Aperture 3 Portable Genius E-Book

Josh Anon

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Portable Genius
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 415

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Get the latest tips, facts, and secrets that help you make the most of Aperture 3 Aperture offers a full range of tools to help serious photographers organize and manipulate images and manage workflow. This little guide is packed with hip tips, secrets, and shortcuts that help you get even more functionality from the software. Find out more than you ever knew about vignetting, RAW fine-tuning, Quick Preview mode, Command Editor, and using the integrated iPhoto Browser. Learn new ways to streamline your workflow, get tips on publishing albums online or as customized photo books, and take advantage of many more Genius techniques. * Designed for the Apple enthusiast, this handy, colorful guide is packed with ingenious and innovative tips for getting the most from Aperture 3, and the latest version 3.3 * Offers advice on using the new streamlined interface, using advanced RAW image processing, and streamlining workflow with keyboard shortcuts * Shows how to maximize the effectiveness of vignetting, using Quick Preview mode and Command Editor, and working with the integrated iPhoto Browser * Provides helpful hints on creating web-based albums and print photo books Aperture 3 Portable Genius, 2nd Edition gives you the professional tips and tricks that help you squeeze all the functionality from this cool software.

Leseprobe

Aperture® 3 Portable Genius, 2nd Edition

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: How Do I Get Started with Aperture?

Understanding Why Aperture Is a Key Part of Your Workflow

Seeing the difference between Aperture and iPhoto

Choosing Aperture over Lightroom

Working with Aperture’s File Structure

Understanding the Aperture library and where your files live

Understanding referenced and managed files

Understanding how images are organized within Aperture

A Brief Tour of Aperture’s Interface

Understanding the Inspector, Browser, and Viewer

Managing files with Projects and Albums

Using special built-in views

Using gestures

Basic Customization Options

Setting library location and other General preferences

Changing appearance preferences

Changing default import behavior

Modifying preview preferences

Chapter 2: How Do I Import Images?

Importing from a Memory Card, Camera, or Hard Drive

Touring the Import panel

Using the different views in the Import panel

Choosing Import Settings

Configuring a destination project for your images

Using referenced or managed files

Renaming files on import

Fixing time zone settings on your images

An introduction to presets

Configuring what types of files to import

Working with RAW+JPEG pairs

Running actions automatically after importing

Setting up an automatic backup on import

Understanding Unified iPhoto and Aperture Libraries

Dragging and Dropping Files into Aperture

Using Photo Stream

Chapter 3: What Methods Can I Use to See My Images?

Customizing the Interface

Rearranging and grouping library items

Using Viewer modes

Using the Viewer with multiple monitors

Using multiple Browsers

Showing hot and cold areas of an image

Taking a Closer Look

Zooming and scrolling in Viewer

Using and customizing the Loupe

Viewing in Full-Screen Mode

Using Browser and Viewer in full-screen mode

Working with the filmstrip and toolbar

Working with heads-up displays

Additional Viewer Options

Using Primary Only

Using Quick Preview

Viewing the original image

Configuring and Using Metadata Overlays

Switching between RAW+JPEG Originals

Working with Referenced Images

Identifying and managing referenced images

Reconnecting a missing original

Relocating referenced originals

Converting referenced originals to managed originals

Deleting referenced files

Working with Stacks in Browser

Creating and Working with a Light Table

Chapter 4: How Can I Use Metadata to Organize and Find My Images?

Using Ratings to Sort Images

Setting ratings

Working with rejected images

Using Flags and Labels to Further Organize Images

Setting flags and labels

Customizing label names

Using the Info Inspector

Switching and customizing metadata views

Setting metadata

Managing and applying presets

Adjusting Date and Time after Import

Working with Keywords

The Keywords control bar

The Keywords heads-up display

Adding Custom Metadata

Applying Batch Metadata Changes

Using the Batch Change tool

Using the Lift and Stamp tool

Searching for Images

Searching within Browser

Creating Smart Albums

Searching with stacks

Writing IPTC Information to an Original

Chapter 5: How Do I Use Faces and Places to Categorize My Images?

Using Faces

Enabling Faces

Using the Faces interface

Finding people using Faces

Using Places

Enabling Places

Assigning locations to photos

Removing location information from an image

Finding images using Places

Chapter 6: What Tools Can I Use to Make My Images Better?

Getting Started with Adjustments

Reprocessing originals for Aperture 3.3 or later

Setting preferences for making adjustments

Making Adjustments

Commonalities of all the adjustment bricks

Working with the histogram

Straightening an image

Cropping images

Using Auto Enhance

Using the adjustment bricks

Brushing adjustments in or out

Using Quick Brushes

Using the Retouch Brushes

Using the remaining Quick Brushes

Creating and Using Effects

Using an External Editor

Using Third-Party Editing Plug-Ins

Chapter 7: What Options Do I Have to Create a Physical Copy of My Photos?

Color Management

Calibrating your monitor

Calibrating your printer

Soft proofing

Using Aperture’s Print Dialog

Configuring a standard print

Creating a contact sheet

Using built-in custom presets and creating your own

Clicking the Print button and its settings

Ordering Prints

Creating a Book

Creating a new book album and picking themes

Navigating the Book Layout Editor

Placing images and text

Switching page styles

Adding and removing pages

Customizing page layout

Editing master pages

Printing or ordering your book

Chapter 8: How Can I Share My Images Digitally?

Exporting Originals and Versions of Images

Exporting originals

Exporting versions

E-mailing Images

Setting Your Desktop Image

Creating Slide Shows

Creating a new slide show

Creating a custom slide show preset

Using the Slideshow Editor

Creating Web Pages

Comparing web journals, web pages, and Smart Web Pages

Creating and configuring a new web page

Creating and configuring a new web journal

Facebook

Setting up Facebook access within Aperture

Publishing images from Aperture to Facebook

Managing your Facebook account

Flickr

Setting up Flickr access within Aperture

Publishing images to Flickr

Using Other Export Plug-ins

Chapter 9: How Can I Use Aperture with My HDSLR’s Video Files?

How Does Aperture Handle Video Files?

Importing Video Files

Viewing Video Files

Editing a Clip

Setting the clip’s poster frame

Trimming the clip

Exporting a Video Clip

Working with Audio Files

Importing audio files

Playing audio

Attaching and detaching audio files

Chapter 10: How Can Aperture Make My Workflow Smoother?

Understanding Badge Meanings

Managing Photo Previews

Controlling preview preferences

Generating previews

Previews and stacks

Working with Multiple Libraries

Switching libraries

Moving images between libraries

Working with multiple computers

Controlling Tethered Shooting

Configuring a tethering session

Running a tethering session

Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts

Using Aperture with Automator

Using Vaults and Backup

Using vaults to back up your images

Alternate backup strategies

Using Aperture’s Database Repair Tools

Aperture® 3 Portable Genius, 2nd Edition

by Josh Anon and Ellen Anon

Aperture® 3 Portable Genius, 2nd Edition

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.10475 Crosspoint Blvd. Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-27429-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Aperture is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Aperture® 3 Portable Genius, 2nd Edition is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple, Inc.

Credits

Senior Acquisitions Editor

Stephanie McComb

Project Editor

Kristin Vorce

Technical Editor

Paul Shivonen-Binder

Senior Copy Editor

Kim Heusel

Editorial Director

Robyn Siesky

Business Manager

Amy Knies

Senior Marketing Manager

Sandy Smith

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher

Barry Pruett

Senior Project Coordinator

Kristie Rees

Graphics and Production Specialists

Andrea Hornberger

Quality Control Technician

Jessica Kramer

Proofreading and Indexing

BIM Indexing & Proofreading Services

About the Authors

Josh Anon has been a nature photographer for most of his life, with his interest in photography starting when he received his first Kodak 110 camera at the ripe old age of 4. Camera in hand, he received a BS in computer science from Northwestern University.

After graduating, Josh started working at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California. There he worked on The Incredibles, Up, Toy Story 3, and more, primarily as a camera and staging artist. Currently he is a senior product manager at Lytro.

Josh travels the globe searching for the next great picture, be it 100 feet deep on the Great Barrier Reef, on a cold and windy beach in the South Atlantic, or inside the Arctic Circle. His award-winning images, represented by the prestigious Jaynes Gallery and available at www.joshanon.com, have appeared in a variety of galleries, calendars, and other publications including the San Diego Natural History Museum, Nature’s Best Photography, NBC Nightly News, The Kiteboarder, and more. Josh teaches photography, both privately and for the Digital Photo Academy, and he and his mother, Ellen, have also coauthored Photoshop CS5 for Nature Photographers (Sybex, 2010), See It: Photographic Composition Using Visual Intensity (Focal Press, 2012), iPhoto iOS: Tap the Power (available on the Apple iTunes bookstore, 2012), and more.

Josh continues to develop software in his free time, currently focusing on FlipBook HD, which is movie-making software for the iPad. When not shooting, making cartoons, or coding, Josh can be found kiteboarding.

Ellen Anon got her start in photography around age 5, but for years it remained a hobby as she took a very long fork in the road, earning a PhD in clinical psychology. In 1997, a broken foot forced her to take a break from work as a psychologist and she used the time to study photography. She debated briefly between building a traditional darkroom in her home and creating a digital darkroom. Because she’s not fond of being closed up in small dark spaces with strong smells of funky chemicals, she opted for the latter. Ever since, photography has been a two-part process for her. Capturing the images in the field is the first step, and optimizing them in the digital darkroom is the second. Being creative with it is the icing on the cake!

Ellen is now a full-time freelance photographer, speaker, and writer. Her goal with her photographs is to go beyond the ordinary in ways that she hopes stimulates others to pause and appreciate some of the beauty and wonder of our earth. Ellen’s images are included in collections in several continents. She is also represented by the Jaynes Gallery and her photos have been showcased in galleries and featured in numerous publications. In addition, she has been Highly Honored in Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards and Highly Commended in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Ellen has coauthored nine books including the popular Photoshop CS5 for Nature Photographers series and other books mentioned previously. In addition, she has contributed chapters to other books and has created video training materials on photography-related subjects for several companies. Ellen leads photographic and digital darkroom-oriented workshops and is a popular featured speaker at various events. She had been an active member of the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) and is an instructor for its high school scholarship program. She is an Apple Certified Trainer for Aperture and is honored to be a member of Nik Software’s Team Nik and SanDisk’s Extreme Team.

Acknowledgments

For the hints of wisdom that sometimes tag along with the wrinkles of time — Ellen

First and foremost, we both owe our family, especially Jack and Seth, a big thank you for their continued support and encouragement. Neither of us would have made it where we are without it.

Someone once said it takes a village to raise a child. We don’t know whether that’s true, but it sure feels like it takes a village to create a book like this. Specifically, we want to thank Stephanie McComb, our Acquisitions Editor, and Kristin Vorce, our outstanding Project Editor. It’s been a pleasure working with them on this project.

We both want to thank our friends at Apple involved with Aperture, especially Kirk Paulsen and Martin Gisborne as well as all the engineers, for creating such an amazing program that’s the core of our workflows.

Josh wants to thank his friends and coworkers at Pixar, including Trish Carney, Jeremy Lasky, Patrick Lin, Eben Ostby, and Adam Habib. You guys always provide great inspiration and are just awesome people. To his friends Michelle Safer and Jeffrey Cousens: Thank you for always being there to provide moral support. Last but certainly not least, he owes his continued gratitude to his high school English teacher Claudia Skerlong for teaching him to write well; although he heard she once said something about the odds of her achieving sainthood for the efforts she put into teaching Josh compared to the odds of his writing a seventh book.

Ellen wants to thank her friends and colleagues who continue to inspire and encourage her, particularly Art Becker and George Lepp, as well as all the readers of our books, who make it possible for us to continue writing. She also wants to thank Dr. Gary Brotherson and Dr. J.P. Dailey for their flexibility and perseverance in ensuring that she can continue to see through the viewfinder in search of the next dramatic image.

Introduction

In many ways, Aperture needs no introduction. It’s professional photo management done by Apple, the same folks who brought you iPhoto, iPhone, iPad, and more. We could lavish it with praise for the next few hundred pages and describe to you how happy we are with the photographic workflows we’ve developed with Aperture, but while that praise would be completely true (perhaps garnished with a touch of hyperbole to add some humor), that wouldn’t leave much room to explain how Aperture can help your workflow. Instead, we’ll simply say that Aperture has helped us optimize our digital workflows more than any other piece of software (and between the two of us, we’ve tried them all) so that we can quickly process thousands of images and spend more time shooting and less time at our computers. The latest revisions to Aperture continue to make it more powerful and user friendly.

When you first look at it, though, it’s tough to understand how this neutral-gray window can do so much, and more importantly, what all these weird words like stacks and projects mean. Don’t worry: We’re here to help.

The next few hundred pages will take you through Aperture, from understanding the basic terms in Chapter 1 to using skin tone mode to remove a color cast in Chapter 6 to creating books that include a map showing where you took your photos in Chapter 7 to advanced backup topics in Chapter 10. As you read, we encourage you to import some images and videos into your Aperture library and to try clicking the buttons we describe for yourself.

Don’t feel obligated to read this book from start to finish, however. While we’ve tried to build the text so that the chapters follow roughly a digital workflow order and build on each other, feel free to skip around, especially if you’ve used Aperture before.

Finally, while it’s easy to sometimes feel overwhelmed by all the features in a program like Aperture, don’t be. There’s no test at the end of this book, and you don’t have to use every possible feature to its fullest to integrate Aperture into your workflow. That’s part of what’s so great about Aperture — it’s flexible enough to fit into your workflow instead of forcing you to fit into its workflow.

Chapter 1: How Do I Get Started with Aperture?

Aperture is like iPhoto on steroids in some ways; but in other ways, it’s a completely different beast. Unlike iPhoto, it’s designed to be an incredibly flexible image, video, and audio file asset management tool that you can integrate into your existing workflow. However, this flexibility means that Aperture has more jargon, settings, and buttons than iPhoto. This chapter helps demystify Aperture’s jargon and shows you key fundamentals you need to know when using Aperture.

Understanding Why Aperture Is a Key Part of Your Workflow

Working with Aperture’s File Structure

A Brief Tour of Aperture’s Interface

Basic Customization Options

Understanding Why Aperture Is a Key Part of Your Workflow

Most photographers agree that the time you spend behind the lens shooting is the best part of being a photographer, and all the other stuff (processing an image, categorizing it, trying to sell it, or using it to promote business) is really just annoying. While digital photography enables you to be more creative as a photographer, from being able to see right away whether you got the shot to being able to experiment as much as you want with the only cost being hard drive space, the “other stuff” arguably gets more frustrating because now you have to manage digital files instead of physical film and learn to use multiple programs to develop and output your images. That’s where Aperture comes into play. Aperture is a central point for all of your image management from the moment you download an image from camera to computer until you search for an image and click Print to make a physical copy for a client. Aperture makes it relatively easy and fast to organize and manage your digital files, and that lets you spend more time having fun shooting. However, Aperture isn’t the only digital asset management tool out there. Let’s look at what Aperture gives you over iPhoto and Lightroom.

Seeing the difference between Aperture and iPhoto

If you’ve been using iPhoto to manage your images, then you know that our explanation of why Aperture is a key part of our workflow could apply to iPhoto, too. While iPhoto is great for managing images of your family and friends taken with your point and shoot, it’s really limited when you put it under a microscope. For example, while you can make basic retouching adjustments in iPhoto like a levels adjustment, Aperture lets you fine-tune those adjustments to develop your image exactly the way you want it to look, perhaps adjusting the levels in just one color channel or using the quarter tone controls (which we cover in Chapter 6) to adjust the levels in a specific part of your image. If you really like the effect your adjustment creates, you can save it as a preset to easily apply to other images, even on import. Aperture 3 has the ability to brush those adjustments selectively onto just part of your image, meaning you can make one levels adjustment in the sky and another on the ground, something iPhoto just can’t do. Oh, and if you prefer using curves to levels, Aperture 3 has a curves adjustment, too.

However, more advanced image-adjustment controls aren’t the only difference between iPhoto and Aperture. Aperture provides tools to manage a far larger library than iPhoto can manage. For example, Aperture lets you make complicated searches for images, such as the search in Figure 1.1 that finds all your top-rated images taken in 2010 in San Francisco that have the keyword water. If you want to know specifics about Aperture’s tools to help categorize and search for images, check out Chapters 5 and 6. Aperture is also a lot more flexible with managing your photos, and unlike in iPhoto, images in Aperture can easily be stored on multiple hard drives. Aperture 3 also adds great new tools to merge and split off collections of images, making it easy to share image collections between two machines.

1.1 An image search that’s easy to do in Aperture but just not practical in iPhoto.

Lastly, while there are similar features in iPhoto and Aperture, like Faces, Places, books, and slide shows, they are just more powerful in Aperture. Aperture’s Book tool, which is covered in Chapter 7, has advanced layout options that let you completely customize the image and text boxes on your page, or even use a photo to create a two-page background spread. Aperture’s slide shows, explored in Chapter 8, let you go beyond iPhoto’s click-and-play slide shows, creating custom titles, transitions, and music. You can even include HD video within an Aperture slide show.

Fortunately, starting with Aperture 3.3, iPhoto and Aperture have a unified library and adjustment format. This means you can seamlessly move between the two programs using the same library data. As an example, you could use Aperture to split your library over multiple drives and to adjust your images, and then you could switch to iPhoto, load up that same library displaying your adjusted images, and then order a card or calendar, something you can’t do in Aperture.

In summary, while iPhoto is great for the casual consumer, just as you move from a point-and-shoot camera to a dSLR to upgrade your photography, moving to Aperture from iPhoto lets you upgrade your image-management tools.

Choosing Aperture over Lightroom

For many photographers, Adobe Photoshop is the number one program for image work, and we certainly agree that it’s a great image-manipulation program (although Aperture’s adjustment tools combined with third-party Aperture plug-ins have made it so that we do more than 90 percent of our manipulation work in Aperture instead of Photoshop). You might be asking yourself why you shouldn’t just use Adobe products, such as Adobe Lightroom.

While in some ways the Lightroom-versus-Aperture debate is a bit like a religious Mac-versus-PC debate, there are specific reasons that we find Aperture to be a much better choice than Lightroom for our workflows. The main reason is that Lightroom has different modules that you must switch between for different tasks, whereas Aperture does not. Practically speaking, adjustments affect editing decisions, and it’s faster to make those decisions in Aperture than in Lightroom. For example, you may frequently look at an image and say, “This is good, but if I straighten it, will it be great?” In Aperture, you can use one keyboard shortcut and then drag the mouse to straighten the image. In Lightroom, you need to switch from the Organize to the Develop module, adjust the image, and then switch back to the main module to continue making editing decisions. Less time having to switch modes to make a decision means more time shooting and having fun!

We prefer Aperture for specific, technical reasons as well. One is that Aperture has a more powerful hierarchy (we dig into the specific parts of its structure shortly) that you can customize, such as moving albums wherever you want them to be, whereas Lightroom has a relatively flat hierarchy with limited customization options. In Aperture 3, like in Lightroom, you are able to brush adjustments onto an image, but Aperture provides far more control over how those adjustments are applied, such as only affecting the highlights or shadows. Furthermore, only a few adjustments in Lightroom can be brushed onto an image, whereas most adjustments in Aperture can be selectively applied. Aperture’s curves control is far more powerful than Lightroom’s parametric curves, too. Some tools, such as book authoring, have been in Aperture since the first version and have undergone a lot of refinement, whereas in Lightroom they are just appearing and are not as mature. Then there are also features that Lightroom just doesn’t have, such as Faces.

We should mention that while we far prefer Aperture to Lightroom, Lightroom is not a bad program, and if you have a PC, it’s a very good choice. However, if you have a Mac, we enthusiastically recommend that you use Aperture.

Working with Aperture’s File Structure

If you’ve used a program like Bridge before (one that is essentially an image viewer and metadata editor for the files on your drive), then you’re accustomed to the folder hierarchy on your hard drive being exactly what you see in Bridge, and when you move images around within Bridge or make new folders, it also creates new folders and moves files around on your hard drive for you. Programs such as Aperture (and Lightroom) take a different approach. Your images live in a particular location on your hard drive (more on this in a minute) and appear within a different structure within Aperture. When you move images around within Aperture, between albums for example, they don’t move around on your hard drive (although there are special commands to let you move the files around), and when you create a new folder within Aperture, that folder doesn’t actually exist on your hard drive. Let’s take a minute to explore how Aperture stores files and the different terms for the various collections of images.

We frequently use the word image to talk about any file in Aperture, including movie and audio files, as Aperture treats them all in essentially the same way, especially as far as the file structure is concerned.

Understanding the Aperture library and where your files live

One of the fundamental concepts in Aperture is a library. A library refers to a collection of images. On your hard drive, a library, like the one in Figure 1.2, stores and tracks information about an image, ranging from the various-sized thumbnails that Aperture uses to display the image to the image’s metadata, information about the faces in your images, and information about what adjustments you’ve made to an image. If you choose, Aperture will also store your image files themselves within a library (more on this in a minute), but your image files can also live outside the library instead. An Aperture library appears as a bundle within the Finder (a bundle is a special type of folder that appears as if it were a single file) and discourages you from digging inside your library. If you dig inside your library, you might accidentally do something, such as move a key file, which causes a problem in Aperture.

Unlike in iPhoto, where most users tend to just have one photo library, you will most likely have multiple libraries with Aperture. For example, you could have a library on an external drive containing every image that you’ve ever taken and a second library on your laptop’s internal hard drive that has a library with images from the previous shoot or two.

By default, Aperture creates a library in your Pictures folder. Chapter 10 explains how to work with multiple libraries.

When Aperture is closed, double-click on a library in the Finder to launch Aperture with the contents of that library.

1.2 An Aperture library as seen in the Finder. Notice that it appears as just a single file, even though it contains other files within.

Understanding referenced and managed files

Referenced and managed files refer to where your image files are stored. Put simply, referenced files are stored in whatever folder on your hard drive you select, and Aperture stores a reference to their location within the library. If you move the files around on your hard drive, you have to tell Aperture to update its reference (we cover working with referenced files in depth in Chapter 3). Managed files, on the other hand, are stored within the Aperture library. You don’t need to worry about where they are on your hard drive because they’ll always just be inside your library, and if you want to access the image files you must do so via Aperture rather than the Finder.

Choosing to use referenced or managed files is largely a personal choice, and within Aperture they are treated exactly the same. The main benefit to managed files is that you don’t have to worry about into what folder on your drive you’re importing your images because they’re all just going into your Aperture library. You might find it preferable to use managed files because they help prevent you from losing track of your images.

However, the main benefit to referenced files is that you can store your images wherever you want, even on a separate hard drive. Aperture stores previews of your images inside the library that you can view in Aperture, even if the full image files can’t be found. This means that you can keep your full Aperture library on your MacBook Pro’s hard drive so that you can always have your images with you, but you can store all the large image files on a large, external drive.

Referenced files that you see in Aperture but whose image files can’t be found are called offline images. Aperture indicates an offline image with the badge overlay indicated in Figure 1.3.

1.3 When this badge overlay appears over a thumbnail in Aperture, it indicates an offline image.

A second benefit to referenced files is that if you want to use another program to work with your images, such as Adobe Photoshop, without going through Aperture, you can because your image files are not locked away inside of the library bundle. Just be careful about reorganizing your image files outside of Aperture. If you move the file on your hard drive, you need to tell Aperture where the file’s new location is so that it doesn’t think the image is offline. Chapter 3 covers working with referenced files in depth.

Last, if you use an online backup service like CrashPlan or Mozy, we recommend using referenced files so that if Apple updates the internal library format and changes where the managed images are stored, these backup services won’t have to upload a new copy of every image to the cloud.

Understanding how images are organized within Aperture

Aperture has special terms to explicitly describe which image you’re working with: the original file on disk or a version within Aperture. Furthermore, a key concept to understand about Aperture is that files within Aperture have their own hierarchy that isn’t guaranteed to be anything like the file hierarchy on your hard drive. When you move an image around within Aperture, it doesn’t also move it between folders on your hard drive. As such, Aperture has a special vocabulary to describe how originals and versions are organized into projects, albums, folders, and stacks.

Original images

An original is the initial file you import into Aperture, whether it’s a RAW, JPEG, TIFF, DNG, and so on. Aperture never modifies the original file; you can always return to your original image no matter how many adjustments you make within Aperture.

Versions

A version is a representation of an original file that you work with within Aperture. It refers to the original file but is not the original file. No matter how many changes you make to a version, you aren’t changing the original. This is called nondestructive editing.

Something special about Aperture is that you can make multiple versions of an image with different adjustments applied to each, as shown in Figure 1.4. And unlike iPhoto, which makes a full copy of the original file each time and uses a lot of hard drive space, Aperture only stores the changes you make to each image, saving hard drive space. (This alone is a great reason to use Aperture for all of your adjustments, even if you use iPhoto for everything else.) Then, when you ask to see a particular version, Aperture loads the original behind the scenes and applies the changes you made to create this version.

1.4 All three versions of this image share the same original file, and each new version only takes a few kilobytes more hard drive space to create.

Working with versions can get a little confusing. Although all of Aperture’s built-in adjustments are nondestructive and are stored as information on top of an original file, Aperture also supports third-party adjustment editors such as plug-ins to create High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, as well as external editors like Photoshop. In order for these third-party programs to see the adjustments you make to an image, Aperture makes a TIFF or PSD file from your version for the other tool to work with. This means that if you make a bunch of adjustments to an image within Aperture and want to open it in Photoshop, rather than trying to describe to Photoshop how Aperture converted the RAW file and then also convey to Photoshop the changes you made on top of the converted file, Aperture just collects everything, makes a new TIFF file, and then tells Photoshop to open that TIFF file.

Even if you’re using referenced files, this new file that Aperture makes from your version will be stored within your Aperture library. You can relocate the Aperture-created original wherever you want after it’s created, as discussed in Chapter 3.

This new version has an original file on the hard drive, but it’s not the original file that you imported from your camera, and this version with its new original consumes far more hard drive space than a normal version because it isn’t just a small bit of data describing what changes you made.

If you see the badge overlay indicated in Figure 1.5 within Aperture, it means that this version also has an Aperture-created original aside from the original file you imported.

1.5 This badge overlay on a thumbnail or image means that this version has an Aperture-created original.

Projects

Within an Aperture library, you group your original files and versions into projects. A project might represent an entire shoot, multiple shoots of the same subject, a part of a shoot, or just a completely random collection of images. Each time you import an image, you must determine into what project to place it. If you delete a project, you are removing the original files contained within it from your library. There is no limit on how many projects you can create. If you open your Aperture library in iPhoto, a project appears as an event, and vice versa.

Albums

Albums are a collection of image versions that you create manually. Versions may exist in more than one album (for example, you might put an image in both a Brooks Wedding Dinner album and a Show to Bride album). Albums can either exist within a project to provide a finer-grained grouping of images or at a library level if they contain images from multiple projects. For example, we typically create a project for a shoot such as Japan – February 2012 and then create albums within the project to represent specific parts of the shoot such as Tsurui Day 3 AM. Later, we create a library-level album, such as Images to Copyright, containing images from every project that we need to submit for copyright registration. No matter how many albums within a library you put an image into, Aperture does not create a new copy of the original file on disk. Furthermore, deleting an image from an album does not remove it from your library or hard drive.

There are special types of albums, called Smart Albums, whose contents are created dynamically. For example, Aperture has built-in Smart Albums at the library level (called Library Albums) for 5-star images (the highest rating you can give), videos, images created in the last week, and more. Each time you add or adjust an image and make it meet one of these criteria, such as rating an image with 5 stars, Aperture automatically adds it to the appropriate Smart Album. Smart Albums are covered in depth in Chapter 4.

Folders

A folder is a container for projects, albums, and other folders. As you create more and more projects, you may find it helpful to use folders to group related projects together so that you’re not always scrolling through a long list of projects. For example, we have a folder in our library called Antelope Valley (shown in Figure 1.6) that contains projects for each time we’ve shot at that location.

1.6 Here’s what part of our Aperture library looks like. Notice how projects, albums, and folders all have different icons, how folders help us organize our library, and how we have albums at both the library and project levels.

Stacks

While not strictly part of Aperture’s hierarchy, Aperture calls a small collection of images that are related in some way a stack. The difference between a stack and a project or album is that a stack of images tends to essentially be one image, but just slightly different versions of that image, whereas a project or album might contain many stacks of images.

For example, Aperture can automatically group bursts of images taken close together into a stack. If you shoot a sporting event and import the images into one album, you would have many stacks representing each burst of action. Additionally, if you want to create multiple versions of a single image with different adjustments, you could group these different versions into a stack for organization. Each time you open your image in an external editor such as Photoshop, Aperture automatically stacks the previous version and this new externally edited version together. Stacks are covered in more detail in Chapter 3.

A Brief Tour of Aperture’s Interface

Now that you’ve learned some of Aperture’s basic jargon, let’s look at Aperture itself. The first time you launch Aperture, you see the Welcome screen in Figure 1.7. Click Continue to close this window to begin using Aperture. The main parts of the interface you see right away are the Inspector, Browser, and Viewer, and this section explores these pieces in depth and explains how to work with the Library Inspector, which you use to manage Aperture’s file hierarchy.

1.7 Aperture’s Welcome screen.

Understanding the Inspector, Browser, and Viewer

The three key parts of Aperture’s interface are the Inspector, the Browser, and the Viewer. These three areas are shown in Figure 1.8.

1.8 Three areas of the Aperture interface that will serve you well.

Inspector

The Inspector has three tabs within it to let you inspect different items. The initial tab is the Library tab. The Library Inspector has four groups, as shown in Figure 1.9. At the top is a library-wide group that lets you see all your projects, all your images, every face in your library, and more (we discuss this section shortly). Below that is the Recent group that has images you’ve worked with recently as well as flagged images and rejected images. This group also has the iCloud Photo Stream collection (covered in Chapter 2) as well as Aperture’s Trash. Next is the Projects group. This has all of your projects (or iPhoto events), folders of projects, and items within projects. Last is the Albums group, which contains library-wide albums as well as built-in Library Albums — Smart Albums that search your entire library for certain groups of images.

1.9 The Library, Recent, Projects, and Albums groups within the Library Inspector.

To create an empty project, choose File →New →Project. To create an empty album within a Project, select that project and choose File →New →Album. To create an empty, library-level album, do one of three things:

Deselect everything in the Library Inspector before running this command.

Select an item, such as Photo Stream, not within the Projects group and choose File →New →Album.

Click and drag a project-level album out of the project and into the Albums group.

To create a new folder, choose File →New →Folder.

At the very top of the Library Inspector is a search field that filters the contents of the Library Inspector. This search field does not search inside the metadata of your images. It simply searches your project, album, and folder names for a match. Next to the search field is an Action pop-up menu. This menu contains the following four commands:

Add to Favorites/Remove from Favorites. Over time, you will end up with many items in your Library Inspector. To filter the list so that you only see your favorite items, select Favorite Items from the search field’s pop-up menu. To mark an item as a favorite, select it in the Library Inspector and choose Add to Favorites from the Action pop-up menu.

Keep Albums & Projects Arranged By. This submenu affects how items at the same level (such as all the top-level items, all the items directly under a project, and all the items directly within the same folder) are sorted within the Library Inspector. Choose Name from this submenu to sort all the items in the Library Inspector alphabetically. Choose Kind to group the items by kind (for example, all projects will be grouped together, all folders will be grouped together, and so on). Choose Manual so that you can drag and drop items to rearrange them however you want. Even if you choose Name or Kind, you can manually rearrange an item at any point and Aperture will automatically switch to Manual sorting.

Export Project/Folder/Album as New Library. We cover this topic more in Chapter 10, but the quick explanation is that any item in Aperture can be exported as a new library to make it easy to share groups of images.

Maintain Previews for Project. By default, Aperture maintains large previews of your images for use in other applications such as iWork. However, these previews can take a lot of hard drive space, and it’s often useful to not maintain them for an entire project. We cover previews and this command more in Chapter 10.

At the very bottom of the Library Inspector is a button marked Show Vaults and another Action pop-up menu with vault-related commands. Vaults are special Aperture-created backups of your library. We cover Vaults and other backup options in Chapter 10.

By clicking the Info tab at the top of the Inspector, you switch from the Library Inspector to the Info Inspector. As you might expect, this inspector allows you to view and edit information about your image, information that’s also referred to as metadata. This inspector is covered in depth in Chapter 4. The last tab, Adjustments, lets you switch to the Adjustments Inspector, which contains tools to adjust your image. The Adjustments Inspector is covered in Chapter 6.

If you’re working on a small screen, it’s often useful to hide the Inspector and to only show it when needed. To hide the Inspector, choose Window →Hide Inspector; to reveal it, choose Window →Show Inspector. The keyboard shortcut for hiding and showing the Inspector is I (with no modifiers). There are menu commands for quickly switching to the Library, Info, and Adjustments Inspectors under View →Inspector, but more useful are the keyboard shortcuts to switch to those views: Control+P for the Library Inspector (think P for Project), Control+D for the Info Inspector, and Control+A for the Adjustments Inspector. W (with no modifiers) is also a keyboard shortcut for View →Inspector →Next Tab, which lets you quickly cycle among Inspector tabs.

If you’re working with a tablet display like a Wacom Cintiq, you might find it useful to move the Inspector to the right side of the screen. Choose View →Inspector →Swap Position.

Browser

The Library Inspector lets you switch between collections of images within your library, and the Browser lets you see the contents of those collections. The three views within Browser are Filmstrip, Grid, and List, which you can switch by clicking the view buttons marked in Figure 1.10. Filmstrip (the default) and Grid are similar in that they both show primarily thumbnails of your image (we cover customizing what other data you see in Chapter 3), but Filmstrip only has one row of images that scrolls from side-to-side. Grid view arranges your images into a grid that you scroll up and down. List view turns Browser into a table where each column has a different piece of metadata, such as the image’s date, aperture, and shutter speed. Another way of switching views is to choose View →Browser →Filmstrip (Control+F), Grid (Control+G), or List (Control+L). In Grid and List views, there is a thumbnail size slider that lets you make the displayed thumbnails larger or smaller. In Filmstrip view, use the Split view control, as described shortly, to resize the thumbnails.

1.10 Browser with a few key buttons and controls highlighted.

Browser also has a sorting pop-up menu that lets you determine how your images are sorted, be it by date, rating, or more. Switch between Ascending and Descending in the Sorting pop-up menu to change the sort direction. When in List view, you can also click the column header to sort by that criteria, and click the header again to change the sort direction. If you prefer, it’s also possible to manually arrange the images by clicking and dragging an image (or group of images) wherever you want it to be. If for some reason the sorting and filtering controls aren’t visible, choose View →Browser →Show Sort and Filter Controls (+Shift+F). Similarly, if you want to hide those controls, choose View →Browser →Hide Sort and Filter Controls.

If you start to work with your images in the Browser while Aperture is still importing your images, it tends to revert to Manual sorting. We highly recommend making sure you’re sorting by Date when editing your photos so that it’s easier to see sequences of images.

At the top right of Browser is a search field. As you might expect, if you start typing in it, Browser filters its contents to only show images whose name or other metadata match the text you’re typing. If you click on the search field’s pop-up menu, you will see commands to quickly filter Browser based on image ratings and labels. By clicking the Filter button to the left of the search field, you open the Filter dialog, as shown in Figure 1.11, which lets you refine your filter even further. This is covered more in Chapter 4, but this control is where you can make advanced queries like “filter Browser so that it only shows images taken last Tuesday containing Eric’s face.”

1.11 The Filter dialog and button.

Sometimes, when looking for an image, you’ll find it useful to make Browser larger. There are two ways to do so. If you’re working in Split view, which has both Browser and Viewer on-screen at the same time, click the dark line between Browser and Viewer and drag it up and down to adjust Browser’s size. Note that if you’re using the Filmstrip view, Aperture just makes the thumbnails larger when you adjust the split. Switch to Grid view to see more images in Browser. Unfortunately, Aperture only lets you drag Browser so that it takes up about 60 percent of the screen. To hide Viewer and make Browser take the entire screen, click the Browser button in the toolbar indicated in Figure 1.12 (if for some reason the toolbar is hidden, click the pill-shaped button at the top right to reveal it). To return to the previous view, click the Split view button in the toolbar. Note that when you’re in Browser mode, you can only switch between Grid and List views, not Filmstrip. If you’re comfortable using keyboard shortcuts, press V to cycle among Viewer and Browser, Viewer only, and Browser only.

1.12 This is what Aperture looks like with Viewer hidden and Browser maximized. Note the Browser and Split view buttons in the toolbar that let you toggle layouts.

In Browser, you can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly scroll through your images. Press L to scroll forward, J to scroll backward, and K to stop scrolling. Press L and J multiple times to scroll faster in their respective directions. Make sure to click inside of Browser so that it has focus before using these hotkeys.

If you prefer to see your thumbnails in a vertical Filmstrip rather than a horizontal one, it’s possible to rotate Browser by choosing View →Browser →Rotate Position (Shift+W). Like Inspector, it’s also possible to swap which side of the screen Browser’s on (as shown in Figure 1.13) by choosing View →Browser →Swap Position (Option+W).

1.13 Aperture with Browser’s position rotated and swapped.

Viewer

Viewer, the last key part of Aperture’s interface, is where you see the full contents of your image (or selected images). When you select an image in Browser, Aperture loads the full contents of that version, displaying a “Loading” indicator while doing so, and displays it in Viewer. Many tools in Viewer help you examine your image in detail, from zooming in to 1,000 percent to quickly switching between seeing the original image and the current version with your adjustments. Viewer is covered in depth in Chapter 3.

Aperture also has an excellent full-screen mode for Browser and Viewer that removes any distraction and lets you focus on your images. We explore this mode in depth in Chapter 3.

Managing files with Projects and Albums

As mentioned earlier, Projects are where your images and originals truly live. Making a new project is quite easy. To move a group of images into a new project, do the following:

1. Select the images in Browser that you want to use for the new project.

2. Choose File →New →Project (+N). Aperture displays the New Project dialog, as shown in Figure 1.14.

1.14 The New Project dialog.

3. Type the project name.

4. Select the Move selected items to new project check box if you want to move your selected images into the new project.

5. Click OK.