Aperture Workflow

Amigos,

Some of this is over my head but I think the lesson is what can be done to achieve a faster workflow.

Sure, it's on www.apple.com and touting Aperture. But it sure looks like this photographer had a HUGE advantage in his chosen venue! I'm always looking for ideas I can adapt and cut my photo editing process down.....

Check it out:

http://www.apple.com/pro/photo/laforet/index.html

dhaas

A very interesting article, David. Now the only thing you need is an editor standing by to cull through your photos as they're downloaded or uploaded!

Interesting. Technology is amazing.

Joe

I think the biggest idea I got from this was to try and streamline my own workflow.

Being a Mac guy I use iPhoto as a browser AND quick and dirty adjustment tool. I currently have iPhoto 5, but will likely upgrade for about $70 to iLife 6 suite containing iPhoto 6. Supposed to work faaaaaast with 250,000 photos (!!!!!!!)

I have about 7230 photos in my current database, and with 1.5GB it's pretty damn fast. But I do need to dedicate some time to a "banshee" editing session deleting the obvious crap. Plus I have a ton on CDs, some I MAY actually go back to try and find a photo (like White Shark trip pics)

But most, not likely.......

I firmly believe being a brutal editor of your work and finding faster and faster ways to edit and select the best photos, adapting parts of this guy's method is where most digital photographers could save themselves a ton of grief.

Or I could be full of it LOL

Later amigos!

David Haas

Haas Photography Inc.

I got all exicted at the weekend when I picked up aperture from the local "store" to test. Unfortunately it wont work on my iMac due to graphics driver incompatability.

Also picked up iLife 6 but that would not work because my iMAc could not read a dual layer disk.

bit of a bummer of a weekend!

Has anyone used aperture on a new iMAC or a new Probook ?

I firmly believe being a brutal editor of your work and finding faster and faster ways to edit and select the best photos, adapting parts of this guy's method is where most digital photographers could save themselves a ton of grief.

I agree 110%. This is partly why I am AMAZED when people say they need more than 30GB of temporary storage for a one-week dive trip. Do we really get more than ~2500-5000 keepers (= approximately an average 100-200 keepers per dive!) in a week of diving? Or should we just delete a WHOLE BUNCH of mediocre shots in camera and carry on? I am not very accomplished, but I have to admit that for some week-long trips I can carry everything that's EVEN CONCEIVABLY worth keeping on a single 2GB card (about 300 shots on a d70).

On my D70 (about 6MB per RAW/compressed NEF), I have NEVER found the need to keep more than a dozen GB or so from a long trip.

To me, one of the joys of digital is being able to eliminate the crap, quickly, and get it OUT of my workflow. Unlike film, there's no reason to keep the intervening experiments...it ain't a film strip, and with histograms, highlights, and simple review on the tiny D70 LCD I can still find the best 1/3 of my shots easily and purge the rest.

I got aperture at christmas, and I'm still learning to use it. The concept of when I am dealing with (or moving or deleting) a master file and when I am dealing with a version has been tough for me.

But, I think, aperture is saving me a lot of time, even on my old 17" powerbook (1.33ghv g4). It does bog down and spin at times, but it still saves me time overall. I do tend to take a lot of pictures of a good supject, and its way of stacking a series and letting you pick a compare image and letting you use it to find your one select, it really works for me.

I also really love the backup vaults. Really really. My laptop died for a couple days on my last trip, flaky power on the boat, I think, but I was totally backed up when it died, thanks to aperture. I lost no sleep.

On a trip, I do very minimal culling. I just don't spend the time on it. On my last trip, I was shooting a couple hundred shots a day, 5mp raw images, 4 or 5 gigs a day, deleting almost nothing. Really only images that were completely dark or obviously out of focus. I'm on vacation, I'd rather be in the water, napping, or eating, or even interacting with other humans on the trip. And with my laptop dead for a few days, I didn't even manage to do that much culling, I just copied them off onto a hard drive using my wife's laptop and kept shooting. So I came home with, I think, around 30 GB of files.

I often have 10 or 20 shots of the same subject, and I find it very slow to pick the best single shot. That's why I wait until I get home to do my selecting. They typically aren't experiments, they typically have all the same exposure. I'm looking for the one with just the righ composition, depth of field, and gesture.

I complely agree with you that I'm going to end up with just a gig or two, but the way I shoot, the way I take time over my selects, and the way I fill my time on vacations, it just takes longer for me. Different strokes....

Have just had a walk over to apple so can answer my own question. FYI

Aperture does not run on Pro book or new intel iMAC. They hope a universal version will be released next month so it will run on the iMAC but not sure about the probook yet.

Aperture will run on the newer powerpc chipped iMAC, but not on the previous versions.

CS2 will run slower on an intel mac and they dont think Adobe will release an interim upgrade and will probably have to wait for CS3.

I had a look at the G5 and considered it for a moment but then had a seizure when they started telling me the costs.

Word on the street here is that Aperture 1.1 in Universal Binary is being/will be revealed at the PMA show, so it is probably not too far off.

yes. I read that it's faster for G4's, too. I think I read that lightroom is universal binary, too.