I've gotten more and more photos of reasonable quality over time - and found it quite difficult to manage them in just a folder/file structure.

The other day I bit the bullet and purchased Apple's Aperture 2 software, along with a 500GB network attached storage device (Lacie) - and I spent the recent 2 days transferring a lot of RAW images into Aperture 2.

I was after something with very good metadata and keyword management, along with very smart organisation of imported media, and some limited editing ability (eg, remove dust spots, levelling, crop, colour and brightness and so on).

I'd done nothing more than watch the tutorial videos on the Apple website - before plunging in and starting the task of moving everything into Aperture.

The software seems well designed. It is simple to use, and the edits you make in Aperture are non-destructive, such as levels, straightening, colours, crop, etc. When you start the process of importing selected files, that is a background task and you are free to go on with doing other things in Aperture while that is completed.

You can export to PSD format (16bit) - so it makes advanced editing (stuff that can't be done in Aperture) easy enough to deal with. In my case, Photoshop is on a PC, not the Mac - so I transfer files across the network. If you had Photoshop installed locally, it'd be easier still.

I ended up sorting my collection into numerous keyword based smart-albums (see image below). These smart albums collection images together based on a number of different user selectable criteria. I used keywords. I've split things up into manufacturer folders/categories and airline categories. When I put in a image, it will have the following sort of keywords:

A380, A380-842, Airbus Industrie, landing, Qantas, rwy16r, Sydney, VH-OQC

Aperture 2 main window

So that image would appear under the ** All Airbus Industrie ** smart album, A380 smart album, and Qantas airline smart album. It would also appear under a number of other categories - if I created them. The search features and organisational features are however only as good as the metadata given to the image - so if your metadata (aka keywords) is poorly done - then the search features and smart albums will also not work well. But if you are methodical about it - the possibilities are impressive. If you need to apply or update metadata quickly across a number of images, based on the first one - that is possible too. You can also do batch updates of metadata.

I also had 4 images of the same plane in sequence, and they were all reasonable, so rather than throwing 3 away - I keep the others and assign them as a stack - grouping them together as the same thing. Once they are stacked, you can collapse the stack, expand it, or promote one of the images in the stack as the "pick" image. Quite handy.

On the adjustments HUD, the auto-levels feature seems to work pretty well, but you can just as well do your own levels adjustments, holding Command to see clipping of highlights or shadows.

The only thing I don't like about Aperture is the apparent lack of a full screen preview of a RAW image selected from the import window. You can use the loupe, but it's not the same thing. Apart from that - the software seems pretty well thought out.

It also has book making and website creation features - but I've not really touched them, and I doubt I'd use the website feature since I'm a web-developer myself and prefer to build my own sites. But if you needed to give a preview of some images to someone over the web in a hurry, it'd be handy. The book making feature appears to offer some reasonable scope for laying out images - but don't expect to be building the sort of books you might create in Adobe InDesign - it's not that sophisticated. You can have a finished book created by Apple's bookmaking service and delivered to your door - how much that would cost I don't know.

And on the 2.4ghz, 1GB RAM iMac I'm using to run it - it works very quickly. So on first impression - it seems like a good bit of software and pretty good value for money. You can't do away with Photoshop completely - but you can leave Photoshop for the more tricky editing tasks that aren't possible in Aperture. The fact that you can pick up the software and make use of everything it can do in a very short time, with only a minimum of watching tutorials is also a very big bonus.

[Edited 2008-12-29 02:00:52]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with Aperture 2, it's prompted me to revisit the tool for a closer inspection. I trialed Aperture 1 early on and there was one behaviour that I could not live with; forcing import of files to a central Aperture Library. Instead of linking and leaving files in their pre-existing locations/structure. This is one of my pet hates with modern programs.

BUT having said that it looks like Aperture 2 has fixed this but adding support to store folders from where they were imported from!

I currently use Bridge for general browsing, culling, metadata application and searching. But the searching in Bride is very clunky and slow as the number of files grows. Being a recent Mac convert myself, the idea of smart folders using IPTC/EXIF metadata sounds like a perfect solution!

Quoting Cpd (Thread starter):

Ahhh so thats what you've been up to these last few days I knew your too quiet! Ive had my eye on Aperture for some time and thanks to you you have given me a good inside story about it. I know it wasn't a PS type package, but it seems you can do more on it that I originally thought.

Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

There are few programs that will allow you to view RAW files in full screen. I have PS4 and still Bridge won't let you get the full screen picture, mind you though Preview does a pretty good job!

Thats one thing that blew me away when I got this new 24" iMac was that I didn't need additional software to view RAW files, OSX does it with ease!

Thanks again CPD!   

Take care

Fergul   

Quoting Cpd (Thread starter): When I put in a image, it will have the following sort of keywords: A380, A380-842, Airbus Industrie, landing, Qantas, rwy16r, Sydney, VH-OQC

I assume that you have to do that for each image?

Quoting SNW (Reply 1): BUT having said that it looks like Aperture 2 has fixed this but adding support to store folders from where they were imported from!

Can you confirm this CPD, cheers!

Fergul   

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 3): Can you confirm this CPD, cheers!

Heres a screen capture (i've expanded the drop down so you can see the options):

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 3): I assume that you have to do that for each image?

You do - but it's not difficult. You can set up buttons to click with the appropriate metadata to remove the typing. Good metadata and key-wording is the key to enhancing your search results.

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 2): Ahhh so thats what you've been up to these last few days I knew your too quiet! Ive had my eye on Aperture for some time and thanks to you you have given me a good inside story about it. I know it wasn't a PS type package, but it seems you can do more on it that I originally thought.

Yes - it can straighten images, crop images, adjust levels, remove dust spots and other similar blemishes, adjust saturation, shadows/highlights (with the same problems as Photoshop with the halos).

It's quite good actually - and the auto levels feature is surprisingly competent - more so than the one in Photoshop CS3. All of the edits are non-destructive.

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 3): Can you confirm this CPD, cheers!

I believe it is possible - but I've not tried to do this sort of thing. My aim was to get the images off the memory card and onto a central storage device.

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 2): Thats one thing that blew me away when I got this new 24" iMac was that I didn't need additional software to view RAW files, OSX does it with ease!

My thoughts too. It is much faster to look at raw images on the Mac. Now I just have to get Photoshop for the Mac and I'll be able to avoid using the PC as much as possible.

Quoting SNW (Reply 1): I currently use Bridge for general browsing, culling, metadata application and searching. But the searching in Bride is very clunky and slow as the number of files grows. Being a recent Mac convert myself, the idea of smart folders using IPTC/EXIF metadata sounds like a perfect solution!

You could probably try out Aperture 2 at one of the Apple stores - enrol in a training session and they'll take you through it. They should be part of the "Pro lab" sessions. They are series of four two-hour sessions. It's free - but you do have to enrol online on the Apple Australia website.

[Edited 2008-12-31 20:47:40]

[Edited 2008-12-31 20:47:56]

Some more findings - Aperture 2 has its own interesting sharpening features - one of them being the Edge Sharpen filter. I've been experimenting with it and it seems very smart, and very powerful.

Unlike the USM filter in Photoshop, edge sharpening only sharpens what it believes are edges - thus leaving out the sky.   Apple's support site explains:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24421?viewlocale=en_US

I've just did a sample on an image I did from Photoshop against one directly exported straight from Aperture at 1280x853 with the edge sharpening. Compared to my efforts with USM in Photoshop, Aperture 2's edge sharpening seems to bring out more detail, without appearing to necessarily over-sharpen the image, and without causing excessive halos around the areas that were sharpened.

It seems that you'd turn off the raw sharpening in Aperture, and use the edge sharpening alone. This means that it could be possible to skip Photoshop if the base photo is pretty good to start with. It certainly beats selective sharpening in Photoshop - especially if you've got a really detailed background (such as broken clouds).

Quoting Cpd (Reply 6):

CPD, sent you a message, get back to me if you can, cheers!

Fergul   

Quoting SNW (Reply 4): All of the edits are non-destructive.

IIRC, didn't Aperture 2 have some localized adjustments that were non-destructive, but you couldn't change the 'basics' after you used those local adjustments? (as opposed to full control at Lightroom 2)

Quoting Cpd (Reply 5): I believe it is possible - but I've not tried to do this sort of thing. My aim was to get the images off the memory card and onto a central storage device.

I'm assuming by that you can nominate in the preferences where Aperture 2 keeps all its images, i.e. on an external HDD. Or is it advisable to leave them where they are and just back them up to the external HDD.

You have certainly sold me on the aperture as I have been keeping an eye on it but now I am convinced that its a great tool to have. Tell me this. You said . . . .

Quoting Cpd (Reply 5): You do - but it's not difficult. You can set up buttons to click with the appropriate metadata to remove the typing. Good metadata and key-wording is the key to enhancing your search results.

. . . how easy is it to set up the buttons, can someone like me, a beginner to the Apple world set them up easily?

Thanks again for all your info, very much appreciated!   

Fergul   

Quoting Cpd (Thread starter): I'd done nothing more than watch the tutorial videos on the Apple website - before plunging in and starting the task of moving everything into Aperture.

Any chance you can link that page, I've watched a few on the Irish Apple site but can't find any on your Australian site.

Thanks

Fergul   

Here you go:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/tutorials/

They are well done.    (Replied to your message as well).

And it certainly is possible to tell Aperture 2 where you want it to save imported images - and to specify the folder structure of that location

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 9): . . . how easy is it to set up the buttons, can someone like me, a beginner to the Apple world set them up easily?

Not too difficult - I've not done it yet - but the buttons are those that you see in the large screenshot at the top of this message. Those are defaults, but it is possible to change them - or replace them with different sets.

Regards,
Chris.

[Edited 2009-01-01 18:02:26]

Quoting Cpd (Reply 11):

You're an absolute gentleman!!! Thanks again for all your help and assistance, Cheers

Fergul   

Damn you guys...
I had been thinking of getting Lightroom.
But with the high probability of a Mac (of some kind) becoming part of my workplace soon perhaps Aperture is the way to go.

Chris, thanks for the useful info you have provided... kind of stuff hard to ascertain from the brochures!!

Also going to have to reevaluate what type of Mac, it was originally going to be a second hand MacBook Pro but if it is going to be prime graphics machine it might have to be something different.

Cheers & again thanks

Chris

You are both welcome.  

Quoting StealthZ (Reply 13): Also going to have to reevaluate what type of Mac, it was originally going to be a second hand MacBook Pro but if it is going to be prime graphics machine it might have to be something different.

You'd probably go well with a 24" iMac, it is said to have a very good screen. Sometimes Apple (via their website) has bargain deals on rocket like ex-demo computers that have been refurbished.

A MacBook Pro second hand would do okay - but you'd need to get a second screen for it.

I was originally intending to get a dual PowerMac G5 tower used from my old place of work as I hoped to follow it to auction when it was superseded. But since it didn't go (I went before it did) - I went with a new iMac.

I never intended for it to be a graphics machine, but it seems to go really well - especially considering that this one is the base model with only 1GB ram and the 2.4ghz processor.

[Edited 2009-01-02 00:51:51]

Quoting StealthZ (Reply 13): But with the high probability of a Mac (of some kind) becoming part of my workplace soon perhaps Aperture is the way to go.

Excellent!!! Another one joins the clan!! Chris thought you'd never see the light!!! How you keeping these days, family well I hope! All well here and No3 on its way again! Ahhhhhhh.
Kidding, have two beautiful kids that are quite simply growing up too fast!!! Loving it!! 

Quoting StealthZ (Reply 13): Also going to have to reevaluate what type of Mac, it was originally going to be a second hand MacBook Pro but if it is going to be prime graphics machine it might have to be something different.

Chris, iMac is the best thing!! Have a look at the apple site/Store and look at the bottom for the refurbished iMac's they come up every now and then but you can save a lot of money. I got this 24" iMac, and its brilliant. You'll have to learn how to process all over again but its worth it.

Quoting StealthZ (Reply 13): Chris, thanks for the useful info you have provided... kind of stuff hard to ascertain from the brochures!!

     

Chat soon,

Fergul   

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 15): Excellent!!! Another one joins the clan!! Chris thought you'd never see the light!!!

Ha, not so soon. I have a friend that runs a Mac based repair & support operation and I was supposed to be providing some kind of cross platform capability.. not "join the clan" (although Mike has been trying to convert me for years!)
Thinking about it though the Windows portion of the cross platform thing could be handled by the Thinkpad and the big HP under the desk could be retired, gonna have to think about this.

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 15): How you keeping these days, family well I hope!

All is well here though don't seem to get so many plane pics these days!
Wow 3rd on the way, seems just yesterday you were anxiously awaiting #1, must be wonderful for you both watching them grow!

Cheers

Chris

Here is are a few examples of photos exported straight from Aperture using the edge sharpening (no cropping on either of them):

Nikon D80, AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED at 57mm, 1/320sec, F/9.0, ISO100

Nikon D80, Sigma 50-500mm at 345mm, F/6.3, 1/1250sec, ISO100

(click the images to see full size)

I have no idea what they look like on other screens - I'm still trying to work out how the 20" iMac screen compares.. I'd be right if the new work place had Eizo screens like the old one did.   So feedback there would be handy as well.

But it does appear that edge sharpening works well - and it doesn't sharpen silly things like the sky or clouds.

Aperture also seems to have clone tool features like Photoshop - I've not tried those yet, but I have a very nice photo with an ugly street sign in the way, it might be a good chance to see if the video on Apple's website isn't exaggerating the abilities of Aperture 2.

Edit: I can report the clone tool works well - in conjunction with the repair tool. If it were possible to view the image at 100% size, you could use the tool more precisely. Once selecting the clone mode, you Option+Click to select the source, then drag or click across the element you want to get rid of. The repair tool is good for masking up the defects of the clone tool (thus hiding the trickery).

So it might not be a fully fledged Photoshop type tool, but it does have all the typical photo editing features you might need - and they appear to work well. God help Adobe if Apple ever did a rival to Photoshop.

[Edited 2009-01-03 02:18:19]

Quoting Cpd (Reply 17): But it does appear that edge sharpening works well - and it doesn't sharpen silly things like the sky or clouds.

They Don't look too bad there Chris, there are a few jaggies on the loggos, more so on the Jet Star A330 but nothing a bit of layering can't fix.

Quoting Cpd (Reply 17): and it doesn't sharpen silly things like the sky or clouds.

That has always been a simple case of selecting the sky and inverting to sharpen the plane itself and not the sky, however a tool that eliminates a few steps in PS is very welcome!

Quoting Cpd (Reply 17): So it might not be a fully fledged Photoshop type tool, but it does have all the typical photo editing features you might need - and they appear to work well. God help Adobe if Apple ever did a rival to Photoshop.

   I think they are a bit nervous as it is, 
CS4 and below is really for the high end users who need to do more than just a bit of croping and altering. Aperture is certainly giving PS Elements a good run for it money with its ability to sort and arrange your photos into groups. I went through some of the tutorials and that keyword and what you have shown above is excellent!

You have certainly wet my appetite for this software. It will be very handy when I do wildlife photography and weddings as i can sort my images into what I need.

Thanks again for all your info, it is very much appreciated!   

take care

Fergul   

Quoting Cpd (Reply 17): If it were possible to view the image at 100% size, you could use the tool more precisely.

While you have an image displayed for editing, pressing z will show the image at 100%.

Those pictures look pretty good - I haven't used the edge sharpening yet (haven't got any recent aviation photos, but going to Tokyo this week to fix that!)

This thread caught my eye.

I have a Mac on its way to my home. I finally made the leap after several months of general unhappiness with my Dell and Windows.

My primary purpose is to start uploading again. I have hundreds of pics to go through.

I opted against Aperature b/c I thought I would get Photoshop. But how are the two different? And how/ where does iPhoto fit in?

Quoting Mirrodie (Reply 20): I opted against Aperature b/c I thought I would get Photoshop. But how are the two different? And how/ where does iPhoto fit in?

Aperture is fairly close to a cross between iPhoto and Photoshop. It has some of the more high-end editing abilities of Photoshop, and strong organisational capabilities like iPhoto. However, its way of organising photos (projects) is very different to iPhoto (events), especially now there are Places and Faces in iPhoto (very cool, by the way; I hope you get free upgrade to iLife '09, IIRC there's a 14-day window).

iPhoto is best used for general family/holiday photos (there are some basic editing features to get you by), and Aperture for more professional organisation/editing. I have my entire photo library in Aperture, but it is very easy to move photos between the two using a simple menu option in both applications.

Quoting Mirrodie (Reply 20): I opted against Aperature b/c I thought I would get Photoshop. But how are the two different? And how/ where does iPhoto fit in?

Well, Photoshop is more for the complex editing that Aperture can not do, while Aperture is excellent from an organisation/management perspective.

It's really easy to manage a lot of images and browse them quickly. I find that if I want to, I can easily load a RAW image through photoshop on the PC and do the edit there, it's easy enough with the logical folder structure aperture 2 sets by default. (all my images are on network attached storage).

I haven't abandoned Photoshop - but I can rely on it less.

I'm still learning how to process photos in Aperture 2 - the settings are still fairly unfamiliar, and I'm trying to do a lot of comparison between Photoshop and Aperture to find how to get the same effect in Aperture as I would in Photoshop, etc.

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 18): CS4 and below is really for the high end users who need to do more than just a bit of croping and altering.

CS4 really is for the web-designers like me.  

Does anyone reading this thread have any experiences of Lightroom 2? I'm trying to decide between Aperture and Lightroom 2, and short of a complete months long trial with both, its proving a hard decision to make  

Quoting Mirrodie (Reply 20): I opted against Aperature b/c I thought I would get Photoshop. But how are the two different? And how/ where does iPhoto fit in?

As mentioned above, iPhoto is much more basic - more for the few photos here and there, store the holiday snaps, etc.

Aperture is much more rugged and packed with a lot of features the home user wouldn't need - but might appreciate as they grow into it.

Regards,
Chris.

Quoting Skyhawkmatthew (Reply 21): iPhoto is best used for general family/holiday photos (there are some basic editing features to get you by), and Aperture for more professional organisation/editing. I have my entire photo library in Aperture, but it is very easy to move photos between the two using a simple menu option in both applications.

Just looked at your site, good effort with the photos.  

Quoting Skyhawkmatthew (Reply 21): I have my entire photo library in Aperture, but it is very easy to move photos between the two using a simple menu option in both applications.

Quoting Cpd (Reply 22): it's easy enough with the logical folder structure aperture 2 sets by default. (all my images are on network attached storage).

Well I bit the bullet and got myself Aperture2. Dammit Apple make such good stuff! I have barely scratched the surface with it but I am watching the tutorials Chris has linked on his earlier posts. Some good stuff there and the way you can organize your photos is brilliant.

Quick question to you two above. Do you have separate folders for, say all your aircraft images. For example, Chris, you seem to have all your images in airline photos, created all you smart folders from that folder, and then created sub folders and dragged and dropped your smart albums into the relative folders.
Do you limit the numbers of images in the main folder? Would you be worried about the size of it and as it gets bigger?

Its a great software.

Fergul   

Cpd: I haven't updated my site for a while (been pretty busy!) but these are my latest photos from Haneda a few days ago http://gallery.me.com/skyhawkmatthew#100120 (D300; 70-200 VR). Partially edited in Aperture, haven't had time to do all of them (or cull the second half) yet.

Fergul: I have my library structured like this:
Aviation photos sorted by airport

Photos from school events, etc sorted like so:

Everything else by year/month/event (like iPhoto in a way)


I'm not concerned about the number of photos in the library - just got a new HD in the MacBook, so that'll keep me out of trouble for a while longer!

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 25): Quick question to you two above. Do you have separate folders for, say all your aircraft images. For example, Chris, you seem to have all your images in airline photos, created all you smart folders from that folder, and then created sub folders and dragged and dropped your smart albums into the relative folders.

I don't really care to be honest - it's not a problem. I have the smart albums to deal with sorting the images, and the storage on disk doesn't really reflect that. On disk, they are in date format, eg:

2008 > 09 > 21
YYYY > MM > DD

It's pretty flexible. The folders inside the project are merely a way to organise the smart albums in some kind of logical and convenient way.

But if it does get too large, it might be possible to create another project to accommodate photos from other years, but my suspicion is that it should be okay for the moment.

Edit: Argh, the attachment in my opening post is dead..

[Edited 2009-01-15 00:39:10]

[Edited 2009-01-15 00:42:24]

Quoting Skyhawkmatthew (Reply 26):

Quoting Cpd (Reply 27):

Thanks Guys!

Yeah, I will be getting an external HDD, looking at the WD Book studio as it will turn off and on when you turn on and off you Mac. Looks good as well with the 800 firewire.

The whole Aperture2 is some job, slowly getting to grips with it.

Fergul   
PS:

Quoting Cpd (Reply 27): Edit: Argh, the attachment in my opening post is dead.

Saved that to my HDD as I thought it might be useful.

F

Quoting Fergulmcc (Reply 28): Yeah, I will be getting an external HDD

Yes, I'd get a WD or a LaCie, but not a dual-drive Big Disk (power issues - mine won't spin up properly now fairly frequently, but the drives themselves are fine). Likely getting a LaCie d2 quadra to replace it, and put the Big Disk's 2 500GB drives in the G4 NAS machine I have.

The d2 has an 'auto' position on its power switch which will make it behave like the My Book and turn on/off with the computer. It also has eSATA, FW400+800 and USB so it will connect to just about anything.

In playing with Aperture I've found it can't import photos that have metadata in XMP sidecar files, I'm not interested in the ACR raw adjustments but the IPTC (description, keywords, location, etc), GPS data. All my files are tagged this way.

I can't understand why they would implement XMP export functionality in Aperture but not have an XMP Import - it could stop a few people, such as myself from transitioning for the time being.

Possibly there is a third party tool that edits the metadata after import by parsing the XMP files in the masters location, but I haven't found it yet.