Rangefinder Magazine
April 2006

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First Exposure Bob Rose
Apple Aperture: The First All-in-one Post Production Tool for Photographers

SIX VERSIONS of product and four years ago, Apple Computer brought forth on this continent a free software program dedicated to amateur digital photographers called iPhoto.

It offered some nice basic digital photo editing, sorting, and storage, with especially easy importing from digital cameras, scanners and disks. Since that time it has been rumored that there would eventually be an iPhoto Pro, a “Photoshop killer.”

Well, the good news is that there’s a new product in town, and it’s neither an iPhoto Pro nor a “Photoshop killer.” Apple’s first entry into the professional photographic market may have some strong roots and resemblance to iPhoto, but it is much, much more. And recognizing that Photoshop is the de facto standard of image editing for photographers and graphic artists, Aperture considers itself the ideal companion software.

Taking time to analyze the way professional photographers work, Apple decided there are six steps to the digital photographic workflow: 1. Acquire images, 2. Create projects, 3. Photo edit, 4. Apply adjustments, 5. Distribute, and 6. Back up.

Standard Layout with Inspectors

Project Management Auto-Stack	Multi-Image Compare View
Full Screen View	Ratings and Keywords Layout

So after a couple of years of development, with a very straightforward, clean and easy-to-understand Apple interface, Aperture was born. (PC users will have to refer to this story for informational purposes only, as Aperture was built specifically for the Mac and is unlikely to appear in a Windows version).

Aperture represents the first of a new category of software: an all-in-one post-production tool for photographers. Said another way, it’s the only single application today that lets you review and edit your entire photo shoot of RAW images easily and elegantly on the computer, perform minor image corrections, place these images into multiple page layouts and books for printing, then archive and catalog all of the files.

Metadata Options

While these six steps have defined the sequence of the workflow, the method of operation is very free-form. It’s quite possible to be working anywhere in the process and decide to bring in more images or create new projects. A quick look at the program doesn’t do it justice, so let’s see how it actually works.

Aperture offers a variety of options on the welcome screen, but I suggest you bypass them and just start using the program. Once open, you’ll find a pleasant, well organized, neutral array of windows and controls.

To acquire images, I prefer to import from a card reader. This keeps my cameras free to shoot, saves on battery power and lets the file transfer take place while I’m off working on something else. Aperture senses the card once plugged into the reader and allows import of all images or just selected images. It also automatically sets the location for the file transfer into a new project in Aperture’s library.

The project is the master location for all the original digital files in your shoot and can be accessed in a number of ways, as you’ll see in the next steps.

You can go with the default new project and name it, or point to an existing project to add files.

You can also download multiple projects simultaneously from the same card, and, if you use the stackable Professional CF Readers from Lexar like I do, you can import from multiple cards at the same time.

While you’re at it, you probably want to enter your metadata or specify your metadata set so the info is applied to your images at the time of import.

With a project folder in the library, all of its file thumbnails show up in the lower middle of the screen in the browser area, while an enlargement of the first selected shot appears above, in the viewer.

The Projects Panel is located on the left side while the image adjustment tools are on the right side along with the Metadata window. The Control Bar sits on the bottom and Toolbar hangs at the top.

What I just described is the standard layout window, and it’s a bit cramped on a 17-inch PowerBook. Fortunately, it can be quickly reconfigured to reposition, resize and customize the most important elements on the screen and hide other parts.

Primary View and Adjustment HUD

In addition, many tool control panels can pop up from their stealth modes as needed. Apple calls this an HUD, or heads-up display (which by definition means these should be floating in space off-screen, but I guess that’s for a future product).

Aperture is the first program for photographers that I can think of specifically designed to work with multiple displays—and I’m not just talking moving menus and tool palettes to a second screen.

When it comes time to really compare images and show selections, nothing beats the more than four feet of horizontal video real estate that a pair (or even a quartet) of 30-inch Cinema HD Displays can deliver—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The photo editing process is unlike anything you have ever seen.

The logic to the tools for this process is that images shot in a series (in close time proximity) are likely to be related, because the photographer was trying to capture the peak action, the best expression or the ideal bracketed exposure. You can link related images automatically at the time of import or manually, using the auto-stack HUD.

A slider control groups these images together based on a selectable time interval from zero to 60 seconds. In the browser these images are all open and grouped together in a row, or all closed and represented by one image. The top pick of each stack shows a number indicating how many are in the stack.

It’s easy to sort through stacks by changing the layout and selecting one with an enlarged viewer window. By working with the Control Bar comparison settings, the program keeps your favorite image fixed and highlighted as a Current Pick and allows toggling through (and comparison to) the rest of the images in the group.

Light Table and Loupe

There are easy ways to navigate, accept, reject, add keywords and tag the images with ratings, and this is where a multiple monitor setup really makes the difference.

While there are some other nice features that help with image selection, the neatest new tool in the bunch is the Loupe. Click on the Loupe icon and drag it over the image to see an enlarged view of all details.

The size and magnification of the Loupe can be changed, and it can be used to view small thumbnail images in the browser window as well as larger images in the viewer window.

Flexibility is your choice in the layout: You may want to see more of the series, or more of a magnified image, or even lists of files. My favorite is the elegant full screen view, which eliminates some of the controls (but gives them back as HUDs).

It slightly enlarges all of the images, placing everything on a black background for best contrast. Have it your way—however you want to work, it’s pretty much up to you.

While everyone is going to develop his or her own sequence of operation, there is no wrong way to work. For my part, once I select all of the images I want to use, I click on the Album icon.

This automatically places them in a special kind of folder underneath the main project folder and allows me to name the group. The project is still the main location for all of the original digital masters from the shoot, but the Album only contains Versions.

Versions are small files that reference the digital master and are unique in whatever way you have modified them, such as with keywords or image adjustments.

By creating Versions, you protect the digital master and minimize the amount of storage space needed.

However, it’s quite possible to have a number of different Albums to represent collections from the shoot, or alternate applications of images.

In this case, multiple versions of the digital master can exist in one project folder.

Book Layout	Proof Layout

There is another kind of Album called a “Smart Album.” A Smart Album is more powerful and allows you to create a selection of images by specifying their criteria (such as date, rating, keywords or any combination).

This is a very flexible way to group images and is dynamic inasmuch as if you change the criteria, you change the contents of the Smart Album.

The concept is the same as Smart Albums in iPhoto and Smart Playlists in iTunes.

I generally try to shoot clean, straight photos, so my actual image adjustments are typically very minimal. That’s a good thing, because the adjustment controls in this part of the Aperture package are not extensive.

Personally, I’m fine with simple exposure, levels and color control, plus a minor retouch along with some cropping and straightening of the image. A few more features are included, but Aperture readily acknowledges that other software packages (called “external editors”) can do more and hands off the image to Photoshop (or some other program if you so wish).

It starts to get a little complicated here because Aperture doesn’t recognize layers (they’re flattened), doesn’t hand over the RAW file itself (unless you export the Master, which is a different step), and the way it processes RAW images (compared to Adobe Camera Raw and other programs) can vary based on the image, exposure and the camera model. I also didn’t have much faith in the histograms, as they always looked good even when I knew the result of a drastic correction should have been full of spikes. If you’re going to be making a lot of refinements and/or are batch processing, it’s time to move to the most powerful computer you can find or take an extended break.

Adjustment Options	Project Options

Presumably by now you’ve got the images you like and they’re tweaked to perfection, so it’s show time! It’s too bad Apple didn’t find a cooler name for this part because “distribute your image” just doesn’t cut it—Aperture does so much more.

Printing to most inkjet printers is clean and straightforward, contact sheets are easy, and there’s a decent Slide Show feature that links to the iTunes library for music. But I like what Apple calls a “deceptively simple layout environment.”

Building on the proven techniques of previous creative programs in the iLife and iWork family of products, images can utilize predefined page layouts and themes that exist in Books, Web Galleries and Web Journals. These variations on the Album create more ways to showcase your work than you ever thought possible.

For example, currently Books can be made in three sizes and offer themes such as: Art Collection, Picture Book, Proof Book, Special Occasion, Stock Book and Stock Book Black. There are about 20 different page layouts that provide templates but also offer virtually unlimited freedom to place, position, size, crop, and intermix images and text. Finish a design, then shoot it off online to Apple and order a professionally bound book, or save the whole thing as a PDF.

In a similar manner, Web Galleries (Smart ones too) and Web Journals assist in the simple creation of web pages of images and text, which can be uploaded to a .Mac account or exported as HTML pages for more conventional online use. Another way to work with images (which many people may opt for earlier in the edit) is a variation of the Album called Light Table. A Light Table offers you a large free-form workspace, much like a real light table or lightbox.

Drag images over from the browser to sort and position as you like. Images can be resized and aligned manually to the background grid or automatically to each other. This is a great place to create design layouts that can be printed or saved as PDFs.

The final step to the Aperture workflow is to back up your images. Apple does a very nice thing here by creating an automatic system called the Vault. The Vault is a literal copy of your entire library and is intended to live on an external drive or ideally, duplicate drives. This is handled very easily. When Aperture first opens, you’ll see a message telling you how much data has not been backed up if you aren’t current. However, the Vault is a proprietary way of dealing with things, so users who want to back up in a universal format will need to remember that the only way to do this is to export individual files (and hope that most of the important tagged data travels with it, which is an area that’s being worked on by the Aperture software team).

Export Version Options

Please recognize that there are many ways to use Aperture. In this article I could only touch on the surface and present a sequence that I found useful for me. Although I worked extensively with my own files to find my way around Aperture, to create the illustrations for this article I utilized the tutorial images from the wedding shot by West Coast wedding photographer Joe Buissink.

If you’re going to buy Aperture, I recommend you watch the hour and a half video training on DVD to familiarize yourself quickly. There’s also a great set of three tutorials—more than 150 pages on disk, along with a competent 47-page Digital Photography Fundamentals document (Apple needs to fix a few errors). And last, but not least (actually first for me) is the well written, 223-page, printed Getting Started Guide.

Today Aperture is at Version 1.0.1 and requires Mac OS X 10.4.4 to work. In addition, it relies heavily on hardware for its power, so give it everything you’ve got—a lot of RAM and CPU processing, along with the best video card you can find. While there’s a specific list of recommended hardware on the Apple site (and a downloadable compatibility checker), I found the trick is to have at least a 128MB video card, or it won’t even load on your system.

For this review I had the luxury of using the most powerful Mac on the planet (at least today): a 2.5Ghz Power Mac G5 Quad with 512MB video, 1TB of storage and 4GB of RAM, hooked up for my viewing pleasure to a glorious 30-inch Cinema HD Display.

Right now nothing else that Apple offers can touch the G5 Quad and even the next generation of Intel-based Mac’s are a long way off from catching up. In addition, the new Mac’s are running most current software in Rosetta emulation mode until software has been rewritten and optimized for the new hardware (software designed for both systems is called a Universal application). But depending on the application, Rosetta can really slow things down. Also be aware that Adobe and some other companies are not reworking existing versions of software but are waiting until the next release of product to implement Universal applications – that means the G5 is the fastest way to go for at least the next year if you’re running Photoshop (Aperture is a few months away from it’s Universal release).

I must admit, as tempting as it was to work with the G5 Quad (and help lower the heating bills in my studio this winter), I felt obliged to conduct most of my work for this article on my traveling system, which represents exactly what I take on a shoot: a 1.5Ghz 17-inch PowerBook G4 with 128MB video, 80GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. While I can certainly talk about the compromises in performance between the two machines, it’s clearly possible to get along with less power for downloads and quick edits. Still, I’d save the G5 as the place to go for large quantities of image adjustments and the balance of the tasks.

G5 and dual displays

So how much does power cost? At the time of this writing, a 2.5Ghz Power Mac G5 Quad and 30-inch Cinema HD Display fully-configured like the one I used adds up to $9430, plus another $499 for Aperture. There is still room to raise the RAM to 16GB, but I’d much rather toss in a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a second display for $2499. So the price to really grab those customers is a cool $12,580. To put it in perspective, that’s about the same cost as a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, the three Lseries zoom lens set and a half dozen Lexar 2GB 80X CF cards. Of course, speedy computers do save you time (which is money), and big beautiful presentations of your images on Cinema Displays help sell your customers on additional prints and larger prints (which means more money)—that’s a way you can justify your purchases.

The final question: “Is Aperture for you?” The answer is, “It depends.” As an all-in-one package, nothing can touch its combinations of features. But if you already have a number of software programs that work together and offer somewhat comparable functionality, you might want to think twice. Aperture is not likely to play nice with whatever system you have now for editing and cataloging, plus it won’t deal with offline archiving. And if you buy a new digital camera that’s not on the list, it requires an update to the operating system (not Aperture itself) to add RAW processing.

Aperture version 1.0.1 is a very impressive first offering by Apple for the professional photographer, and like a fine wine, it will only get better with age.