Posts tagged with Aperture

Saving the (animal) farm?

I've said before that O'Reilly's Inside Aperture and Inside Lightroom blogs have been getting a bit tired lately. Folk evangelize about how their chosen program has revolutionized some aspect of their work, when either program - or indeed earlier DAM programs - would have done so. This is just one where you could just as …read more

50 ways to leave your lover

This post isn't really about Extensis Portfolio, iView or Lightroom - it's really another of my despairing rants - but today I was asked about getting metadata out of Portfolio and into something like iView or Lightroom. The direct answer is that Portfolio lets you sync the metadata into jpeg and tif files, but for …read more

Search trends

I never claim to be an early adopter, and only recently discovered the value of Google Alerts. Now Matthew Campagna shows me the use of Google Trends by charting searches for Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture: One thing to consider, however, is that Aperture remains exclusive [JB: in the sense of “limited”] to Apple computers, …read more

DNG from Aperture

Although some developers of raw converters might have you think otherwise, the DNG format isn't just for Adobe. Photographer and Aperture user Micah Walters has written a DNG Export Plugin for Aperture which uses the Adobe DNG Converter's command line interface to generate DNGs from raw file. Right now it creates a bare DNG with …read more

Lightroom v Aperture

John Nack reports a comparison of Lightroom and Aperture pro market shares: InfoTrends recently surveyed 1,026 professional photographers in North America to determine which software they used for raw file processing. Here's what folks reported: 66.5% using the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in 23.6% using Lightroom 5.5% using Aperture To be fair to Aperture, it might …read more

Data migration

In my former life I did a lot of data migration, moving finance and other business information between old and new systems. Moving metadata between cataloguing systems isn't very much different and I've moved quite a number of photographers' metadata into iView (now Expression Media) using an Excel application as a bridge (from there it's …read more

Stay free

Until a year a two ago, mySQL seemed to be the open source database to back, but barely a week goes by without SQLite popping up behind the scenes of some program I use - it powers both Aperture and Lightroom. Today's Guardian carries an interview with SQLite's creator: It's very clear to me that …read more

The masterplan

PHPture is an interesting plug in for Aperture which, if I understand correctly, uses a web server on your Mac and the PHP language to run a web site which looks like Aperture. It accesses Aperture's database and shows stacks, thumbnails, and a project listing, and makes your image versions available over a network or …read more

If things were perfect

I don't run Aperture seriously, more out of curiosity, but it's frustrating that metadata is stuck inside its library until you export the masters, duplicating your files. That is especially annoying because I often go through new pictures on the laptop while watching TV, like United's annihilation of Roma last night, and the same master …read more

Achilles last stand

Not sure when he wrote this, other than in the last 6 months, but Robert Edwards looks at Aperture or Lightroom = Neither: I'm not suggesting there isn't a use or market for Aperture and Lightroom. Certainly their sales figures suggest otherwise. What I am stating is neither Aperture or Lightroom is the panacea digital …read more

She’s lost control

In this post I wrote about using Lightroom's Collections to record virtual copies or versions. My thinking has changed a little since I wrote that piece, though I do still use Collections, and the key point remains that you must mark the virtual copies immediately after they are created and while LR still has them …read more

Round and round

O'Reilly's Lightroom vs Aperture has some interesting articles and even more interesting threads such as this discussion of Aperture's flexibility vs Lightroom's modularity. While I prefer a palette-based interface, as in Aperture, I don't think Lightroom's modular approach slows me down, and one commenter put it really well: I'm still confused as to why modularity …read more

Don’t fence me in

Having both programs, I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of a Lightroom user comparing it with Aperture, and an Aperture user coming at it from the other direction, but that's exactly what Michael Clark on O'Reilly's Lightroom Blog and Micah Walter at O'Reilly's Aperture Blog are attempting (though Micah does seem to be writing mainly about …read more

With God on our side

Now Lightroom is released, there are lots of threads comparing it with its Mac-limited competitor Aperture. See Adobe's forum and this Apple thread where one wanker (you would have had to read the thread but Apple have now deleted it) shouts that Aperture is the one because …most of all, it's not just the features. …read more

Be my number two

With Lightroom about to launch, it's no harm to see what's going on across at its Mac-limited competitor, Aperture. Automator actions and stock library plug ins give you a pretty good idea of the sort of things to expect once Lightroom gets its scripting and SDK released. Other Aperture resources: Bagelturf articles “written to be …read more

All the young dudes

With days left to go before Lightroom is released, Michael Tapes has a series of free videos (with a higher res DVD also available for $10.95). I got to know Michael virtually through the beta testing program and am not at al surprised that the style is professional and common sense - and I learned …read more

And the gods made love

The other day I posted about being able to examine the Lightroom database using the open source SQLite Database Browser. Well, according to Fazal Majid, Aperture uses the same underlying database…. Find the Aperture library, right click it and select “Show package contents”. The application data seems to be a folder structure with a large …read more

Always look on the bright side of life

There's a new Lightroom podcast at George Jardine's iDisk (look for “1127 Podcast - Phil Clevenger and Mark Hamburg”) which initially focusses on the programs interface design. A little on the bland side - you'd hardly base a design on anything other than a “content is king” mantra - but it's interesting enough as it …read more

Hung up

Inside Aperture blog contributor James Duncan Davidson writes on his own blog about Aperture vs Lightroom RAW Conversion: Does this mean that Aperture is off my system? Heck no. I'm not tossing 31,000+ images at Lightroom anytime soon. Aperture kicks Lightroom's butt at organization and management. And Aperture has done a great job with generating …read more

Games people play

Maybe next week I’ll have a bit of time to try out Aperture, Apple’s Mac-limited raw processing and picture management program, but I enjoyed reading this thread Improving Aperture. Yes, it was me suggesting they make it run on PC, but wouldn’t that be an interesting response to Lightroom when it’s finally released?