O'Reilly Digital Media

To start with, I took a straight studio shot of a rare double hellebore blossom (immediately below). The flower is one of the first blossoms from the second year blooms of these special hellebore plants, hybridized by Barry Glick of Sunshine Farm and Garden, the self-styled “Hellebore King.” I photographed the blossom using a backlighting setup on partially reflective lucite with a black background.

The capture information: 200mm f/4 macro lens (300mm in 35mm terms), 1 second at f/36 and ISO 100, tripod mounted using a Kirk Mighty Low Boy.

View this image larger.

When I saw the photo on my monitor, I like the way it came out. But I definitely needed to play with the image in Photoshop (below and far below).

View this image larger.

I often get asked about the techniques I use to get effects like these. I’ve no desire to be mysterious about it. But the precise steps I use are different every time. It’s a process, when it’s working right, that feels like the image is calling out to me, and revealing the steps as I go along necessary to reveal the inner image. You could say that I am the image’s therapist, taking the external image and revealing its inner self.

Also the case: if you tell me that you prefer my straight starting place, I won’t be offended.

There is some commonality in the techniques I usually use. I start by photographing (or scanning) for high depth-of-field and transparency. I then work on the image in Photoshop using a variety of blending modes with duplicated inversions of LAB channels.

View this image larger.

The influence of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s thinking on flow continues to spread. Partly, no doubt, because learning to say his name (”Me-high Chick-sent-me-high”) is a flow experience in itself: just the right amount of challenge, and a satisfying experience once it’s accomplished.

I joined a then-growing list of writers on the topic in late 2004, relating an effort at Project BarBQ to apply the principles of flow to musical instrument design, and since then have returned to it now and then, including via the still-in-beta Flow Awards.

Now comes Jim Ramsey, lead designer of Movable Type blogging software, applying flow-oriented thinking to website design (and by extension many forms of design), in a useful and thought-provoking post at A List Apart.

Ramsey identifies 4 principles:

1. Set clear goals
2. Provide immediate feedback
3. Maximize efficiency
4. Allow for discovery

One example, under the heading “Maximize efficiency”:

Google Reader has several features that make it feel fast and effortless. Perhaps the best example is the “endless scroll.” It eliminates the need for pagination by fetching new articles as you scroll down the page so that you can read all the articles in a tag or feed without ever clicking to go to a new page. The user never has to disrupt their reading by clicking a link to the next page.

Another way that Google Reader ensures efficiency is through the email feature which, when clicked, appears directly below the article and allows you to send a story to a friend without losing your place. Google avoids causing a disruption in flow by reducing the mental cost of taking an action, thereby promoting more engaged use of the site.

I am in Chicago this week, doing a photo shoot for the campaign of Fusion. Fusion is a new yoga school partly owned and operated by my good friend, a yoga master and instructor, Juanita Monaghan. The past two months, I’ve been traveling and I’ve been getting valuable first-hand education on what it actually feels like to be mostly doing on-location pictorials.

Before this constant traveling, and for the past 15 years, I’ve been shooting almost exclusively inside the comfortably controlled confines of a photo studio. Sure I’ve done quite a number of location shoots in the past, but not on a very regular basis (meaning, not all the time). Shooting on location almost all of the time is therefore a somewhat new experience for me and I’m in the process of getting used to it. I am a fish out of the water, so to speak, but hopefully, not for long.

I am guessing that many if not most photographers who are using Aperture are shooters whose work and passion takes them to interesting locations both far and near. These are photographers who may be shooting in some of the most exciting places but maybe under unpredictable conditions. They may be constantly traveling, alone or with assistants, from one place to another, lugging lots of stuff and moving about, while at the same time, keeping in mind the process of consistently producing required output on-the-go and certainly keeping deadlines.

While veteran location shooters may have the on-the-go Aperture workflow down pat, I’m figuring out how it can work for me. Here’s how I’m doing it:

1. All my equipment are stashed in a single backpack: a D2Xs camera body with 6 Nikkor lenses and a Lensbaby 3G , and, an overly accessorized 17? MacBook Pro with an Epson P-5000, and a few other stuff, including an iPhone.

2. After the shoot, or even while shooting, I load all RAW image files into the Epson P-5000. It seems easier and more convenient to load the photos to a handy and compact portable storage device than into a laptop while on the go.

3. Meanwhile, on my MacBook Pro, I have Aperture installed and waiting with an empty Library.

4. The soonest that I am able, I connect the Epson P-5000 to the MacBook Pro, and reference all the shots in Aperture. I keep lots of other stuff on my laptop so I may not have enough space to create a managed Library in Aperture. Also, it seems that referencing the images stored in an external drive attached to the laptop seems faster.

5. First thing I do once the images are referenced in Aperture is that I export the masters out of Aperture, or and burn them into DVDS, and stash these away as a backup.

6. And then I just go ahead and start working on the new shots inside Aperture (with the P-5000 hooked up when necessary).

7. At whatever stage I may be in the workflow in my laptop’s Aperture, when I reach my home studio, I export the Project (with Consolidate Images checked) out of my laptop, and then import it into my MacPro’s Aperture, where I then continue working. I also do a little housekeeping at this stage, with all unnecessary and secondary backups and copies are judiciously deleted to conserve space and to avoid confusion.

8. The DVDs I burned as a backup on location undergoes a quick check and then filed and referenced away.

9. Once I’m done with the Project, I export the final Project, burn in Toast spanning multiple discs, label, reference and stash away.

This simple workflow seems to work for me, and I’m enjoying the location-to-studio workflow in Aperture. Being new to “being always on-the-go,” I am meeting photography challenges that others may have already solved ahead of me. The straightforward workflow I outlined above, although I might need to refine it a bit more, helps me concentrate on the images and meet my deadlines. I’m just glad to be able to do this with Aperture as one of my main workflow tools, on the road and in the studio.

In my quest to track my photos out in the wild, I’ve settled upon an efficient but slightly–less–than–ideal solution: drag the photos in question from Lightroom (both the filmstrip and grid will work as drag sources) to my destination of choice. I’ve settled upon a VoodooPad document with one page for each publication; dragging photos from Lightroom into VoodooPad will result in a link back to the file, wherever it happens to be located on my computer. I include any relevant publication information that I wish to catalog alongside the link back to the file. Here’s one page that illustrates my simple solution:

Every software program that I’m familiar with includes some automatic adjustments, and without fail, until recently, I’ve been opposed to using them. The reason is that any auto adjustment is a software engineer’s best guess of what adjustments usually work for most images with similar characteristics. I prefer to make adjustments that are image specific. I do use batch processing via the Lift and Stamp tool when images have been shot under similar lighting conditions. But even when taking advantage of the Lift and Stamp tools, I often tweak the adjustments for individual images. So until recently I could accurately claim to never use auto adjustments. But you’ve heard the old adage, “Never say never!”

Not long ago I was experimenting with some underwater photography. I’m new to this type photography and left my camera set on Auto White balance. (OK, some of you are saying, “See, you do use auto adjustments,” and perhaps you’re right. But that’s an in camera setting not a software setting.) As is often the case with underwater shots, there was a strong cyan/blue cast to the images. I tried adjusting the Temperature slider in Aperture but that wasn’t enough and there isn’t a red/cyan white balance slider. I also tried increasing the red saturation and decreasing the cyan saturation, which improved the image somewhat, but the cyan cast was still present. Out of curiosity ( I clicked the Auto Levels buttons that are under the histogram in the Adjustment HUD. And to my surprise the colorcast was gone!

Once again, virtual instrument maestro Gary Garritan has compiled a collection of Christmas carols recorded by his customers. You can download all 19 MP3s plus cover art to make your own CD (or iTunes covers) from his Xmas page. I’m grabbing them right now with the handy Firefox extension DownThemAll.

This year, Garritan’s core software orchestral and band instruments are joined by his company’s new virtual violin and cello. (You can hear the expressiveness of the latter on Digital Media Insider podcast #7.)

What a great showcase for desktop musicians and public-domain music!

For more on Gary Garritan, read our interview, “A Personal Orchestra for Everyone.”

Last week, over on the Inside Aperture blog, Micah Walter mused on what would happen if his RAW workflow tool went away. What would happen to the metadata and the image adjustments? I have to admit, it’s a thought that I’ve wrestled with quite a bit myself having used both Aperture and Lightroom and moved between the two. It’s a different set of issues than we had with back in the good (*cough*) old days of film, but it’s just as important.

Luckily, thanks to XMP and the like, transporting metadata such as titles, copyrights, and descriptions between tools is no longer rocket science. But, what can and does get lost in a move between tools is all the work you put into adjusting images. Given that each RAW processor works differently, and supports a different set of image adjustments, it’s probably not going to be possible to come up with a standard for preserving the processing instructions that go along with each image. I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I think it’s a long shot.

This problem, however, doesn’t just manifest itself between tools. It also manifests itself between versions of a tool. As RAW converters are improved, the images you made adjustments too last year might not look the same after upgrading Lightroom. I’m aware that Aperture provides a way to use previous converters, but how far back will that support go?

So what is one to do if they perfectly tweak an image to their liking and want to keep it for posterity? At this point, the only sane thing to do is to bake—my pet term for export—a TIFF or PSD file, preferably in 16-bit format. This will ensure that you can keep your currently processed image no matter what happens in the future with your choice of tools. Of course, now you have another file to manage. And that becomes another problem.

Maybe DNG could help us out with this. It’s already possible to include multiple representations of RAW data in a DNG file. Maybe if the keepers of the DNG spec were to add an ability to include “snapshots” in TIFF or PSD format into a DNG, we could package our processed versions of a photograph together with its RAW data in such a way that could survive the test of time in one handy package. That way, even if you move from Lightroom to SuperDeluxRAWTool in the future, you can always access how your photos looked when you made your edits in late 2007.

I’ve been using Aperture since it shipped in Nov. 2005 — more than two years of building projects, adding metadata, and organizing images. There have been many little rewards along the way, such as being able to quickly locate this photo from an Apple event. But the big payoff just happened recently.

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new book, Digital Photography Companion, and I’ve had to cull hundreds of pictures (from a catalog of thousands) for possible inclusion in the project. In the past, this was an agonizing endeavor. Pictures and various iterations of them spread all over the place, difficult to find, hard to organize.

For Digital Photography Companion, it’s an entirely different universe. My Aperture library contains everything I’ve shot for the last two years (except for photos captured with the Canon G9), and the images are totally organized and accessible. I’m building preview catalogs for my publishing team, outputting Jpegs for sample designs, and will soon be exporting high resolution Tiffs for CMYK conversion in Photoshop. (I know what you’re thinking… wouldn’t it be nice to output CMYK directly from Aperture. Answer: yes it would be lovely.)

So the last two years I’ve spent gleefully organizing my images in Aperture is now paying off handsomely. I’m actually enjoying the photo editing process instead of dreading it. If I could only go end to end and output in CMYK, it would be a total victory. Ah, maybe someday. But for now, I have to say that my photography workflow has made a giant step forward. And I feel like my return on investment is excellent.

In my latest Digital Story podcast, I talk about this process. You might want to tune in if you have a hankering for more.

On Friday, Apple unveiled the new West 14th Street store, its largest store in Manhattan. I had a chance to check out the store yesterday and though at this point we expect Apple stores to be impressive, this one really takes it to the next level. It occupies a corner lot in the trendy Meat Packing district and it features three floors of Apple products and services. One of the coolest aspects of the store is that the third floor is dedicated entirely to service, featuring a huge Genius Bar for repairs. Perhaps more exciting for Aperture users are the new Pro Labs that the store will offer. These are four-part, eight-hour courses covering either Aperture, Final Cut Pro, or Logic Pro. Students will have their own Macs to use during the classes with all the software pre-configured. And get this: they’re free.

This is pretty impressive. With these Pro Labs, Apple can now offer three ways for new Aperture users to learn the software:

There are the instructor-led workshops, where anyone can sit in the audience and listen to a demo-style presentation and ask questions. And there’s “One to One”, in which customers can sign up for one-hour personal training sessions. This was formerly included in the $99/year ProCare service, but was spun off into its own offering a few months ago. Still, $99/year for weekly personal training sessions is a great deal. Even if only one out of ten sessions is truly mind-altering, it’s still 99 bucks a year. Most Apple trainers I know charge more than that for an hour. And, of course, the level of training that pro Apple Certified Trainers can offer is far beyond that of the Apple Store, but I still think that these sessions can be quite useful and are an affordable option for a lot of beginners using Aperture.

Add to workshops and One to One training sessions these new Pro Labs and you’ve got a really compelling reason to go with an end-to-end Apple solution… I’m thinking specifically of the new user, just starting to get into digital photography and trying to make a decision between Aperture and Lightroom. It’s a pretty strong selling point for Apple to be able to say “hey, go with Aperture and come back to the store for free training and workshops”.

One thing that I’ve heard a few rumblings about from some of the Pro Trainer channels is a feeling that these Labs might threaten some of our prospective business. And I suppose it may. But I don’t think that these Labs are intended to parallel the experience or depth of an expensive multi-day Apple Training course. And I’d be perfectly happy to direct a beginner Aperture user to an Apple-led course and then have the chance to work with him or her in-depth once they have a foundation in the software.

The Pro Labs are currently only being offered at West 14th Street, but it seems likely that Apple is using the new store to try the concept out. If Apple’s track record is any indicator, the initiative will be a huge success and we’ll see these classes offered at other stores. Even if Apple decides to charge a nominal fee for the courses, I bet it will still be a steal over the alternatives.

Last week, Dominey Design, the makers of SlideShowPro, announced that they have created a new version of the popular slideshow software that works within Lightroom. Ever curious to find new ways of using Lightroom I downloaded a copy of the software and have been playing with it all weekend. The array of slideshow options is dizzying. The interface is excellent - basically it is like using any other module in Lightroom. The only downside to the interface is the bewildering number options. Hence, it will take some time to figure out all the possible changes that can be made. It is hard to call options a downside though - just more to figure out and I’m sure the results are worth it. Below is a screen shot in mid-production of a slideshow I made using SlideShowPro in Lightroom’s web module.

Strangely enough the SlideShowPro software eliminates some keystrokes while working in Lightroom. For example, while in the web module - which is where you work with SlideShowPro - if you want to get back to the Library tapping the “G” key does nothing. You have to physically go up to the upper right menu to chose Library to get back to the grid. Not to worry though, the software is powerful and incredibly customizable and a little strangeness is worth it. Once you exit the web and SlideShowPro module then all of the keystrokes work normally.

Looking around the web, you might be surprised to find out how many photographers have used SlideShowPro to display their images on the web. I have seen a few websites that were pretty much entirely built around SlideShowPro galleries. As you can see in the sample slideshow layout below the resulting slideshows are simple and elegant.

While working on a recent slideshow I realized that for the best results, i.e. to have your images sized properly and sharpened correctly it is best to export the images and constrain them to the size that you’ll create your slideshow. For example if you are creating a slideshow that is 800 x 600 pixels, export horizontal images so they are 800 pixels wide and verticals are 600 pixels tall. I would then apply some sharpening to the images in Photoshop (in a batch) and then re-import those images into Lightroom to build the slideshow so they will look their best. This is kind of a pain but it works nonetheless - and since I don’t know how to use Flash very well it is easier to use SlideShowPro in Lightroom.

Once you are finished with your slideshow, you can preview it just as you can with any Lightroom web gallery and you can also export it to your desktop or upload it to a website directly from Lightroom. The SlideShowPro software pretty much acts just like any other web gallery template except it is building slideshows and flash web galleries. What would be nice is to be able to customize the gallery around the actual SlideShowPro interface in a similar manner as the other web templates offered by Adobe.

If you are interested in checking out SlideShowPro you can download a copy here.

At $25, the software won’t be breaking any banks. It is one heck of a deal for the money. I am going to start playing around with a few slideshows and look into incorporating them on my website. I have put up a sample slideshow created in Lightroom just so you can check out what they look like. To see it go to:

http://www.michaelclarkphoto.com/slideshow/index.html

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

Adios, Michael Clark

As an argument for keeping photos on file, and being prepared to revisit their treatment in the digital darkroom, this image is a good case in point. The original was a wild flower along the lines of a dandelion in a field near Sea Ranch. I photographed it this summer in the early morning, covered with drops from a heavy ocean mist.

Retrieving the photo from my files a few days ago, I gave it an alternate (and I believe more compelling) treatment.

View this image larger.

Another issue this image raises is the extent to which digital photography is a new medium. I’ve made very clear my view that the post-processing part of digital photogray is integral. Ignore what you can do in Photoshop at your peril.

With freedom comes responsibility: the capture is the starting place, and my image can go almost anywhere from that starting place. That’s nice, but then I am completely responsible for the image, and I can’t excuse it by saying, “But the scene was like that!”

As most of you probably know by now, a few days ago Adobe released ACR 4.3.1. In the release notes it mentioned that there was an update for the new Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 cameras (among other things). I was kind of surprised at this because I thought that the Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 had already been included in the 4.3 update. (You have to excuse my present slightly disoriented state, I seem to have caught some kind of flu a few days ago, that is making it difficult for me to think clearly).

Anyway the appearance of a new ACR gives me an opportunity to run some more comparison tests, this time between Lightroom 1.3 (with the old 4.3 ACR) and Adobe Photoshop CS3 with the new and improved ACR 4.3.1.

I realize that to get the most out of an image in either application, I actually need to push some buttons, slide some sliders and use my brain, but the only way to make a head to head comparison is to let the programs work on auto-pilot and accept their default output.

In Lightroom I just chose Export straight out of the Library, reduced the image and saved to the maximum JPEG quality. In Photoshop CS3 I opened the image in Bridge (which applied the ACR 4.3.1 RAW conversion) with the default setting, reduced the size, applied the USM filter, and saved to JPEG at maximum quality.

Not surprisingly the results are actually quite similar, the only difference I see using Apple Preview (on my Mac) is a very slightly lighter image from Lightroom 1.3 (the preview of this blog actually shows me the opposite in a Mozzila browser), as usual the results will vary on different computers, monitors and browsers.

Update: I checked the results in Safari browser after publishing the Blog posting and the colors are more saturated and the best result (in my opinion) are from Lightroom 1.3 but the Photoshop CS3 images could easily be adjusted to be the same.

The images are of a temple very near my house and were taken on my morning bicycle ride a few days ago. The camera is the Nikon D300 and the lens used for these images is the 60mm f/2.8 AF Micro Nikkor.

Lightroom 1.3 - New temple construction.

PS CS3 & ACR 4.3.1 - New temple construction.

Lightroom 1.3 - Detail of a shrine residing on the side of a tree.

PS CS3 & ACR 4.3.1 - Detail of a shrine residing on the side of a tree.

Almost a year ago, Ben Long wrote a pretty nice article about how to move away from Aperture. He outlined a plan that would ensure that you would be able to preserve much of the work you have done in Aperture, should you decide to adopt a different application.

Back then, and even now, there has been much speculation as whether or not Aperture will make it. People have suggested that if Apple doesn’t grab hold of a certain portion of the market they may just dump the whole project altogether.

These types of rumors have been running around the internet since Aperture was launched, and while I don’t really see Apple dumping a product like Aperture anytime soon, talk like this does prompt me to think a little about things like image permanence in the digital world.

With film, the study of image permanence was a huge deal. All sorts of studies were done to prove or disprove the “archivalness” of film based materials. They studied the affects of UV radiation, humidity, and all sorts of other variables to determine how long we could plan on keeping our precious negatives around.

But, when digital photography became readily available to the public, we saw a whole new onslaught of issues arise along this same vein. The first ( and quite possibly the most talked about ) issue was the concept of RAW images.

Camera makers began offering their proprietary RAW image data from their cameras in addition to a processed Jpeg or large TIFF file. I think this was partly due to a demand for more control over the image and partly a way for camera makers to sort of show how much they cared about their customers. Remember, there is nothing stopping Canon or Nikon from only writing TIFFs and Jpegs, aside from the influences of their customers.

But, photographers never really even knew about RAW until camera manufacturers started offering it. I’m not really sure which came first, but the point is, somewhere along the line, we photographers got obsessed with the word RAW.

Along comes Aperture

When Apple announced Aperture, one of the biggest selling points was its ability to simplify a RAW workflow. Apple showed us that one software application could handle all sorts of RAW image types and with a seamless and enjoyable user experience. And I believe they did a fine job. I personally shoot nothing but RAW anymore, and Aperture continues to be the focal point of my workflow.

It’s a pleasure to be able to work with RAW files so easily in Aperture, and I have to say, I’m hooked. But one other thing that Aperture introduced ( for me anyway ) was a really seamless and non-destructive work environment. Now I feel like I can work without having to worry about hurting my original artwork. My “negatives” are always safe, never touched by human or computer hands, and stored neatly and in an organized manner within my archive.

But what if Aperture dies? What if all of the sudden Apple drops the product, or even worse, what if for some reason I just can’t get Aperture to open on my machine?

Obviously the later is a temporary problem I will probably be able to solve, but the former is much more daunting. What do I do?

Well, I suppose it would really have to do with how extensive the work I had done with Aperture had been. I mean, all of my original files are always going to be safe and sound, even though they are in proprietary format. I have them all stored neatly in a referenced archive, so I can always get at them with other applications without a problem ( and I should probably be doing this already), but what about all my Versions and Masters, and Metadata.

Well, Ben’s article describes some good ways to deal with this stuff, but I have to wonder how “universal” of an approach this would be, and how labor intensive this would be? In other words, what should I be doing differently to preserve the data I am creating on a daily basis in Aperture.

Many people have been talking to me about exporting XMP sidecar files. I think XMP has always been a good idea in some ways, but fails in others. The idea of a standardized approach to metadata is really good on paper, but may never fly in the real world. We shall just have to wait and see how it evolves. But the idea of a sidecar file is something sort of odd to me.

I guess sidecar files came from the non-destructive school of thought. Like, just create a little file that sits next to the “real” file that holds all the metadata. This way you are never actually touching the file.

To me this approach sounds a lot like the card catalog at the library. A system that was replaced by, you guessed it, a computer some twenty or thirty years ago. ( Well, they still use one here at the public library in Dominica, but that’s another discussion altogether. )

So where am I going with all of this. Well, I think what really needs to happen, aside from an open RAW format, or agreement on the DNG approach, or Canon and Nikon playing nice together, or peace in the Middle East, is a much more universal system with regards to digital imaging.

I’m not just talking about the image data, I’m talking about the meta-data, and all of the database instructions that Aperture or Lightroom writes when you make any changes to an image Version.

There should really be some type of package file thing. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but I am brainstorming here a little bit. There should be some type of single unit entity that can house a RAW file from any camera, its DNG equivalent (if you like that sort of thing), and all the metadata associated with that image. All stored in one, non-destructive format that anyone could read, openly.

Okay, maybe I am dreaming of a utopian imaging society somewhere in Bizarro World. But, really, what would you do if all of the sudden there was no more Aperture? Same goes for you Lightroom aficionados! How would you deal?!?!

I often do presentations and I find that one of the most effective and entertaining way for you and your audience to digest a large number of images in a short time is to put your images to music.

Generallly, I like to have total control of the presentation and for years I have been creating audio slideshows using a software program called Live Slide Show. Then, after my slideshow is exported as a QuickTime movie, I drag and drop the QuickTime onto its own slide in Keynote. What’s really nice in Keynote, is when you advance to a slide with a QuickTime Movie the movie automatically launches, making for a slick and seamless presentation.

Aperture does have a slideshow function, but you can’t save said slideshow as a QuickTime movie. I’m hoping in the next version you can, but there are a lot of great things you can do when creating slideshows in Aperture.

More and more, I’m choosing to show my work directly from Aperture, and when I do a demo or teaching, it’s nice to be able to move directly into a slideshow with music, and Aperture accommodates nicely.

What’s nice in Aperture Slideshow, is the ability to create as many albums of images you want as separate shows, each with it’s own unique soundtrack. So during the course of a presentation, you can set the tone and the mood for a body of work with the right audio track selected from iTunes as a pre-set.

I first make an album with the images I want to be in the show and I put them in order. Then, when I click on Slideshow, a dialog box and pulldown menu appears. I choose Edit in the pulldown menu which brings me to a bunch of options for the show.

Scroll down to edit and reveal the host of options below.

This is where you can determine the look of the show, the music to play, and save these directions as pre-sets. I have chosen to keep a consistant look using the traditional dissolve from one slide to the next and my first soundtrack pick is Coldplay’s “In My Place”.

First quick on the + sign at the bottom of the preset window and then call it whatever you want. I label presets by song title which makes sense for me, particularly if I want to use the same music for different presentations.

After I choose a bunch of different songs from my iTunes playlists and make them presets, I make sure the “play music during slideshow” checkbox is checked. Then, when I go to an album of photos and click slideshow, I simply scroll through the dropdown menu to the song I want to play with the images and in seconds, the slideshow begins.

Just make sure that Aperture has rendered the previews for those images beforehand, so when you click on the slideshow and preset, the show starts almost immediately. Otherwise, you and your audience have to wait for Aperture to render the previews, leaving you to tap dance during the awkward silence while the progress bar slowly makes it’s way from start to finish.

Once these presets are created and the previews are rendered, it’s quick and easy to show different bodies of work from within Aperture, each with it’s own unique piece of music. If either no image or a single image is selected in a project or album, the slideshow displays all images in the current album or project.

Another nice feature is having Aperture fit the slides to the music, for nicely coreagraphed shows. But choose a track keeping in mind the number of images in your show. Choosing a three minute song over a six minute one means your images will be up on screen for half the time, and you want the pacing to be fast enough to keep the audience interested, but slow enough to appreciate the work.

I find that a 3 or 4 second per slide pace works well. So if you were showing 50 slides and wanted to “fit slides to music” then 50 times 4 seconds equals 200 seconds or a three minute and change tune.

Aperture allows you to keep multiple library files, by simply changing the Library setting in Aperture’s Preferences dialog box. Many people use this as a way to get around the fact that Aperture limits the size of an individual Library to a single volume. For example, they’ll use one library for work files, and another for their personal projects.

While there are no right or wrong answers to how you should architect your Aperture library structure, I’m increasingly of the mind that it’s much better to have a single library. First, it simplifies backups. Second, it lets you take advantage of one of Aperture’s core features: a searchable library of your entire photographic archive. Third, multiple libraries introduce an extra level of organization and management hassle to the already complex chore of managing your image library.

So what do you do about that single volume library limitation? Fortunately, the ability to import images as references pretty much solves this problem, because your master files don’t have to consume any storage on the volume where your library is kept. What’s more, the previews that Aperture builds are small enough that you can have hundreds of thousands of them on a reasonable-sized drive. Because Aperture allows you to re-build previews, you can easily change your preview compression settings and rebuild them at any time, to free up more disk space.

Of course, if you keep everythingin a single library, then your Projects pane will be harder to navigate, as it will be crammed full of more projects. To minimize the clutter, consider grouping projects into Folders, or take advantage of Aperture’s Favorites menu. Tag all your personal projects as Favorites, and then change the All Projects menu to Favorites.

This allows you to easily switch to a select group of projects. Or, change the menu to Recent Projects to view the last 20 projects that you worked on.

Keeping one library lets you take full advantage of Aperture’s keywording and search features - features that end up somewhat less useful if you’ve spread your images across multiple libraries.

Lightroom has a new “feature” in release 1.3 that I’ve not yet heard anyone mention: When you ship your image over to Photoshop to do the things that Lightroom can’t, then bring the image back into Lightroom, it’s no longer two or three stops brighter than it was before it left. Once I realized that all I had to do to make it match the previous adjustment of the RAW image was to drag the Brightness slider to the left while watching the thumbnail in the film strip. BTW, if you’re going to make a Develop module adjustment to an image you want to compare with another, the Before and After view doesn’t help much. You only see the difference in how the same image looked before you adjusted it. So what you have to do is simply make the images in the Filmstrip large enough so that you can get a better idea of how the match looks. You won’t need to match up images for the same reason, but you may still want to do that if you’ve made adjustments in Photoshop or LightZone or whatever that you want to compare to the original.

There’s another “new” development in Lightroom 1.3. I have “new” in quotes because it’s been lingering in the background for a while now, but there are actually downloadable “next-gen” Web gallery templates that you can try. Actually, my first attempt to do that wasn’t very successful and there are some fairly interesting installation considerations. Those who understand XHTML and CSS programming, at this stage, will likely have the best luck. But even if you know nothing, taking a look at the samples and the claims can get you pretty excited. Most of the new galleries are stated to only run in Lightroom version 1.3. Still, they do seem to load and run faster, as claimed. So I’m sure it won’t be long. The prospects look or sound downright exciting. The designs are very clean and professional but some also promise to allow you to make it possible to let the gallery’s viewers make comments on the individual images and that allow for a PayPal sale of your images.

The big buzz is about Slimbox galleries, downloadable from http://theturninggate.net/blog/adobe-lightroom-slimbox-template.

You might also want to take a look at this link: http://www.lightroomgalleries.com/. There are several of the new galleries that you can download and try. My favorite, so far, is a gallery called the Airtight AutoViewer that just slowly moves a “filmstrip” from left to right, showing a feature-size image of each of the shots in your gallery. This gallery seems to work right off, in Windows XP, at least. I’ve placed a screenshot of AutoViewer immediately below. Note how clearly you can see the descriptive caption for the image and it’s number in the slideshow. So you’ll have no problem communicating with your audience about which images they prefer and the changes they may want to make.

Ideally, most of us preach that you should organize your Lightroom workflow along the lines of the order in which the Lightroom modules appear. So you should start in the by adding the metadata and keywords, delete the images that will never have any value

My workflow may not be suited to everyone. A lot of what works for you depends on the type of work that comprises the bulk of your shooting and on the personal habits that make you most comfortable. Just so you know, most of my work these days consists of beauty shots that I submit to stock agencies.

All the metadata steps I take in the first run-through of the images are in this paragraph. I don’t want entering metadata to slow down my winnowing process and I don’t want to add a lot of individual metadata to images that may later be eliminated. I start by clicking the Library Module’s Import button.

You probably saw that Apple released a new version of Mac OS X, Leopard, about a month ago. Yet one announcement that didn’t get too much attention was about a public beta of a new, Leopard-only image editing tool called Naked Light. If you’re like me, you might be groaning a bit, going “enough of the new tools; I’ve got a system that works.” Hold on a second, though, as there are two great reasons you should care about Naked Light.

One of the first reasons you should care is the interface–unlike most other editors, Naked Light is node-based (like another Apple pro tool, Shake). As you can see in the screenshot, a node-based UI means that there are small boxes representing each image processing step, and your image flows from the input (in this case, on the bottom left) through a set of steps and out on the top-right. Unlike a layer-based UI (like Photoshop), it is very easy to see how a complex image is getting pieced together from multiple filters, and unlike Aperture’s adjustment panel, Naked Light’s interface makes it possible to see the order of adjustments (there can be a difference between tweaking color balance and then applying curves and applying curves and then tweaking the color balance). Additionally, when you start working with masked areas of an image, a node-based UI makes it easy to see (and change) what set of adjustments are being applied to the global image vs. just the masked area.

What’s even cooler, though, is that Naked Light’s taken a concept revolutionized by Aperture, non-destructive image editing, and applied it to more complicated actions. Although Photoshop supports more complex actions to some extent with smart objects, you have to convert a smart object back to a normal image for tools like dodging. In Naked Light, there’s no need for these conversions–everything is non-destructive. There are some interesting future possibilities, too. For instance, you can paint on top of an image in Naked Light, and no matter what resolution you resize your image to, it’ll adjust your brush stokes to match perfectly. While painting in bright pink might not be very useful for a photograph, imagine if the same brush technology were adapted to create a non-destructive Photoshop-like healing and clone brush.

All this being said, keep in mind that the available version of Naked Light is still a very early, pre-release public beta. There are funky notions, e.g. you can’t just open an image, you have to import it, as well as annoying parts in the interface (the “dock” of tools don’t stick open when you click on them–you have to hold your mouse button down to keep the menu open). The toolbar even warns you that some commands are slow and/or crash-prone. But again, it is just a very early version, and I’m sure this will all get better.

Why am I spending time on an Aperture blog talking about this product? Well, quite simply, I think that the feature set that Naked Light is developing should one day, when it’s mature enough, end up inside of a future version of Aperture (I am not saying I think Apple should buy these guys, but rather I believe something like Naked Light is a natural evolution of the image editing tools you see in Aperture). I really like the idea that I could one day just use one program with a node-based UI for all of my adjustments, especially if I am non-destructively modifying a RAW file. Hey, I can dream, can’t I? :)

My last post describes how I started (loosely) keeping track of where my photos end up. For example, my photos published in Fast Forward have the “Fast Forward” keyword applied to them through my “Exported” keyword set. However, I’d like to add a little more detail to this process: I want to keep track of exactly where my photos are published by cataloging their URLs on the web and the print publication’s name & issue number when printed.

My first idea was to store the information in the “Large Caption” view in the Metadata list, thinking that it was separate from the plain ol’ IPTC Caption field. However, it turns out they’re one and the same: the former is enlarged to make verbose captions easier to enter and edit than in the teeny tiny text field provided in the regular IPTC metadata view. And unfortunately the caption field is important enough that I can’t clutter it up with URLs and such.

And there aren’t really any other places to hang extra metadata on. I don’t see keywords as a valid solution, as I don’t want to clutter up my dictionary with URLs and other information that will only be used once; applying the keyword “http://www.readmeansrun.com/blog/2007/12/christmas_tree” seems wrong to me (although it would get the job done).

So for now I’m using an external application to keep track of this information. I’m crossing my fingers that future versions of Lightroom will allow flexible & customizable metadata fields that can be defined by the photographer. And providing one free-form notes field in which photographers can jot down random ramblings for each photo would be a blessing. Here’s to hoping that something along these lines is coming down the pipe in a future update.

Viva Lightroom updates!

Sometimes when you’re out making photos, things don’t always go just as you’d like. You can be in the most stunning scenery, but the light won’t cooperate. This happened to me a few days ago while traveling through the Big Bend area of Texas. A storm front was on its way, but instead of spectacular brooding skies, there was just a high layer of clouds turning the world into one big low contrast shadowless scene.

Of course, I still made a few photographs for myself to remember the place. Here’s an image I shot of the Rio Grande and Texas route 170 in Big Bend Ranch State Park:

In the image above, I’ve done a bit of initial processing a bit to neaten up the exposure and added a bit of vignette, but you can see that there’s not much pop in the scene. Out of curiosity, I started making some extreme adjustments in the luminance color panel—much more extreme than I’m used to making. Here’s what I ended up with:

Looks pretty extreme doesn’t it? But, with these adjustments and a little vignette, here’s the resulting photograph:

The sky is still featureless and lifeless, but there’s a lot more pop in the ground vegetation and the mountains. It’s still not one of my better shots from this trip—at least in my opinion—but it’s a nice record of where I was. And, more importantly, by playing boldly with the controls on this image and seeing the results, I’ll be more open to working up some of my other images using some of the same techniques.

If you’re looking for the ultimate handheld stereo audio recorder, you’ll probably want to check out the Sony PCM-D1. Scott Bourne reviewed it for us last year and called it “nearly perfect.” Alas, perfection in this case comes with a $1,995 list price.

Happily for the rest of us, Sony just unveiled a more affordable version — the PCM-D50. For around a quarter of the price, this little guy has some high-end features, like aluminum casing, adjustable mics, 4GB of onboard memory (expandable with Memory Sticks), Hi-Speed USB transfer, discrete circuit boards for audio and power, and a pre-record buffer that continuously captures the five seconds before you hit the Record button. It also runs on standard AA batteries instead of those annoying proprietary types.

Mark Nelson, whose exhaustive yet entertaining reviews of five previous handheld digital recorders grace the O’Reilly Digital Media site, just got his D50 review unit. When he started his last review, we asked what features you especially wanted us to check out, and got such a great batch of suggestions that the resulting article became a true community achievement.

So let’s try it again: Let us know in the comment section below what you’d like to learn about the new Sony PCM-D50 recorder.

I’m feeling a little nostalgic. It’s probably because I am thinking forward, and anticipating the annual MacWorld Expo & Conference happening in January ‘08. In any case, come with me and let’s stroll down memory lane. We have time, believe me.

When Apple first introduced Aperture, it got a lot of photographers really excited. I have to admit, I was one of them. And to this day, I am still excited about Aperture. It must be the “geek” in me.

Many professional photographers who are on top of their game, and those who always seem to be at the forefront of digital imaging, embraced the revolutionary concept of an all-in-one post-production tool. This was an idea that Apple introduced with Aperture that re-framed the way digital photographers plow through their workflow after the shoot. There was nothing quite like it, or quite as organized and smooth-flowing, and it seemed short of revolutionary.

Fast-forward to today, the idea of a post-production software unifying almost all the essential steps that most photographers need to take is now somewhat ubiquitous. It is almost difficult to imagine working on digital images without some sort of a step-by-step, logical and organized, and yet flexible, way of going through thousands upon thousands of high resolution image files. Today, every digital shooter seems to be doing the same thing–going through the same “routine” when it comes to post-production workflow.

How many years has it been since Aperture was first introduced? It almost seems a very, very long time; and yet, it was only actually a few years back when version 1.0 was first launched.

Maybe, this is because everyone thinks time is relative. And because of this, to some, the development and evolution of Aperture may be slow. But to others, the pace may just be right. And, let’s not leave out those who might even say that Aperture’s development is quite fast.

But who’s counting the years? Perhaps, I’m the only one. Despite the absence of official announcement, I’m probably just eager for 2.0 to come around. But while I’m in breathless anticipation of the yet unannounced 2.0, there’s one feature that was in 1.0 that I somehow miss.

And that is the Camera Clock Sync feature. You do you remember the Camera Clock Sync feature in Aperture 1.0? No, you don’t?

The Camera Clock Sync feature is a tiny clock icon that appears from within Aperture’s interface when your camera is directly hooked to the Mac via USB cable. Yes, once upon a time, Aperture did have a built-in feature that can supposedly sync the clock of your digital camera with that of the accurate time of your Mac computer. I love the idea behind this feature: for the camera/s we use to finally keep accurate time by being in sync with the Mac’s clock. Just like the iPods. Or the iPhone.

Maybe, this feature, accurate digital image time-keeping, is not that crucial to most photographers. This feature is perhaps only really useful to photojournalists, investigative photographers, forensic photographers, event photographers, and maybe, even to paparazzi photographers. Imagine what it would mean if they are able to commonly and routinely capture the accurate time of any event’s occurrence with every shot. Personally, and even if my work is far from photojournalistic, I’d be curious to know the very exact actual time of each and every shot that I take.

It seems ironic that, in this day and age, and despite modern advances in inter-connectivity, we still have to manually set (in a notoriously inaccurate analog fashion) our digital camera’s internal clock. We do the same analog approach to almost all wristwatches and other time pieces. Frustrating to a certain extent because it would appear that we have not, to this day, mastered the art of accurate time-keeping beyond our computers. The iPods and the iPhone is a good start. What about our camera’s clock? And what about our wristwatches? (Maybe, Steve Jobs should introduce a new product line that will do what watches are supposed to do best: tell accurate time.) Is there hope?

With Aperture 1.0, photographers had the chance to sync their cameras into the world’s atomic time. Imagine that unprecedented level of accuracy! But somewhere along Aperture’s iteration, this “feature” disappeared. It is possible that no one was paying enough attention to it, and therefore it may have eventually been deemed unimportant. Or, it could be that linking into the time mechanism and technology of various camera models, brands and configurations is difficult, hence, was just not working.

In any case, if I can turn back the hands of time, the Camera Clock Sync is one feature that I wish Apple engineers retained. Yes, I’m being nostalgic.

So, while we are moving forward, maybe we ought to step back as well? Do you think Apple engineers will be inclined to bring back the Camera Clock sync feature in future versions of Aperture?

We can only speculate. And of course, only time will tell.

I recently rediscovered a useful feature of Aperture that slipped my mind a long time ago: the Edit AutoFill List menu command. A few months ago, I imported a bunch of photos from a business trip to Chicago and in my haste to keyword them, I typed “Chiacgo” in the IPTC field for City. No big deal at the time — I corrected the misspelling and moved on. But last weekend when I went to another card of photos from the trip, Aperture tried to help me out when I typed “chi” in the City field, and autofilled my mistake. This is like the Aperture equivalent of the Previous Recipients database in Mail.app: incredibly useful unless you’ve made a spelling mistake or (in the case of Mail) the person’s address is no longer valid.

A misspelling in my IPTC information.

I knew there was a way to correct this, but I had a blank moment, and hunted through the menus to try and find the command. After a frustrated trip to the Aperture User Manual PDF, I found what I was looking for under the Metadata menu. Choosing Metadata > Edit AutoFill List… brings down the AutoFill Editor sheet. I was able to find my misspelled city name and remove it, and while I was there, I figured why not add a handful of other useful metadata that I knew might come in handy.

Fixing the mistake in the AutoFill Editor.

The AutoFill list will remember up to 20 entries for each field. I’ll have to remember that during my next trip to Chiacgo.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about using the Vault with referenced images. Because a lot of people still seem a little confused by the question of backup when choosing between managed or referenced images, I thought I’d review a couple of important concepts.

When you import an image as a referenced file, which you do in the Import dialog box by setting the Store Files pop-up menu to “in their current location”, Aperture leaves your original master file where it is and imports a pointer to that file. Next, it builds a JPEG preview of the file so that even if the master goes offline, you can still see a high-res view of the image, for keywording, organizing and rating.

As most people know, Aperture’s Vault system does not back up original files that are imported as references. Instead, you have to take care to back up those files yourself, using whatever method you like. Josh Anon covered a few excellent options Synchronize Pro which is what I use for backing up my original master files, as well as lots of other things, such as my iTunes music library. Synchronize Pro can be used for both synchronizing two folders (making sure that both folders have identical contents) or backing up one folder to another (making folder B look like folder a).

Synchronize Pro has a very simple interface, and it provides an easy way to perform progressive backups. That is, a backup that only copies files that are different or changed, rather than re-writing files that were copied in a previous backup. This is how Aperture’s Vault system works, and it makes periodic backups much faster.

However you choose to back up your referenced files, though, you still need to keep a Vault backup also. With a Vault backup you’ll preserve your library structure, all of your previews, and most importantly, all of your edits, versions, and metadata. If you only back up your referenced masters, a crash will wipe out all of the actual work that you might have done in Aperture.

After a crash, or other calamity, you’ll need to restore both your Vault backup, and the backup of your referenced masters that you performed by hand.

This week I was reminded of my old workflow when I first started shooting with digital SLR cameras. I was late to jump into the digital game - starting with a Nikon D70 back in 2003. I dipped my toes into the digital pond with a healthy sense of skepticism. The biggest pitfall with digital back in 2003 was the workflow. It was painful. Editing my images took days, not hours or minutes as it does now. I processed images one at a time. It took me six to eight months to become comfortable with digital imaging and the workflow.

My first workflow used Nikon Capture and while it produced very nice results it was so slow that I just couldn’t get into the swing of things with digital. I moved up to an Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Camera Raw workflow when I saw the results were on par with Nikon Capture. While it was a huge improvement in the workflow it was still sluggish. And with the release of the Nikon D2x the image quality of digital capture improved significantly. I jumped in with both feet and while I still shoot some film it is the exception rather than the rule.

Then Lightroom came on the scene and well, you know the rest of the story. I marvel at how many days it used to take me to caption, edit and process images just a few years ago and how quickly I can do the same tasks now, usually in just a few hours for medium size shoots where I capture 300 to 500 images. So what is the point to all of my ramblings here? The point is if we have come this far in just a few short years; imagine how much faster and painless dealing with digital images will be in another few years.

There are still many issues to be ironed out in the new digital world we live in. Color management has got to be the biggest issue that holds digital back from all it really can be. I still see many images reprinted quite poorly in even the biggest magazines. This has always been an issue - even with film - but with digital it has become a much larger issue. Lightroom, along with Photoshop, has given more control to the photographer than we have ever had before but along with that control comes a minefield of hazards. I have worked with a professional retoucher on a few images in my career and watching him at work shows me that while I may know Photoshop fairly well, I have no where near his expertise.

I have been saying for many years now that we are in the infancy of digital imaging. Ten or fifteen years from now I am certain that we’ll all be joking about how we created images back in early digital days. The latest batch of new digital SLRs from Canon and Nikon are a prime example of just how much better the tools of our trade can get. 14-bit processing is perhaps the biggest upgrade for any camera you can now purchase. Someday we might be working with 24-bit or even 36-bit cameras that have incredible exposure latitude and see just as our eyes do. In fact I have heard from several camera manufacturers that their real goal is not just making better cameras but cameras that can automatically reproduce an image just as our eyes saw that scene.

Now imagine how much different the image editing and processing experience will be in another ten years. Never the less, still photography is still about light, timing, composition and hard work. No matter how good the technology gets, photography is still about the image. Better digital cameras don’t suddenly eclipse the talent of Henri-Cartier Bresson or Robert Capa. Hence, we’ve come a long way with the technology of photography but is still the same as it was a hundred years ago just with new tools.

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

Adios, Michael Clark

This is the last photo I took during my all-night vigil in the desert. The photo looks generally southwest, up towards the crest of the Sandstone Ridge near the Wave in the Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness of Utah.

My last battery gave out after the thirty minute exposure had finished, but before the camera had finished processing it. My speculation is that the odd purple fringing at the corners was caused by this interuption.

[This photo: 18mm in 35mm terms, about thirty minutes at f/4 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]