Aperture 3 is said to have 200 new features but really how many of those feature will one use and how many of them are even worth my time? Well I am going to try and help answer that question.

Brushes

This is a feature similar to what Lightroom has had for ages and one I have been waiting for. Apple handle the idea of affecting certain areas very well with out complicating it with layers. In fact all you have to do to affect a select area is click the settings of the adjustment you wish to paint on and click paint in or paint away. You can do paint in almost every adjustment you get plus there are some new adjustments like skin smoothing which is one of my favourites and has huge potential for real life usage.

The skin smoothing has been really effective in this picture in making him look a lot younger.

Here I use brushes to reduce the saturation of the background so she popped out more.

Faces

This is a feature we have already seen in iPhoto and is great to see it in Aperture. Using keywords to tag an image is great but really time consuming and slow however Apertures face recognition is rather good and makes it a load quicker to group photos of the same person. I have used the faces feature to help me when I was making a calendar. We didn’t have any photos of my brother, faces made it much easier and quicker to find them and add them in.

Places

Again we have already seen this in iPhoto. It is a great idea and I am sure will be really useful when more cameras have GPS built in, but very few do and this is a bit of a downside. GPS units cost around £100 at the moment and most people don’t have them and I feel this feature has no practical purpose unless you have shelled out for a GPS unit, which is unlikely.

Presets

Most presets tend to be alright but never actually come in handy. However when using Aperture 3 I have found it really useful to use them to help you get an idea of what you can do to an image. I use them as a base and then adjust to suit the image itself. They offer some great effects and are super easy to use with their little pop out preview. Have you ever shot a load of photos then realised that the white balance is off on all of them or they are all too dark and need lightening up, this is where the presets really come into their own. Upon import you can apply presets to all the images fixing them and saving you hours of going through and adjusting all of them.

Here I used the punch preset as a base and worked off it.

Curves

Curves are powerful stuff and have been missing from Aperture. (As a little side note we actually had a little lesson on curves in Physics recently which was quite funny as most people struggle with the way they work.) As you would expect they offer you great control over your image.

Web Publishing

The web publishing links to Flickr and Facebook are a great idea but I doubt most people buying Aperture are going to be uploading to Facebook. Flickr on the other hand I personally prefer to use Photonic for uploading my images as it makes it super easy to add the pictures to multiple groups, but not everyone has Photonic and so I guess it could a be a useful feature.

UI

There are a couple subtle tweaks to the UI, that make it just that much nicer to use. The grey is slightly lighter and the icons bigger and brighter, this gives Aperture a much more friendly feel.

The Problems

As much as I like Aperture 3 it has some faults, and some major ones at that. It is painfully slow, much slower than its predecessor. It is also a complete memory hog when you first use it. When you first open it and import all your photos it will spend hours looking for faces and processing all the thumbnails. This is painfully slow and means you can’t do anything on your machine. When I had the trial version installed it was prone to crashes, especially if my computer went to sleep while it was open, however I have found this to disappear after installing the boxed version. I mention this sleep thing because lots of people seem to be having the same problem and from what I can work out it is due to a feature in newer macs that basically hibernates your computer if there is a power loss and so saves what you were doing in the RAM on to the hard drive; for me this has resulted in almost 20GB sleep image files that fill up my hard drive. Don’t fret they disappear after you have been up and running for a bit. This problem has again disappeared for me once I installed the boxed copy of Aperture 3, but I can’t speak for others. Something worth noting if you have lots of Aperture plugins, if they have not been updated to work with 64 bit then you will have to relaunch Aperture 3 just to use them.

Conclusion

Aperture 3 has some great features that are well worth the upgrade and make a huge difference in how you edit your photos, but as with any release it is not without its faults. Most of the major problems I experienced simply resolved themselves after I installed the boxed copy I bought, it may have just been a problem with the trial version of Aperture Apple were offering. Loads of the new features are actually useable instead of being just there for show. I have attached a gallery with some of my favourite images from Tough Guy.

]]> http://rmaspero.com/2010/02/21/tough-guy-and-aperture-3/feed/ 1 http://rmaspero.com/2009/08/05/desktop-tuesday-sixty-eight/ http://rmaspero.com/2009/08/05/desktop-tuesday-sixty-eight/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:13:07 +0000 rmaspero http://rmaspero.com/2009/08/05/desktop-tuesday-sixty-eight/ Every Tuesday I try to publish one of my photo that you could uses a desktop background. The images are large enough to be used on a 30″ display. Enjoy the images and I would be grateful for any feedback.

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Alway title your work

When people are looking at your Flickr page and an image is called DCS009 it tells them that you don’t take care in the work you do. A title should always be unique and capture what the image is portraying. Try to avoid duplicate names and be as unique and imaginative as you can, often a title can help people understand what you were trying to do.

Always add a description

A title can tell you what you were trying to do but a description is a place to say how you did it and to ask if it worked. Adding a description makes your work personal and makes it more interesting for the viewer. Tell them the story behind the picture how, where and why you took it.

Never upload more than 5 at a time

Uploading 50 images of the same thing can be boring and repetative for a viewer. The more images the less likely someone is going to see your best ones. People are not going to spend 20 minutes looking though all 50 images you just uploaded. The number 5 comes from the original Flickr users home page were you saw 5 of your contacts most recent uploads. The current page shows 10 but in my opinion that is just to many. By spacing out uploads it gives people time to look at each individual image and comment, rather than being rush to see all 50 and not commenting on any.

Never upload too many of the same in a row

If your Flickr page is covered in images that from a distance look similar you are doing it wrong! There is only so much a person can say about 5 images of the exact same thing. If you have 5 good images of a similar thing spread them out by putting images of a different subject in between.

Sort them out

The worst thing when looking at someone’s Flickr page is discovering that they have not bothered to organise there images in to any kind of sets. If someone wants to see all your HDR’s put them into a set. Rather than spending hours scrolling through all your photos they can see what they are looking for in just a view clicks.

Be selective

Spend time choosing the images you want to put up. Put only your best up, no one wants to have to wade through thousands of disappointing shots to find a few goodens.

Be social

Flickr is a social networking site, so network! Add your photos to groups, find contacts you like and comment. By being social your viewing counts will grow and you never know you might learn something about photography you never knew before by looking at others work.

Go Pro

I am by no means a great photographer but I know what I like in an image. One of the best things that happened for my photography was to receive the gift of a Flickr Pro account (thanks to Chris Leigh). I would recommend to anyone who has tried out Flickr and loves it to get a pro account.

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Organise

It is always good to organise your images, and the best way to do this is put them into a hierarchy, mine goes a bit like this.

In Aperture it looks a bit like this.

If your Library is organised it makes it much easier to find things and edit them.

Editing

After I have edited an image I rate it 1,2,3,4 or 5 stars; I would also add any meta data e.g. Keywords. Next I decide if it is Flickr worthy, if so it gets a Flickr tag added. This tag comes in handy when we get to my smart albums. These are contained in there own folder (Smart Folders). I have one for each lens followed by one for each camera body and finally one for any images tagged with Flickr. By tagging them I can see if I have already uploaded them or not, this makes life much easier.

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Just click here toDownload it

See the Archives Here