Aperture Users Network

The Right Tool for the Right Job


One of the comments most often heard at our training classes is “I love Aperture, but Lightroom’s got some neat adjustment tools.” As a former original Lightroom Alpha tester, I have to agree, I like the way that some of the program’s editing tools work, and I like what they can do.

Which is why we’re so thrilled to see a new spate of adjustment tools available in Aperture 2.0, under the new Exposure, Enhance, Vignette and Devignette panels. Aperture 2.0 can no perform exposure changes with highlight-recover, black point adjustment and brightness controls.

The Enhance menu adds a “definition” slider (think of it as an unsharp masking tool) and a Vibrancy slider, which boosts colors of only the parts of the image that need a boost, leaving the rest of the tones alone. These tools, along with the Levels tools now display the portions of the image they’ll affect if the Command key is held down during adjustment.

The Vignette and Devignette tools will either add a vignette to an image or remove a lens-vignette, depending on which you choose. The Color tool has gained the ability to eyedropper-select a region of color to be adjusted with the sliders, making it a much more useful tool

Color Matching

The Color tool in Aperture’s always been a sort of strange beast. Allowing photographers to tweak colors in certain ranges is great, but more useful would be to pick the specific color and adjust that.

Aperture 2.0 adds an eyedropper tool for direct selection of a color (think the exact hue in bride’s eye, or the orange of a sport team’s logo) so you can tweak just the specific colors you want. It’s a much more precise way to work.

Clone Wars

The Spot and Patch tool in Aperture 1.x is pretty widely used for removal of dust, but that’s really where its functionality ends. I’d say that probably ninety-percent of my trips to Photoshop these days are to use that program’s Healing Brush and Clone tools. Those trips are over for me, as the new Retouch tool supplements the Spot/Patch tool adding real localized “repair” and “clone” functionality. And like the other tools, you can use Lift and Stamp to apply the changes across multiple images. (Combine this with the new plug-in engine I mentioned above and Aperture 2.0’s really got the ability to become a truly powerful image editing tool.)

Time Management

One of the complaints often heard about Aperture 1.5 was that exporting images could take a long time, and it locked up the system. While Aperture was processing images, nothing else could happen. That’s changed now, with completely background processing of exported images. Output one or a million images and Aperture will handle them while you continue with other tasks. For some photographers this little change alone will be the price of admission.

Ex Libris


Aperture’s book making tools are fantastic, they’re even better in some ways than many page layout programs because of the drag-and-drop simplicity of adding images, and the tool’s ability to tweak image directly in the pages. The one limitation (and it’s a major limitation) in Aperture 1.x is that you can only create books the size of Apple’s pay-for-print ordering system, even if you plan to save them as PDF files and print them yourself.

Aperture 2.0 overhauls this with a custom book size that allows creation of books to any dimension. Simply setting a custom size (and you can make any number of custom sizes) allows you to finally print to any book shape or size.

Since you can always print a PDF document from a Mac print dialog box, this should open up huge worlds of possibility for photographers to work with the hundreds of custom book publishers on the market.

I’ve found another use for the book tool though, I’ve used it to create custom “picture packs” for the times when clients ask for multiple images of specific sizes. It’s a snap to create a page with, for example, a 5x7 and three wallet size pictures. In fact, I Just created a single “book” that has the most common package settings, and use that as a template.

And since you can lay out text and other elements to pages, you can also use these pages to create custom output with the name of your studio, or with headshot information.

Sharper Image

An issue that comes up often when printing is the inherent softness that’s created when an image is sent to a printer. Blame it on the fact that printers work by shooting jets of ink onto a page, but there’s often a need for increased sharpening when making a print.

In Aperture 1.5 it was of course possible to make a version for printing and apply a bit of sharpening, but Aperture 2.0 adds a print sharpening tool, and now the Loupe is enabled in the print dialog box. It’s a snap to make a page that’s got the right amount of sharpness for any application.

Aperture 2.0 also now supports 16-bit printing, and support for the newest models of Epson and Canon printers.

This marks the first fully 16-bit program on the market, from display through output and it’s a major advantage for photographers looking to get the most out of their color managed workflow.

XMP Out

While it’s a tenet of Aperture that the original raw file be preserved—which explains why Aperture won’t write IPTC data to your original raw file—the program took that a bit far in leaving IPTC out of exported raw files. This has been remedied with Aperture 2.0, now exported versions created with the Export>Master command can include IPTC data. (You can also still choose to leave the exported file IPTC-less or with an XMP sidecar file.)

Web Master
Many people are fond of the new iPhoto’s ability to create Web 2.0 galleries, galleries that look great and also offer the ability to add images collaboratively. It’s possible with iPhoto’s new web gallery to create albums that people can upload photos to, and to add images simply by emailing. Behind-the-scenes syncing add images back into the iPhoto Library.

This functionality is now available in Aperture 2.0 as well, and it’s easy to control. Simply create a new Web Gallery (as opposed to Web Album or Web Journal) and Aperture will log into your .Mac account and allow you to upload images directly. The new Web Gallery preference panel controls the functionality of this tool.

Time Traveller

One of the more trivial, yet irritating headaches for the traveling photographer is synchronization of the time on the camera with the time on the computer. I’ve personally never remembered to change the time on my camera body when I’ve been on the road.
This is also a vexing problem to the film scanner, as the creation date of the image equals the time the photo was scanned, not the original shoot date.
With Aperture 1.5 it was possible to change the time stamp for photos by increments of an hour, but Aperture 2.0 has added the ability to change the date and time of both original files and versions, and not just by whole hour increments. This will be incredibly handy to the photographer with cameras that are slightly off on time sync.

iPhoto Integration

The last version of iPhoto added the ability to work with Aperture libraries, but now Aperture has added better tools for working with iPhoto. Simply select the iPhoto browser and you’ll have access to all of your images from iPhoto. Drag-and-drop them into Aperture and they’re ready to go. It’s just one of the clever updates in Aperture 2.0.

Adjustable Filters

Aperture 2.0 has added the ability to search and filter albums by adjustments, which makes it easier than ever to find the photo you’re looking for. (This is one of the most commonly asked-for features in our classes, actually.)
Additionally, the program has the ability to select “is not” for search criteria in the search HUD.

One Brick At A Time

Another interesting tweak to Aperture has some pretty big implications for image quality. In Aperture 1.x the order of items in the Adjustment inspector didn’t match the sequence of an optimal workflow. The Aperture programmers call each Adjustment a “brick,” so the area in which you make changes to your Exposure would be the “Exposure brick.” White Balance lived several bricks from the top, which doesn’t match workflow—it’s better to start with balancing your white point because everything else moves on from there. Additionally, the bricks weren’t always in the optimum order for image output.

Aperture 2’s bricks are in the correct order for a flow of image correction adjustments, and now process in order, which will result in simpler workflow and better image quality.

Keyboard Mapping

Taking a cue from Final Cut Pro, Aperture 2.0 now allows you to assign any key combination to any action in the program, even things you wouldn’t suspect you could control. For example, you can set a key to activate Relocate Master, something you normally have to activate under the File menu.

Via the Aperture>Commands setting it’s possible to customize keyboard layouts, switch between keyboard layouts and save them, allowing photographers to take their custom settings with them on the road.

Price Factor
Despite the major advances to Aperture, Apple decided to lower the price of the program, making Aperture 2.0 $199, and upgrades $99 for existing users. This is a huge boon to the prosumer and advanced consumer photographer who have long had to pony up as much money for Aperture as they did for their camera system, just to have access to the more professional features.

Screencasts
AUN Pro members can learn more about all of these features from our four Introduction to Aperture screencasts, available under the Paid Multimedia menu

http://apertureprofessional.com/forumdisplay.php?f=44

These HDTV-resolution screencasts walk through every major feature in the new version of Aperture.