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Recent Posts | All O'Reilly Posts
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Aperture fummoxed me for a bit this morning. I have a project with a few hundred images in it. The project also contains several albums, just the regular kind that I have dragged some images into. When I would click... read more
You need to be very careful when deleting images in Aperture to avoid accidentally deleting an entire project rather than a selection of pictures. To delete an image, or a series of images, you first select them, and then choose... read more
There are a number of digital photography processes that involve shooting multiple frames of a subject. High Dynamic Range imaging allows you to combine and merge a series of images to create a final result that has extremely high dynamic... read more
December 07 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 moreBacking 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 moreNew 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 moreApple 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 moreOctober 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 moreNew 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 moreLaunching 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 moreOctober 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 moreTwo Project Pane Clarifications
September 11 2007
There are a few things about Aperture's Projects pane that can be confusing to new users. What's great about the Projects pane is that it provides so many options for keeping even a massive library organized. The combination of Projects,... read moreSeptember 03 2007
I'll be leaving for South Africa this week to help Steve Simon with a shoot that he's doing there. He and I will work together for about a week-and-a-half and then I'll be on my own for another ten days,... read moreAugust 21 2007
In June, Steve Simon and I had the good fortune to teach a two week photography class to the photo students at the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute. Celebrating its thirtieth year, OSAI is a two week arts camp for 14... read moreAutomated Printing via Photoshop
August 14 2007
While Aperture includes a fairly robust printing architecture, there will still be times when you want to print images in your Aperture library from Photoshop. Whether this is because you want to print using driver-generated color, (something Aperture doesn't allow)... read moreAugust 07 2007
Aperture's Web Gallery feature is very nice, and extremely functional. That said, it's hard not to look a little enviously at the cool Flash-based galleries that can be exported from Lightroom. However, while Aperture may lack built-in Flash support, it... read moreLensTweaker for Optical Corrections
July 20 2007
Why Aperture has a very nice collection of image adjustment tools, it lacks the ability to perform any kind of distortion correction. If you're shooting with a wide-angle lens that has trouble with barrel distortion, then you won't have any... read moreHighlight Hot Areas Threshold Preference
July 06 2007
Aperture's Highlight Hot Areas command (which you can access from the View menu, or by pressing Option-Shift-H) activates a highlight clipping display in the Viewer pane. This display shows any pixels that have clipped highlights. You activate this feature by... read moreJune 25 2007
Printing a Light Table is a great way to knock out a quick printed proof of a layout idea or presentation. Just select File > Print Light Table and the contents of the current Light Table will be printed to... read moreJune 14 2007
The Aperture Light Table is much easier to work with if you learn to drive it using its mouse and keyboard shortcuts. (Note: Wondering if the Light Table is even worth investing time in? Take a look at my previous... read moreLearning to Respect the Light Table
June 08 2007
Most Aperture users I know don't pay a lot of attention to the Light Table. I was this way once. I thought it was a silly feature for Apple to have devoted engineering resources to, when they could have been... read moreMay 07 2007
Aperture's Rotate tools, the ones that sit in the Toolbar at the top of the Aperture window, provide a simple facility for rotating images right or left. Select either the clockwise or counter-clockwise rotate tool and then click on any... read moreMay 04 2007
One of the most powerful innovations that Apple introduced with Aperture was the stack. While it's very easy to think of a stack as a folder - and stacks can function very well as a container for related images -... read moreApril 30 2007
I shoot almost exclusively with a digital SLR. I have a few different point-and-shoot cameras around at one time or another, mostly loaners for book or magazine projects, but I just can't stand using an LCD screen as a viewfinder.... read moreMarch 21 2007
Adobe Lightroom (excuse me, "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom") has some features I'd really like to have in Aperture, such as the Recovery slider, which lets me do highlight recovery without affecting the midtones and shadows in an image, and the Vibrancy... read moreCreating an Aperture Library with Matching Finder Folder Structure
March 08 2007
One of the nice things about Aperture is that once you're using it, you can spend less time hassling with the Finder. Thanks to metadata and Smart Albums, you can organize and sort your images by metadata tags, rather than... read moreMarch 05 2007
I just recently purchased a new Core2Duo 15" MacBook Pro to replace the CoreDuo 15" MacBook Pro that I bought last year. While one could look at this as a testament to my pronounced level of nerdery, I prefer a... read moreKeywords and Multiple Libraries
February 21 2007
Many Aperture users are finding multiple libraries to be the key to their organizational woes. As Derrick Story described here, Aperture 1.5 provides a simple way to switch between multiple libraries. However you choose to make the switch from one... read moreFebruary 14 2007
With Lightroom looming on the horizon, we're going to see more and more comparison articles pitting Aperture head-to-head with Adobe's offering. Lightroom certainly has some very nice features, but it currently lacks one enabling technology that gives Aperture an advantage... read moreBetter Interapplication Workflow Through Plug-ins
February 06 2007
We shoot still images for lots of reasons, of course. At different times, I've been hired to shoot for the usual print or web projects, but I've also had to shoot images for inclusion as stills in video projects, and... read moreJanuary 26 2007
When I was growing up, learning photography was pretty much an exclusively black and white exercise. A color darkroom was prohibitively expensive - and complex - and black and white film was much cheaper than color. Nowadays, for the price... read moreJanuary 19 2007
With the ability to import referenced files, Aperture 1.5 makes it much easier to manage a large archive of images than it was under version 1. However, depending upon your storage strategy, you're probably also using the internal, managed library... read moreJanuary 18 2007
Over the last month, I've taken a look at a few of Aperture's comparison features (such as compare mode and stack mode). These features allow you to easily compare images within a project to determine which images you want to... read moreJanuary 10 2007
An interesting Aperture question showed up in my email box last week from a user with a curious problem: several people use his computer, which means that if any of them launch Aperture, they stand a good chance of finding... read moreJanuary 03 2007
In my last entry, I extolled the virtues of Aperture's Compare feature, which makes it simple to compare a group of images in a project to find the one you like best. As I stated then, I've been very surprised... read moreDecember 27 2006
A friend called a couple of weeks ago with an Aperture workflow question. As we worked our way through her problem I finally realized that part of what was complicating her methodology was that she wasn't using one of Aperture's... read moreAperture Alpha Channel Aberrations
December 13 2006
A lot of Aperture's functionality comes not from Aperture itself, but from Core Image, lower level operating system features that Aperture can tap into. For example, the Mac OS has built-in routines for opening and displaying various file types such... read moreDecember 07 2006
I don't actually think you should stop using Aperture. In fact, in my own work, I've pretty much abandoned all of my other workflow tools and am using Aperture exclusively. However, people keep asking me questions about renaming master files,... read moreDecember 02 2006
In my last two entries I outlined a few strategies for renaming master files during import into Aperture. However, if you've already got files in your Aperture library and didn't rename the masters on import, and now find that you... read moreRenaming Master Files - Part 2
November 22 2006
In my last post, I detailed some ways that you can rename your master image files from within Aperture (I also ranted and raved about why you don't really need to to this if you're an Aperture user, and got... read moreRenaming Master Files - Part 1
November 15 2006
Every time I give a talk or class on Aperture, someone asks this question: "is there any way to get Aperture to rename my referenced master files when I import?" The short answer is: there's no built-in way to do... read moreAdditional Raw Support For Aperture
November 07 2006
Photographers who have been shooting raw for a while know that there's no standard, accepted raw format. While Adobe has offered the Digital Negative Specification in an attempt to establish a single, open-source raw format, camera vendors have not jumped... read moreNovember 02 2006
With Aperture 1.5's ability to import files as references, you can easily keep your images on a portable, external drive. If you regularly move between a laptop and desktop computer, this is the easiest way to quickly move data back... read moreRecent Posts | All O'Reilly Posts
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