[DM-MUG] Notes on Aperture

Wed Jan 24 05:50:17 CST 2007

We talked about Aperture last night and I took 
the outline I handed out and expanded it.  It's a 
discussion of Aperture workflow = not all 
correct, not all detailed = there is so much to 
learn!  But maybe helpful.

Digital Workflow:  Adding Order to the Chaos of your Life in Photography; 
©  Victoria L. Herring/JourneyZing - January 22, 2007

[I will be doing an article and uploading it at 
some point and will let people know where to find 
it, later]

Planning:  plan ahead and use checklists, both 
for your photography and to set up Aperture 
before you import.  If at all possible shoot in 
RAW, to have as much control over working with 
the image as possible.  Be sure to set your 
Aperture preferences, set up import metadata and 
customize the interface as much as you would 
like.   You can correct things after imports 
through batch processing and other methods, but 
try to limit that.

Off-Loading:  I am extremely sensitive to data 
loss so frequently end up with 3-4 or more copies 
of images after taking them:  on card, in iPods, 
on harddrives and on laptop.  Generally, this is 
better than taking, offloading and deleting 
quickly.  No rush to do that.  Be sure to only 
format the cards in the camera;  digital image 
cards are not meant to be formatted in computer 
or elsewhere.  I don't clean off the external 
repositories of images until I'm certain I have 
at least one or two sets of the originals, just 
in case.  This is no doubt overkill but I'm still 
working out the workflow I use.

Import into Computer [Aperture]:   Open your 
library, create a project and import into it. 
While you don't need to maintain separate 
libraries, it might not be a bad idea to have one 
for each year or major topic.  But Aperture will 
hold virtually everything quite well.  I just 
like separation and redundency.  But think I will 
do only separate libraries for each calendar year 
and then within each use folders and projects to 
organize [see Bagelturf, cited below, for more 
information].  Set up your metadata for import, 
although you can batch process later it's easier 
to get it right with importing.  Remember that 
the image imported can either be totally brought 
into the Library or else kept somewhere and 
merely a 'Referenced File' [ in ver. 1.5].  I 
like to import to the Library, as I get confused 
at times trying to locate the referenced files, 
but that is maybe my own workflow issue and there 
are plenty of photographers who do both fine.

Master:  Remember that the imported image is a 
Master and is an original duplicate;  the actual 
image ends up still residing on the card or other 
place you imported from and also is totally 
duplicated inside Aperture, where you applied 
metadata to it.  You then in preferences set it 
up to create new versions with each adjustment 
and those are data versions, not duplicate 
images.  Thus, they don't take up much room but 
when you want to export or work with them they 
'feel' like the original.  Don't forget to apply 
keywords and captions and other metadata, as that 
will help with finding things.  Unfortunately, 
Aperture can't be searched via  Spotlight, but 
you can put keywords or other notes in the 
Spotlight Comments window [Get Info keystroke] 
and that is easily searchable.  Aperture, because 
it is a package is only searchable from within 
the program, but the search and smart album 
functions are powerful.

After importing, 'triage' the images:  rate the 
images, again see Bagelturn's  discussion of how 
to do so;  apply white balance [so much easier 
than in Photoshop, as far as I can tell, do other 
adjustments you want.  I then open in the 
external editor [Photoshop Elements for me] and 
do the final work on the image [resize, levels, 
contrast, saturation, cropping, usually in that 
order]. 

Backing Up:  Remember that you have duplicates of 
your thousands of originals on DVDs, harddrives, 
etc.  But what you want to do is cull from 
Aperture Library those that are truly terrible 
['rejects'] and then maybe keep the rest, but 
have them rated.  You can then perhaps just save 
the top 4* or 5* images onto a DVD and those 
would be the ones you would want to work with in 
the future.  Back up Aperture using its Vault 
feature.  I now backup to harddrives, for the 
most part.

Good luck.  I like using Aperture = but know that 
Adobe has Lightroom.  I have not tried it and 
don't have the time/energy to learn yet another 
program that in many ways duplicates Aperture [or 
vice versa].  I'm sticking with Aperture - it 
provides the image management I want and need and 
the image adjustment as well.

References of value:

Aperture users:  There's an Aperture listserve at 
YahooGroups.com that is helpful and doesn't [yet] 
have all that much traffic.  There are several 
books out now on Aperture 1.5;  I have and use 
the Luna book.

Best Resource:

[Steve Weller's blog, Bagelturf:  http://homepage.mac.com/bagelturf 
[particularly his discussions about the use of 
Aperture and workflow, especially "From 229 to 6 
images"]

-- 
Victoria L. Herring, Attorney, Travel research & 
Photography site and blog, 
<http://www.JourneyZing.com/blog> ;   Gallery at 
http://victoriajz.smugmug.com.  The latest 3Women 
News: 
http://web.mac.com/victoriaherring/iWeb/ThreeWomen/ 
[ShowSale 2/10!]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://cialug.org/pipermail/dmmug/attachments/20070124/0e23c279/attachment.htm