O'Reilly Digital Media

The one thing that the Print Module doesn’t do that I wish it did is make it easy to send proofs to clients…especially those who don’t know much about computers. You see, being out of the country has a cruel way of teaching you the need for such things. Just before I left, I had a portrait shoot with a terrific jazz singer, Dianne Zellers, who’s musical career is rapidly rising. But in the hassle of getting everything ready to go, there just wasn’t time to process the photos;and by the way, Dianne knew that before we did the shoot. However, I thought it would be no problem to process the photos in Costa Rica in Lightroom, then just send her a slide show. I did that, but she didn’t know how to open a PDF file. She has a boyfriend who knows all about such things, but it just happened that he was pretty ill at the time. There was no easy place to put a private web gallery, either. So I thought: How about making a proof sheet in the Print module, then emailing her the proofs?

Ah. Now that looked really nice. You can see the result below.

Here’s the best argument I’ve seen for (and against) legalizing digital mashups. YouTube contributor StSanders took concert video clips of guitar heroes like Clapton, Santana, and Van Halen and replaced the guitar solos with hilariously bad plunking. (Plus other noises, as you can hear here):

The sync is amazing. But what’s especially funny is that StSanders’s soundtrack manipulation is so skillful that half the viewers simply think their musical heroes were stoned.

This is exactly the type of derivative artwork that should be covered under Fair Use, but at the same time, one can see how it could damage the original artist’s reputation.

(Thanks to Julian Kwasneski for the tip.)

It’s remarkable what you can do in post-processing. Compare my original conversion from the RAW of my Yosemite Dreams (far below) with a more recent version (immediately below) I created in Photoshop for a special project. (There’s actually no comparison to either version with the far duller look of the original RAW file that appeared when I first looked at it with default settings in Adobe Bridge.)

These file versions go a long way to confirm my contention that digital photography is an entirely new medium, one part photography and one part digital manipulation. Photographers who ignore the “digital painting” aspect of this new medium do so at their own peril, as do digital technicians who ignore the need to take great photos in the first place. Those who critique the new medium based on the aesthetic of the inviolate unmanipulated negative are truly lost in this brave new world.

For a long time I resisted the metaphor from silver halide photography that “the RAW file is the negative” and the final version is the print. A reason for my resistance is that the metaphor doesn’t completely work: a post-processed photo is not a print, it is a file that (theoretically) many literal, physical prints can be made from.

But there’s a significant kernel of truth in the metaphor: using the power of the “digital painting” it’s possible to make many different end-result images starting from a single RAW capture.

Today I am very pleased and excited to announce the release of the Aperture To Pictage Plug-in. Why am I so excited about this plugin? Well, mostly because I wrote it myself! Yes, it is true, this photographer/writer is also a /programmer.

The Aperture To Pictage Plug-in allows Pictage photographers to easily and seamlessly upload their images to Pictage’s web service. The plugin has a number of cool features including background uploading of your images (man was that interesting to write) as well as a system of key-wording that will allow photographers the ability to organize their images into Pictage categories for easier sorting and viewing on their site. And, the plugin also offers users the ability to select an existing event from their studio, or create a new one right from within the plugin itself.

At the moment the plugin is in Beta testing form. If you would like to try it, you will first need to set yourself up with a Pictage account and then follow this link to download the plugin.

If you are already a Pictage photographer, you can give it a try right away, and please be sure to click the “Send Us Your Feedback” link so we can fix any bugs you may run into.

In addition to announcing the plugin today, I am also happy to say that I will be attending this years PhotoPLUS Expo in New York City. If you are in the area and attending the show, be sure to stop by and say hello at the AUPN booth where I will be stationed most of the time. On the Saturday of PPE (October 20th) I will be giving a brief presentation having to do with Aperture and the new Pictage plug-in over at the Pictage booth, so feel free to stop by there and check me out. I will be blogging from the show here and at my personal website at Micah Walter.com, so be sure to add my RSS feed and check back often.

Man, writing the plugin was really exhausting. I have to hand it to the software engineers at Apple and to all the plugin-writers out there in the world. They really do some amazing stuff for us photographers. The Pictage plugin was a big step for me, and I am looking forward to helping it grow into a more refined and useful tool. In a little while I will be adding the plugin to the list over at Aperture Plugged In and at AUPN, so if you want to keep up on the latest updates, you will know where to look.

This is a rather extreme example of digital camera noise reduction, but the camera used for this image is the fairly popular and affordable Nikon D40, so it is a valid example of a situation that many photographers find themselves in these days.

Before anyone writes me a comment, saying that I should not use ISO 3200, this is an example of what can be done, I took this picture specifically to illustrate what happens when you shoot at ISO 3200 with a Nikon D40 and what you can do in Lightroom to improve (or enhance) that image.

Personally I find noise (or grain in film terms) very attractive in some images and I want to know what I can do with my digital cameras. Not only at the 100 ISO perfect exposure end of the image but also at the extreme and most ragged end of digital noise.

Noise Reduction - Luminance 0 - Color 0

If you look in the picture, especially the road surface, you will see quite a lot of multi-colored “grain” which is the noise coming from the processor at ISO 3200.

Noise Reduction - Luminance 100 - Color 0

With the Luminance Noise Reduction at a value of 100 the “grain” has disappeared but the multi-colored noise is still very visible in the picture and kind of smudged looking.

Noise Reduction - Luminance 0 - Color 100

With the Color Noise Reduction set at 100 the color noise is gone but there is a fairly strong “grain”, I really don’t mind this result and in some instances could see using it on purpose.

Noise Reduction - Luminance 100 - Color 100

This is the maximum noise reduction setting for Color and Luminance and looks a bit too smudged to me.

Full Frame Image - Luminance 40 - Color 100

I find this setting fairly acceptable. it might not hold up to enlargement, but for me (and I assume a lot of other people) most of my images (not all of them for sure) are actually used at fairly small size.

I am of course not recommending that you can start shooting everything at ISO 3200, but whenever it is absolutely necessary, it is good to know that a usable image can be extracted from the results.

The problems I blogged about last week with my Lightroom library were mostly—but not completely—fixed by rebuilding my preview database. My library of around 2800 images was useable, but there were still some irritating things happening that hadn’t been cleared up. Finding myself tired of mystery issues while editing photos on the transatlantic flight home, I decided to pull the trigger and do a complete database rebuild.

More on my post shoot workflow from my recent assignment in Mozambique for Oxfam UK.

I went through every image in each album, harnessing the editing power of Aperture, occasionally toggling from full screen to standard view to see where I was in the process (to see Projects and how many more albums there were to go), comparing, zooming, stacking and upgrading my keepers to three star from two. I had culled 4711 images to 336.

3-Star Selection

I think that seeing a group of images in a slideshow with music can make the experience of seeing the work more compelling. I was then ready to bring my traveling partner Kate into the process. To give a taste of what was to come, I clicked on Slideshow and chose the music of artist Oliver Mutukudzi. Seeing the images dissolve into each other with the added emotion the right music track evokes can really put a positive spin on the editing to come.

Together we went through the 336 to choose a final selection of 88 4-star images that we would send to Oxfam at lo-resolution so they could get started putting together the brochures and campaign these photos are to be part of.

4-Star Selects

Kate is not a photographer and knows nothing about Aperture, but she (and I) were both impressed with how well Aperture worked for us to edit together.

Editing in full screen mode was wonderful. The images looked great and occasionally we would view a series in compare mode, which made the best picture obvious when you see them side-by-side. On the fly, I would summon the loupe to check sharpness or details in expressions—occasionally zooming several similar images from the take to insure we chose the best possible expression in a portrait for example. Also, if something was a bit dark or needed a color temp warming, I could do so without skipping a beat by simply pressing the H key, calling up the adjustments HUD and quickly fixing the problem without slowing down the editing flow.

Maria de Christina Joaquim, 29, and her children walk through a forest in rural Manica Province, Mozambique. Photo Copyright Steve Simon

Finally, we found a wireless connection at the luxurious Holiday Inn in Maputo and FTP’d lo-resolution versions of our final 88 that I exported as small JPEGS from Aperture. Exporting from Aperture is one of it’s most powerful features allowing you to export in many pre-set sizes and file formats, but allowing you to create your own custom pre-sets.

I used a different program to create a QuickTime Movie of the slideshow with music that I also sent. (I hope the next version of Aperture allows creating these QuickTime’s of your slideshows directly from the program).

Regina Cumbuis, 22, photographed near her home in Chibote, Moazambique. Photo Copyright Steve Simon

I burned a DVD of Hi-Resolution Images and she was off to London and I headed back home. So the moral of this story is: the longer you use Aperture, the more you learn to love it—and it’s only going to get better with future versions.

Walking along the Marin Headlands cliffs between Rodeo Beach and Tennessee Beach, I was struck by the brightness of the breaking waves in the sunset light against the darkness of the shore in shadow:

Breaking Wave, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Depth of field was not an issue. I spot metered for the brightness of the waves, made sure that a shutter speed fast enough to stop the motion of the wave was selected, and allowed the camera to choose the aperture.

[300mm in 35mm equivalent terms, 1/250 of a second at f/6.3 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

There have been a few posts recently that cover the benefits of traveling with Lightroom while on assignment, and I recently discussed the benefits of using presets to do some of your editing and cataloging dirty work. This post crosses the gap between the two subjects.

Two weeks ago, someone posed a seemingly straightforward question to Josh’s blog; he asked how to remove unwanted JPEG files if you have managed projects that contain both RAW and JPEG versions but no longer need the JPEG files. Obviously the JPEGs are taking up considerable storage space, and if they’re unneeded, it would be nice to get rid of them.

Neither of us thought this would be too challenging at first. But it turns out that it’s a bit more difficult than you would guess. Of course two brains working together did come up with some solutions. So this week you’re getting the best of Ellen and Josh together!

To begin, in Aperture, go to File > Relocate Masters and move the files to a folder on your desktop. We want to move the JPEG files somewhere that we can easily access them. If you are content to leave your files as Referenced files, all you need to do is go into Finder and navigate to the folder. Then go to View > as Icons >Arrange By >Kind. All the JPEGs will be together and you can drag them to the trash. The problem is that doing this will prevent you from ever making them managed files again because Aperture will complain about the missing JPEGs. You could import the remaining raw files into a new project, but you would lose all your keywords, ratings, edits, etc.

The smaller the aperture (opening in the lens), the greater the depth of field (the distance in front and behind a subject that is apparently in focus). The aperture designated by the very small f-stop f/64 provides much greater depth of field than the far larger aperture of f/1.4. Small apertures with great depth of field are used to create photos that are entirely in focus; large apertures with low depth of field are used to isolate in-focus elements in a photo from the photo’s background.

Depth of Field and Aperture shows a high depth of field (using a small aperture opening at f/32) version and a low depth of field (a big aperture opening at f/4) photo of the same flower. If you look at the two photos in that story, it’s easy to see the impact of aperture on depth of field (and the visual implications of high or low depth of field).

Both Dahlia photos in the depth of field demonstration were taken with my Nikon D200. It may seem odd, but the macro photo below, taken with an old Canon Powershot G3 at f/8, shows about as high depth of field as the D200 photo of the Dahlia taken with a macro lens at f/32. What gives?

It’s well known that telephoto lenses have less depth of field than wide angle lenses. In other words, the wider the angle of view, the greater the depth of field. It’s perhaps less understood that the size of the sensor has a direct impact on depth of field. The smaller the sensor size, the greater the depth of field at a given effective focal length and f-stop.

Sensors are classified by their crop factor, which compares the sensor with a frame of 35mm film. My D200 (and all the Nikon dSLRs) have a sensor crop factor of 1.5, meaning that comparing width-to-width, the D200 sensor is smaller in a ratio of 1/1.5 compared to a 35mm frame. The Canon G3 used to take the photo above, like all fixed lens digital cameras, has a much smaller sensor, about 4.5 crop factor, meaning that the ratio to the 35mm film is 1/4.5, and the G3 sensor is about 1/3 the size of the Nikon sensor. (Worth noting: Canon dSLRs, as opposed to the fixed-lens Canon used here, have comparatively large sensors, many of them actually 1:1 with 35mm.)

The effective focal length of 140mm on the Canon isn’t that different in terms of depth of field from the 157.5mm used on the Nikon photo of the Dahlia (both are moderate telephotos). So the only real variables regarding depth of field between the photos is sensor size and aperture. Depth of field is directly proportionate to sensor size. So the Canon has 4.5:1.5 the depth of field (or three times the depth of field) as the Nikon at any given aperture. The f/8 aperture on the Canon gives as much depth of field as somewhere between f/11 and f/16 would on the Nikon.

Advantages and disadvantages? More depth of field at moderate apertures on the small sensor fixed-lens digital cameras means that you can take images with everything in focus (particularly in macro mode) without having to go to excruciatingly long exposures. (However, note that many of these cameras will only allow you to use macro mode at the maximum telephoto end of their zoom ranges.) Photos of general subjects taken with a camera that has a small sensor will exhibit high depth of field, often a good thing. However, even at the biggest aperture settings you still have plenty of depth of field with small sensor cameras. This means that it’s hard to take photos that isolate subjects, like flowers against a blurred background, or portraits where the background is out of focus.

It’s also a fact of life that the smaller the sensor, the smaller the pixel. Smaller pixels mean more noise.Therefore, for a given size capture, small sensor images will always have inherently more noise than larger sensor images.

I just read Scott Kelby’s blog post about having to remove his DSLR from his camera bag when going through airport security in Minneapolis. Got me thinking about the security line dance performance I already do and have worked hard to perfect. I thought I was fairly clever putting my quart-size bag of 3-oz bottles of liquids in my laptop bag, so I only have to open section of one bag to remove all the items that have to go solo through the xray. (However, I have been directed not to put the liquid and the electronic items in the same gray bin.) Now I’m trying to figure out how to add removing my DSLR will fit into this delicate ballet.

Of course the main issue, somewhat ironically, is security. While all reasonable people want to do what they can to increase airline security, this is the moment where you expose your most expensive possessions to both a) immediate theft and b) reconnaissance by potential thieves. The former can be mitigated by sending the electronics through last. My routine: bin 1 is coat and shoes, then suitcase, then laptop bag, then bin 2 with liquids (which go penultimately because of their proximity to the laptop in the bag not their value. I mean I like my shampoo, but…), and bin 3 with laptop. I don’t even want to talk about the time I felt I needed to take two laptops. As for the latter issue of showing it all off to those bent on thievery? Well, who am I kidding, the whole package travels around in my awesome LowePro CompuDayPak.

Anyway, depending no doubt on which airports I travel through, looks like I may just have to write my camera in to the show. Thanks for the heads up, Scott.

I just got a call from a blind man who liked the sound of my podcast. He asked how he could get started podcasting. Would it require expensive equipment? I told him that all I used was a USB mic and some software. (In my case, Ableton Live, BIAS Peak, and Izotope Ozone, but there are plenty of free options as well.) The secret to my sound, I told him, was upgrading the mic, learning the software, and speaking with enthusiasm.

To demonstrate, I referred him to this before-and-after example (516KB MP3), contrasting my voice in the first episode and the tenth. The difference is enormous.

Then I offered to send him links to podcasting tutorials I’d found especially helpful. But when he told me that he uses a screen reader to browse websites, I started to wonder how helpful this background would be. Even if he could make sense of the pages (try clicking the “Listen” link above and closing your eyes), how would he be able to run a graphic waveform editor? I spend many hours cleaning up my recordings, often on a syllable-by-syllable level.

If you know of audio-editing software or techniques that are friendly to disabled people, please leave a link below. In the meantime, here are some of the podcasting tips I assembled for my listener.

I’ve been testing the new Canon PowerShot G9 that records in Raw. Great camera, but Aperture doesn’t read its version of .CR2 files. This brings up a common question. What do you do if Aperture doesn’t support the Raw files you camera creates?

There are a few things to consider here. First, what’s Apple’s track record with your camera brand? In my case, Apple has done an excellent job of supporting Raw formats from Canon cameras. So for me, it’s probably just a matter of time before I can work with my G9 Raw files in Aperture. If you shoot Panasonic, on the other hand, it’s hit or miss. I was working with an FZ8 for months and never got Aperture support. So as a Aperture user, I would review the Raw support list, look for trends, and consider them before buying my next camera.

OK, back to my Canon G9. Since I’m confident that it will be supported up the road, what do I do in the meantime? Here’s my plan:

I shoot Raw+Jpeg until I get full Aperture support. I’ve been talking a lot about Raw+Jpeg lately; I guess because situations keeping coming up where I need it. This seems to be one of those times. After the shoot, I upload the files to Aperture as I normally would. The thumbnails show up in the import window, but once the files are in the Aperture Library, all you see are gray boxes.

But as we know from an earlier post, Aperture grabs both the Raw files and the Jpegs. It’s been a curse for me in the past, but now it’s saving the day.

All I have to do is right-click on a gray thumbnail, choose “New Version from Master Jpeg,” and Aperture presents me with the Jpeg right next to the grayed out master Raw file. I have the Jpeg in there anyway, why not use it? You can select an entire group of images and apply this command to all of them at once.

Now what’s really going to be interesting is to see what happens when Apple supplies the Raw file update, and the Canon G9 is supported. Will all of the gray boxes in my library suddenly spring to life and display thumbnails? I’ll keep you posted.

Yet another great feature of Lightroom is that you can use a more advanced external image editor to work on your images if Lightroom can’t do what you need it to do. Now don’t get me wrong, Lightroom is incredibly powerful and there isn’t much on the market that can surpass the Develop module that I have found. But there are those rare instances where I need to go in and do some work on an image - and Lightroom isn’t up to the task. If an image needs extensive spotting I just find it easier to do this in Photoshop. If I want to see how Nikon Capture NX will render colors on a raw image I can open that image from Lightroom into Nikon Capture NX. Or if an image needs some local adjustments I can go to Photoshop quickly. This topic has been covered by many of my peers on this blog already but I just thought I would revisit it and explain how I work with this option.

First, to set these options up you’ll have to adjust your Lightroom preferences - setting the External Editing presets to the software applications that you would like to use (as in the image below). Since I shoot Nikon, my external Editors are Photoshop CS3 and Nikon Capture.

Then when you want to work on an image in an external editor you can go to Photo > Edit in Photoshop CS3 or on the Apple platform just use the keyboard shortcut “Apple E” to export the image to your first choice of editing software as below.

Once you have finished working on your image in the external editor you can then save it and it will be updated in Lightroom. And depending on your choices when you exported it will either appear as a copy in Lightroom or just update the existing image. As in the dialog box below - when I export an image to an external editor I prefer to “Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments” and have it stacked with the original in the Lightroom catalog. I prefer this because I don’t want to alter the original raw file in any way and usually I have already worked up the image in Lightroom about as far as it can go. For raw files this is the only choice you get.

For portraits I have found Lightroom to be exceptional in rendering accurate skin tones as long as I used a custom white balance in camera (see my earlier blog post on using a Custom White Balance). But every once in a while I open an image into Nikon’s software to see how Nikon Capture will render the colors. Sometimes they are better - sometimes not. The point is that every raw processor renders colors differently. If I prefer the Nikon colors I just save the image in Nikon Capture and then when the image appears in Lightroom I can continue working it up or export it.

One of my pet peeves with the default Lightroom settings is that it uses a “-Edit_1″ suffix for every image that is worked up in an external editor. Luckily this is customizable so you can adapt your own naming convention to images that have been worked up elsewhere.

By going into the preferences dialog again - in the External Editing section there is a place at the bottom of the panel where you can customize the naming conventions of your externally edited images. Click on the toggle, than cruise down to “Edit” as in the image below.

Once you are in the edit panel (as below) it is set up to work exactly like the Batch Rename dialog. Instead of the “-Edit_1″ suffix I prefer a simpler “v2″ or “v3″ suffix which just indicates to me that I have version two or three of the original.

The external editing feature is nice because it simplifies the process of working your images up in multiple software applications at the same time. This feature comes in handy especially if I want to use Noise Ninja to work on noise reduction in an image - with Noise Ninja as a plug-in for Photoshop this is really an easy way to deal with high ISO noise, especially since Noise Ninja currently doesn’t work as a plug-in with Lightroom.

That’s it for this session. See you next week.

Adios, Michael Clark

I frequently moderate panel sessions at digital music/media industry conferences. Many are regular annual (or semi-annual) events that have been going on for years. Every once in awhile, a new one pops onto the horizon. One such event is Play Digital, a one-day conference held at UC Berkeley (this year on SAT October 27th), focused on uniting forward-thinkers in digital media to share ideas about some of the developments in the space that impact consumers and their lifestyles. Speakers will represent both the creative and production issues along with many of the usual business discussions.

I’ve been asked to moderate a panel on the shifting roles in the digital music space as business models evolve. Joining me will be representatives of the different players in the ecosystem from the artist, label, device, distribution, and social networking communities. We’ll look at the power shifts between artists and labels, consumers and media companies, and more. It should be a fun and engaging dialogue; please come and “play” with us if you’re able.

I’ve been teaching introductory Aperture courses lately, so I thought I’d share some tips based on questions I’ve been hearing again and again. Last weekend at an AUPN workshop in Dallas I had three students ask the same question: how do you turn off the floating HUD that appears when you mouse over thumbnails in the Browser?

They were asking about the Image Tooltips HUD, which can be quite useful to get quick at-a-glance info about a photo in the Browser. But the beauty of this HUD is that it can be toggled on and off quickly; it can be pretty annoying if it keeps popping up whenever you move your mouse across the Browser. It can quickly be toggled on and off by going up to the View menu and choosing Image Tooltips, or even quicker, by pressing the T key.

The other topic that has been coming up repeatedly in my Aperture workshops is confusion around the master/version relationship, specifically when photos are sent to Photoshop via the Open with External Editor command. So, a quick review: the external editor is defined in Aperture’s preferences, under the Output section. This is where the editor is selected and an external editor file format is defined. I use Photoshop CS3 and 300dpi TIFF. When you select an image and choose Images -> Open with External Editor, Aperture creates a new master (leaving the original unchanged), converts it to the chosen file format, and then opens the image file in the selected external editor. It’s important to remember that the new image file is tracked as a new master file and gets stacked with the original master file.

When the image is saved in Photoshop, the changes are reflected back in Aperture, and the image thumbnail gets badged in the lower right corner with a small target badge. But what happens if we want to send that image back to Photoshop to continue our edit?

This is where things can get a little tricky. If no further adjustments have been made to the image in Aperture, the same TIFF Master will be sent to Photoshop when we choose Edit with External Editor. All layers, channels, and masks will remain intact. However, if we attempt to make any adjustments to the TIFF master in Aperture, a new version of that master will be created. And regardless of whether the original master is managed or referenced, this version will be another TIFF file that’s stored in the Aperture library.

The diagram below illustrates how Aperture uses badges to give us information about where these images came from:

Image 1 is the original RAW master file stored as a referenced image in my library. Image 2 is the TIFF that was created when I chose Edit with External Editor. Image 3 shows what happens when I apply an adjustment to Image 2 in Aperture: a new version is created and the target badge gets replaced with a standard adjustment badge. Finally, Image 4 shows what happens when I select Image 3 and send it back to an external editor: another master TIFF is created and badged with the target icon.

For lots of people, the upgrade to Lightroom 1.2 seems to have gone smoothly. Mikkel describes it as a maintenance upgrade. For me, however, it wasn’t quite as smooth. After upgrading, I’d run into spinning beachballs that required a force quit. I’d also run into images where Lightroom would put up the “Working” notice and never render out the image. And, more than a few times, some images in the develop module were displayed from their thumbnail view and all pixellated.

I shot these two photos of a dahlia to illustrate the impact of aperture on depth of field. The photo immediately below, with a large aperture of f/4, has minimal depth of field, while the photo far below with a small aperture of f/32 has much more depth of field.

The flower is in focus in both photos. In the low depth-of-field image (immediately below) the background is out of focus, and therefore visually separated from the foreground.

Dahlia at f/4, photo by Harold Davis.

In this situation, the low depth-of-field image is preferrable (at least in my opinion). An important point with low depth-of-field photos: since most of the photo will be out-of-focus, try to maximize the focus you do have by placing the camera as parallel as possible to the primary subject of the photo.

[Both photos: 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, 157.5mm in 35mm terms, ISO 100, tripod mounted. Above 1/1250 of a second at f/4, below 1/20 of a second at f/32.]

In a previous post I talked about using iPhoto and Aperture together by linking iPhoto images to Aperture’s preview files. What you are essentially doing with this method is creating a reference to Aperture from within iPhoto. This technique seems to work pretty well (with a few small caveats that came up in the comments section), but it also brings up a number of other possibilities having to do with the concept of referenced masters.

With Aperture’s own Referenced Masters we have the ability to store our original RAW images anywhere we would like. We can store the images to multiple external drives, DVDs anywhere we would like. With Aperture’s built in previews we can even keep jpeg versions of our files on hand at all times.

This is really good stuff for those of us with large and expanding library files, but there is another way referenced masters can help us. With referenced masters we can make multiple references to our files. What does this mean? Well, let’s say for example you want to maintain two Aperture libraries. One library exists on your desktop machine and is a master library of all of your work. The other library lives on your laptop and contains your recent project work and anything you may download to your laptop while in the field. Well, with referenced masters you can easily access these files from both libraries at the same time. Just use the relocate masters function in Aperture to move the files to a centralized place (network drive or your desktop machine) and Aperture will keep a reference to the new location. You now can do one of two things. Either re-import the masters as referenced masters into the second library, or you can export the Aperture project from your laptop and import it into your desktop’s library. By moving the project file you will also get a copy of any metadata and image adjustments you made while working on your laptop.

Now that your image masters live in a separate place you can reference them with other applications such as iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

One technique in image asset management that I think has a lot of value is making permanent archives of individual projects. A really easy way to do this is to create a new Aperture library, import the Aperture project, which will include all metadata and adjustments and then use the Consolidate Masters feature. When you click Consolidate Masters you will be given a choice of moving or copying the files. Click copy, and all of your referenced files will remain in place. You can then burn the new Aperture library to a DVD for cold storage. Any other applications, including Aperture that reference these files will still be able to find them.

Over at Bagelturf.com there is a really good article about the dangers of using referenced masters. He goes into detail about these dangers and how to prevent accidents. Remember, once your masters are outside of your Aperture library you are fully responsible for them. So be sure to back them up! If you are new to the concept of referenced masters, be sure to check out the article on Bagelturf, here.

On the surface this image was fairly difficult to process in Lightroom and I will for sure have to take it into Photoshop CS3, to get the best results. The foreground of the image is in a very deep shadow and the sky was very bright. I did expose for the brighter part of the scene as much as possible, so that I would have a chance of using the picture, but I still had to use almost all the Basic tools in Lightroom to pull out an acceptable image.

First the sky - I used the localized version of the Tone Curve tool and dragged the highlight of the blue part of the sky down by a value of -99.

Fill Light - to bring out the shadow area in the image I used a value of 51.

Recovery - to lessen the overall effect of the fill light I used a value of 74.

Blacks - I added just a little bit of black for realizm, a value of 5.

Clarity - a full value of 100 to neutralize the flattening effect of the fill light

Saturation - not too much but enough to punch up the picture, value of +21.

On the other hand this picture tells another story all together. My nine year old son Man and I have been visiting this open air place of Buddhist worship since before he could walk. We hadn’t been here in a while and I though it was about time to pay respect to the mountain and to the Buddha who lived engraved on his side once again.

I have literally hundreds of images of my son at this temple and he has always been in great spirits during our visits, saying a prayer to the Buddha and leaving some money for the upkeep of the grounds. I remember that both his mother and I were really surprised when he insisted on leaving money in the donation box on one of his very first visits (I had to lift him up to the top of the box so he could put the money in).

On this particular trip we came upon a new prayer spot and were surprised by a small crocodile that darted across our path and dove into the pond at the base of the mountain. I am not sure how the crocodile got here, it was probably bought as a pet when it was a baby and released here to stay with the Buddha when it got too big.

The 109 meter high Buddha image itself was projected onto the side of the Khao Chi Chan mountain with a laser light, traced with chalk by mountain climbers and then blasted along the drawn lines, to create the grooves for the golden inlay. The Royal Thai Navy and Marines guard and maintain the site.

This image taken on the same day and at the same location had pretty good portrait lighting and did not require any adjustments in Lightroom (OK I added a little Clarity). There is also not that much of a story. This was taken on a path coming back down from the Buddha shrine (behind my back), on which I have photographed my son many times before over the last nine and a half years.

His mother says he is funny looking in this picture, but that is because I am using a 12-24mm Nikkor DX lens at 12mm and very close up, so I can get as much of his smile as possible (missing teeth and all) into the image. Once again visiting the Buddha at Khao Chi Chan has had it’s magical effect on Man.

Going from Lightroom 1.0 to 1.1 was a major upgrade, with considerable changes to both features and performance. Last week Adobe announced Lightroom 1.2 and while there are no new features, there have been some under the hood changes that you should be aware of.

Well, being in a foreign location certainly can force one to take one’s Lightroom thinking a step further. Here in Costa Rica, at this time of year, it rains every afternoon, sometimes, in sheets. The result is a lot of dark green on the ground and some very bright but totally cloudy skies. There are lots of shades and shapes in those clouds, but normally, no matter how far to the right you slide the Recovery slider, some of the skies are totally blocked up, provided you’ve also got enough detail in the landscape.

One solution to this is to shoot all your landscapes early in the morning, before the rain clouds move in. That doesn’t work too well when you’re suddenly confronted with overwhelming beauty at 2pm. Besides the overcast skies provide a soft light that lets you see lots of detail in the dark green landscape…provided you expose for it.

When I worked in Silicon Valley, I realized after a short while that a big part of my job as a manager amounted to finding ways to help people be creative. After all, if you have a collection of very smart employees, it’s wasteful to just tell them what to do - they probably know more than you do about the challenge at hand. So I started collecting my own thoughts on the subject, and also looked into a lot of the academic literature (in recent decades a sizable field of creativity studies has grown up). I guess I shouldn’t have been, but I was struck by the similarity of my personal experience and the research. It appears that many if not most creative people work in roughly the same way.

But only recently did I come across a slim, decidedly non-academic volume that, it turns out, pretty much said it all back in the 1940’s: “A Technique for Producing Ideas”, by James Webb Young.

Because I have been traveling with writer/story editor extrordinaire Kate Pattison from Oxfam, and since we are on a tight deadline—Aperture has proven invaluable.

When I had time to edit, I got rid of the unusable stuff by rejecting those images (9-Key) and deleting them. This freed up some library space as well as psychologically felt good by tightening up my library with only images that have a chance of being used in some context in the future. I liken this feeling to cleaning up my office or getting my car washed or having all clean laundry—I’m ready and energized to move forward.

An outdoor Church in Mozambique. Photo Copyright Steve Simon

In Aperture, I went to “All Images” and saw that there were 4907 images in my library. I selected them all and corrected the time encoded on each frame by choosing the correct time-zone. I love this feature in Aperture. I can leave my camera’s clock set to New York time and simply adjust the entire take using the Batch Metadata Change in Aperture.

Sadly, my Fuji camera had the wrong New York date and time information and I couldn’t figure out a way to change this first, so Aperture could then adjust the time zone. Fortunately the vast majority of my images were not shot on the Fuji, so this wasn’t a big issue. Aperture only adjusts from the original time encoded on each file. So if it was set for March 5, 2006 at a certain time instead of September 4, 2007 at the correct time, Aperture would make the time-zone adjustment, but only from the original “wrong time”.

The time the photograph is taken is important for Aperture users since it directly correlates to the much-loved auto-stacking feature, which allows you to coral stacks of images taken within certain time periods up to a minute. It’s also important for me when I set the image sequence by Date, allowing me to see the chronological sequence of my multi-day shoot.

Since the Fuji images were all out of sync time wise, I had to manually move these images into the right order with the others that were all together in the sequence they were taken. (Important for the Slideshow feature for example, when you want to have a show of images from the first to the last taken).

Information embedded into our images is a powerful thing. It makes it easier to find specific images, which may not be a huge deal now, but add 10 more years of shooting to your archive and trying to find something shot yesterday may be more challenging.

Once I had the time adjusted, I was ready to update my caption info. You may remember from a previous post that I had made some metadata pre-sets for the shoot. This was just to get some basic information into the files. Now it was time to finesse and add more detail to the metadata.

Photo Copyright Steve Simon

Since Kate was taking detailed notes and names along with all the pertinent ID data to identify people in group shots, I simply took her word file on a USB Key and copied it to my computer. It was a simple matter of cut and paste to take the pertinent info and paste it into the captions.

With a set of metadata presets matching the corresponding albums, I could quickly do a Batch Change to copy all the pertinent metadata to each of the image files in the albums. Worked like a charm and fast.

After I had all the images together in their respective albums with all the info embedded in each file, I was ready to do a preliminary edit before bringing my colleague Kate into the process. More on my post shoot process next post.

Sheep’s Head, a popular food in Mozambique. Photo Copyright Steve Simon

There are three adjustment sliders in the “Presence” section of the “Basic” panel in the Development module (whew, did you get all of that?): Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation. There have been a few posts here on Inside Lightroom about Clarity and how it affects your images. That leaves two tools—err, more like one & a half—left to cover: Saturation and Vibrance.

Photoshop jockies and hobbyist photographers alike will recognize the saturation tool does and where to use it: bumping up the saturation of your image will intensify the colours in your image, bumping it down will take your image closer to monochrome. As always, the easiest explanation can be made by adjusting an image and comparing the before and after to see the effect; the version on the left is the original as imported by Lightroom, while the version on the right has had its Saturation increased. And, being humans, the eye will automatically pick out the fact that the skin tones are a little too saturated and appear orange, as a result.

Chances are, if you’ve ever searched for help on Aperture, you’ve found Steve Weller’s, aka Bagelturf, website. Here, for some time now, Steve has posted a wide range of well-written Aperture articles dealing with everything from high-level topics, such as the viewer, to technical subjects, including export plug-in development. Recently, he bundled up the plethora of articles on his site into a self-published, $24.95 PDF called Get Your Hear Around Aperture 1.5. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a review copy, and I have to say that I’m impressed with how much work he’s has done!

There are a number of excellent Aperture books on the market (shameless plug: including the one that Ellen and I co-authored, Aperture Exposed) designed to expose the reader to everything in Aperture; they’re written as reference/how-to guides to help you learn all about the program while providing some workflow suggestions and troubleshooting tips. Steve has taken a different approach. In the PDF’s introduction, he explains that everything here is from a personal perspective. Rather than taking a comprehensive, reference manual approach, he’s written about what he considers worth covering, what what works for him, what he’s discovered, and what problems he’s had. Furthermore, he explains that this PDF is “simply a large number of articles classified into sections, roughly organized into a sensible order. It’s a dip and skip book.”

Be aware that this means that some topics, such as processing RAW images and advanced image adjustment, aren’t covered while other topics, such as going from iView to Aperture, are. This also means that you should take some of the sample workflows for just what they are–samples that you’ll want to customize to be more appropriate for your shooting style (this is true with every suggested workflow, though!).

What really impressed me is the amount of detail Steve has discovered and documented in many parts of Aperture. I blogged recently about finding new features in Aperture. Reading his articles will give you a head start into discovering what buttons to poke! For example, most of us know about using folders to help organize our library. Yet did you know that folders that organize projects and other top-level content are blue while folders that organize the content inside a project are brown? In “Brown Folders In the Aperture Library,” with many descriptive screenshots, Steve describes the differences between the two, explains what type of folders you end up with when you import projects, explains how to move the files to get the organization you want, and more.

These articles, including “Brown Folders In the Aperture Library,” are available for free on Steve’s site (there is a donation link, if you want to thank him for his work), and you could save them each as a PDF if you don’t want to purchase the full collection. However, having an organized, searchable PDF is quite handy for when you want to read about Aperture without having an Internet connection or want to quickly search for a topic. Furthermore, the $24.95 price includes a year of upda