Aperture Users Network

There's a saying I like that goes "slow is smooth, smooth is fast." It's smothing I've been thinking a lot about here at the Olympics as I work in the media center helping photographers with their Aperture workflow, and as I stop to watch the pageant of athletes compete in various events.

We're often focused on pure speed, and while Aperture's a really fast program (as anyone who upgraded from 1.5 to 2.0 can attest) not everything in photography is about speed, and I noticed an interesting parallel between the faces of athletes and the faces of members of the press here in the Kodak photo center.

During one particularly important event for women's gymnastics I mentioned to my Apple counterpart Joe that several of the competitors looked scared and sad before they'd even gotten up to compete—they'd clearly lost the round before they even set a foot in motion. Others, (specifically the Chinese competitor, the American and the super-strong Austrian) looked confident, they clearly had this down and knew what they were doing.

This is something I see time-and-again while looking at photographers and watch which ones have their workflow down. It doesn't matter if they're using Aperture or PhotoMechanic or Photoshop (or iPhoto, like the few people I saw yesterday), you can just tell when they've got it.

It's a look that I've come to recognize when someone "gets" Aperture as well, the sort of collected calm that comes with the realization that a lifetime of creating multiple save-as versions has come to an end, and that they can do everything they need in one program.

This is especially true for sports shooters, and I often forget (not having worked in that field for some time) that so much of the business is about getting images submitted for deadline, and nothing else. Importing, selecting picks, exporting—that's the whole job. Sometimes there's some cropping (and a few times we've seen some people here asking us how they can remove errant heads or body parts from an image, to our surprise) and some adjustments, but really it all boils down to the process of moving images from a card to a client.

And that's best done smoothly (and quickly) and it's something at which Aperture really shines. A few times I've watched as a photographer imports through Aperture and then kicks open Photoshop simply to export a JPEG or do a crop, and when I show them how to do all the steps in Aperture, they're thrilled.

Others, of course, have a workflow that works, and the Olympics isn't the place for a lot of people to switch mid-stream, but for others any seconds saved are precious.

In any case, it's good to remember that the smoothness of the workflow is pretty paramount, and from that smoothness a speed and efficiency follows.