Hey Suzanne,

Take a look at this. Too funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEAGmBRC1dc

Regards, Art.


Very funny, Art!

BTW, Cate.. I started to look at the Macbook Pros, but at close to US$3000, the imac with their serious screens is looking like a way better deal. All the preloaded software looks great, but the Aperture would be extra, but I can get it at a discount at the same time.

Well, just ran into a working pro I know at an exhibition opening here, (work was terribile, food great). Took the oppurtunity to ask him if he knew about Aperture. As it turns out, yes he does, in a round about way. His assistant does all the computer stuff when shooting remotely (uses a mac laptop) and in the studio.

From what he said his assistant has tried Aperture and prefers to work with Photoshop (CS2 he thinks) and Adobe Bridge. This is a guy who hates the technical side of photography so gets other people to do it for him. When asked what sort of camera he used once he is rumored to have rung his assistant to ask..... He did say that the comment he got was that his assistant thought that Aperture was good, but that as she knows Photoshop back to front she will stick with it.

Thank you, David. I think I get what that assistant was saying. I don't know photoshop, and I don't print digitally. If that were my aim, I'd be looking at getting it. And perhaps, down the road I will. For now, I think either the aperture or lightroom will be great ways to show off photographs to clients!

And, maybe, I can have a more oganised digital database of my negs and contact sheets.

Suzanne, just as a side note, Aperture (and probably Lightroom as well) was originally designed to be a RAW workflow software, allowing you to "develop" your RAW files non-destructively. It's not a full-blown Photoshop replacement, more of a proofing + filing system for your primary files. PS is then used to make fine adjustments and final printing, but there's a lot that can be done in Aperture already.

OK, and for those who feel like asking, a RAW file is a digital camera file. This format contains more information than a JPEG.

What MHV is saying is a good point. The non destructive modification of the original files is a major selling point. Saves people make two files, an "archive copy" and a working copy of the original file then doing modification on the working copy. I learnt to do that with scanning, after finding I was rescanning stuff that I didn't like when I printed it after working on it and couldn't get back to the original scan. I can see the advantages of it for seeing what the RAW files might look like in various iterations.

Don't know much about working in RAW (don't shot digital, yet) but I can understand that it can be an "art". Hopefully someone who uses Aperture will chime in with comments.

Oh yes, scanning is taking an image (negative, transparency, print) and converting it into a series of 1 and 0's (called binary code) that can be then read by a computer (a complicated device that has changed the face of the modern world) and manipulated in image editing software to produce another image.

Oh yes, scanning is taking an image (negative, transparency, print) and converting it into a series of 1 and 0's (called binary code) that can be then read by a computer (a complicated device that has changed the face of the modern world) and manipulated in image editing software to produce another image.

You forgot that software is also another series of 0s and 1s but which has the actual ability of manipulating series of 0s and 1s, also known as data. 0s and 1s are numbers, but they are instantiatied as electrical charges in a modern computer. Electricity is ....

I give up!

Thanks for the insights, but I'm gathering not a lot of folks have used this particular software. I like that you don't have to rescan if you'd mucked something up with your scan! (been there, done that!! :p )

It boils down to... is it easy? hard? frustrating to learn... that's the gist of what I'm after. Anywhooo... I may throw caution to the wind, and get it when I get the new computer, as I can get it at a discount, and I'll tell you how I like or don't like it!!

You can achieve similar results by using adjustment layers in photoshop and saving the repurposed image as a copy. This way you keep the original scan/capture intact for future uses.

When shooting RAW the camera (or at least I'm told) captures more information then can be used by current computer software. The idea is that the raw file information will eventually be usable in future software iterations.

In a perfect world you'd scan all of your images at max res and colour depth, but the truth is that we tend not to have that kind of time. Cameras don't take 5 to 20 min's for a capture so there is nothing keeping the user from shooting at the max. Of course the camera doesn't capture nearly as much information, but it is first generation.

I'll stop here before I wonder clear into the weeds.

Hi Suzanne

this is a bit of a plug for an upcoming workshop that we are in the works of planning right now, but it may be helpful to know what we are planning.


We will be bringing Les Mclean, and Bill Schwab to Toronto this July,(both these gentlemen will be working with students in the field over four days exposing images for a future exhibit in Toronto. We will also be having Kevin work with students in digital capture over this same period.* he uses apeture and capture one on a daily basis and his insight may be of value to you.*
Les will be staying on in Toronto and giving daily workshops on traditional printing as well as digital inkjet printing, after the initial weekend. He is know for his split printing in an traditional darkroom, but from what I hear from the Ilford guys, he is a shit hot digital printer and we will have him working with the New Harmon Inkjet offerings while he is here in Toronto as well as hands on darkroom teachings.
Bill will be taking his students out in the late day to evenings and giving up his knowlege of Urban landscape and some of the techniques that he uses to produce the beautiful work you can see on his site.
Our goal will be to explain simple workflow methods of / film to digital/ film to traditional/ digital capture to digital print/ and digital capture to lambda fibre. We will be bringing in some Manufacturing Experts to explain some of the software available for imaging workflow.*Toronto's commercial photographic scene has pretty well all gone digital, so there is a lot of infomed teachers here.*
Students will shoot film or digital, process the film or files and we will be proofing out the work daily for critique and printing purposes.
I will be printing lambda colour and black& white from film and digital capture and hopefully be able to show easy setup proceedures for working with an imaging service from your own computer.

If you can wait till then, we will be giving hands on instructions in all of the above from working pros , to simplify the massive amount of info out there.and
We will make a point of having experts on hand to go over Apeture and Capture One software and any other software that is available for capture to print.
Hopefully the goal is to have students leave Toronto with a firm idea on the basics of digital capture and film capture.
Les and Bill will be back in Toronto in mid to late October and we would like to produce a show of work to hang in our gallery late October, from the participants of this July Workshop, with the proceeds of sales to go to a charitable orginazation.
sorry for the obvious plug for our workshops but I couldn't resist.
Bob

Thanks, Bob... that sounds like a great workshop.

My heart and passion is in film, and working in the darkroom, but I am trying to get a handle on the possibilities of using the computer for making things a little easier. Hmmmm..... July, huh??!

Anyone have recent experience with Aperture? I have been thinking about getting a new mac, and was playing around with a demo at an Apple store, and it actually looks like a great tool for organizing scans/ and digital image captures.

Would just like to hear others' thoughts. I know it's similar to Lightroom, so in anyone can compare the two, I'm all ears.

TIA

I too have recently purchased a new Mac and need an image oraganization solution. I have looked at Aperture, Lightroom and iView MediaPro. I need to organize both digital camera files and large film scans.

Many of my scans of medium and large format film are rather large, sometimes around a GB of disk space. This created problems with the Lightroom beta software which can't handle more than 10,000 pixels in one dimension.

I started out really liking Aperture but once I indexed all my images in it my opinion changed. It got sluggish and moving around the directories with the scan was not fun. Also the database Aperture created was huge (and I wasn't letting aperture manage my images, only the thumnails).

iView MediaPro is so far my favorite of the three applications. It isn't as nice looking as Aperture or Lightroom, but it works well for indexing my files. If I only shot with a digital camera I would lean towards Lightroom.

I plan on pulling the final version of Lighroom's trial down before I make a decision.

Good luck with the new computer,

Larry

Thank you, Larry! Exactly the kind of information I was looking for!

Suzanne,

I really hate to post this link but there is some good info on Aperture that can be found here: http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showforum=39

Regards, Art.

If anyone is interested iViewMediaPro sent me an email with a "coupon" for friends to buy it for $99. This is half price and 1/3 of what it will be when they release the ExpressionMedia upgrade (Included free if you buy the current version).

http://www.iview-multimedia.com/product/order.jsp?coupon=friend

If you already have Adobe Photoshop CS2 or 3, you don't really need Aperture.
Having said that, Aperture has some very nice tools that permit fast and accurate editing, the magnifier is one tool I find very handy. The latest version 2 is much improved over version 1.5.
I don't think you will be disappointed should you decide to buy it. IMHO it is a better product compared to Lightroom.

[QUOTE=Ray Heath;1741 how could i have known the subject from such a poorly worded question [/QUOTE]
without reading any more of this...I have to ask "Ray, have you been drinking?"

If you don't understand the subject line, don't read the post...just move on.

without reading any more of this...I have to ask "Ray, have you been drinking?"

If you don't understand the subject line, don't read the post...just move on.

well, maybe you should have read more of it

at least i had the decency to do just that, and it wasn't particularly informative, just like your poor contribution