30 Days Using Aperture 2 (Day 2)

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.