Entries from March 2008 ↓

Day 4

After yesterday’s post (using a perfectly exposed and white balanced image) I realized I need to import many more images into Aperture 2. And, that’s what I’m going to be doing over the next few days. I want to be able to show you all that Aperture 2 can and can’t do. But, to do that I need a larger variety of images.

I’m going to go through the thousands of images I’ve shot over last few years and import ones that need adjustments and use those for future post. OK, I’m going to chain myself to the computer now… see you in a day or so.

Day 3

The tutorials I watched today on Apple’s web site were; “Adjusting White Balance”, Adjusting Exposure”, and “Enhancing Your Images”.

I wanted to show you a more dramatic effect with the adjustments I did today, but my white balance and exposure for the image were dead on (I know, I’m perfect… kidding). It does help tremendously if you use a gray card and a light meter. I think I will have to revisit white balance and exposure adjustments in Aperture 2 with another image, maybe something I took with my Canon G9. I didn’t make any adjustments to the white balance and exposure, but I did bump up the saturation to 1.25 and the definition up to .50. The color saturation setting from yesterday’s trial adjustments have been removed, but the edge sharpening settings were kept.

The two images below show the “master” image (no adjustments applied) and the adjusted image. I like the feature of being able to toggle between the adjusted image and original “master image” in Aperture 2.

Unadjusted image “master”

Adjusted image

Day 2

Today I watched the following tutorials on Apples website; “Exporting Versions, Masters, and Projects”, “Using RAW Fine Tuning”, And “Sharpening Images”. There is a lot of stuff Aperture 2 can do. I’d like to say I’m starting to scratch the surface, but I’m not even close. I feel like I have my index finger extended and ready to start scratching the surface, but I’m still about a mile away from actually starting to scratch. But I’m getting closer.

Today, I decided to try a quick experiment. “What is the experiment?”, you might ask. Let me tell you. I took an image I shot last December, in RAW on my trusty (I said trusty, not rusty) Canon 10D and imported the shot into Aperture 2. I then proceeded to process the image in Aperture, trying to use roughly the same adjustments I used in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional. I know it’s like comparing strawberries to water buffalo, but I just wanted to see a comparison for myself. This will also be the “before” (before I knew anything about Aperture 2) image, and at the 30 day mark I will process the exact same image as the “after” image using all that I have learned (if I learn anything) and we’ll be able to see my progress.

For my client I originally increased the saturation in Canon DPP software so the image would “pop” when printed in the local news paper as a small “Grand Opening” ad. I also added some sharpening to the image. I tried to do something similar in Aperture 2. The image on the left is of the contrast settings I used, and the image on the right is the edge sharpening settings I used.

Now for the comparison shots. I’m not going to make any judgments based the two comparison images. I still have way too much to learn regarding Aperture 2 and making any judgment calls this early would be foolish. So lets wait and see what things look like after 30 days, shall we.

Processed with Canon Digital Photo Professional software

Processed with Aperture 2

Let me know if you have any questions or comments below.

I’ve been wanting to do a post about Aperture 2 for almost a month now since it was announced. The day Aperture 2 was announced I ordered more RAM (Aperture 2 minimum RAM requirement is 1GB) and an external hard drive from an online retailer hoping to get the items in a week or so. Well, I just got the RAM and hard drive yesterday. They were back ordered on the external drive cases. I now have 2GB RAM (recommended) and a 250GB FW400 external drive on iMac G5 2.0 GHz. This is the system and setup I will be using for the next 30 days while using Aperture 2.

My Aperture 2 “test library” resides on the external drive so it doesn’t affect my current image library or my system. I installed the software today and the process was quite simple and seamless. I have never used Aperture before so I decided to watch a couple of the tutorials on Apples website - “Exploring the Interface” and “Importing Basics”. This was enough to get me familiar enough to create a new project and import 23 images into that project. So far things have been easy, but I’m sure that will change as I explore the software more.

Over the next 30 days I will be posting regularly on my experiences using Aperture 2. Since I am noob at using Aperture you’ll be able to learn from my mistakes and probably get a good laugh at the stupid things I end up doing. If there is anything specific you want me to do or try with Aperture just let me know.