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Ben Long

Biography

Ben Long is a freelance writer, photographer, and videographer based in San Francisco. A long-time computer journalist, he has written hundreds of features, reviews, and how-to's for magazines such as Macworld, MacWeek, Macworld UK, MacUser, Computer Graphics World, Maximum PC, and eMediaWeekly. He is currently a Senior Editor for CreativePro.com, where he writes a regular digital photography column. His most recent books include Apple's Pro Training guide for Aperture, Real World Aperture, Getting Started with Camera Raw, and Complete Digital Photography, 3rd edition.

As a photographer and videographer, his clients have included Blue Note Records, 20th Century Fox, the Pickle Circus, Global Business Network, Head Start, the Oklahoma Arts Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. You can learn more about him and his work at www.completedigitalphotography.com.

Blog

Changing Aperture 2.0's Default Raw Converter

March 03 2008

Raw conversion quality is a very subjective topic, and different people have different ideas about what they like in a raw conversion. If you decide you prefer Aperture's 1.1 converter to the new 2.0 converter, you can easily change the program to default to the older version. read more

Aperture 2: Tethering

February 25 2008

Aperture 2 includes a new Tethering HUD that provides in-program tethering - a much better solution than the AppleScript-based tethering offered in previous versions. To use the tethering feature, you must connect your camera to your Mac via a USB... read more

Whither Primary Select?

February 18 2008

Apple has made an important interface change in Aperture 2.0, that you may not notice right away: the Primary Select control is gone. In its place is a new control for quickly changing to a Primary Only viewer mode. To understand exactly what this button does, let's re-cap. read more

Aperture 2: Quick Preview

February 18 2008

When you activate the new Quick Preview option, Aperture displays previews much more quickly. In Quick Preview mode, Aperture stops generating new previews and uses whatever JPEG file it can find. read more

Aperture 2.0 Interface Changes

February 12 2008

Aperture 2.0 features some major interface changes that make for a much more streamlined, fluid experience than previous versions of the program. Apple has redesigned Aperture's main window, and added some new keyboard shortcuts that make navigation much easier. If... read more

One Library To Rule Them All

December 18 2007

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... read more

Backing Up a Referenced Library

December 18 2007

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... read more

One Library To Rule Them All

December 06 2007

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... read more

Backing Up a Referenced Library

December 03 2007

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... read more

New Camera Support for Tiger Users

November 16 2007

With the release of Leopard, Apple added raw support for a number of new cameras, leaving Tiger-based Aperture users wondering if they would be forced to upgrade to the new operating system in order to gain support for the new... read more

Apple Sneaks In Camera Support in Leopard

November 03 2007

A lesser-hyped feature of Leopard is its inclusion of a number of new raw formats. This page shows a complete list of all of the raw formats now supported in Leopard. A quick peak shows that Apple has snuck in... read more

Aperture and Leopard

October 26 2007

Leopard has some great new features for digital photographers. For example, QuickLook is an exceptional way to get a quick view of an image file in the Finder. Meanwhile, CoverFlow, a feature that I thought was a stupid thing to... read more

New Add-on: Publish for Approval

October 19 2007

Automator.us has released a new add-on for Aperture that provides a sophisticated, automated way to get client approval of a set of images. The new Publish For Approval package is an AppleScript-based application that works as follows: • A web... read more

Launching a Photoshop Automation From Aperture

October 09 2007

In this posting of a few months ago, I showed how you can create an automated Aperture/Photoshop printing process using a Finder Folder Action. The idea was that, if you wanted to print using Photoshop - either because of its... read more

Remote Power

October 02 2007

In my previous post, I described the storage solution that I'm planning to use on an extended trip - sans computer - to Africa. This trip won't be the first time that I've gone on a shooting expedition without a... read more