Apple Aperture freaking me out!

I just paid $300 for Aperture and this program looks USELESS to me. I'll admit I haven't put much time into it yet, but I don't even know if I can start. I bought it because I read numerous recomendations for its RAW workflow.

MAJOR PROBLEM: Aperture requires you to reorgainze your entire image collection! This is ludicrous! I have thousands of photos (almost 50GB) of a wide variety of subjects already organized on my hard drive. Firstly it tries to have you copy all your photos into its own library file that only aperture can read. right.....

So you can use "referenced" files and keep them in their original location - but you still have to "import" them, (which seems to take forever considering its not supposed to be copying the files) and reorganize them in aperture's "projects" and "albums". I don't have time for that. This is ridiculous. I also don't shoot many "projects" but primarily stock photos and organize by subject matter.

Am I missing something? Why can't it just open, store and work with everything where you already have it like photoshop? This seems like a ploy by apple to make you dependant on aperture - what happens if I want to switch image editing programs in the future??? Unbelievable.

Any advice?? Was this just a waste of money? Should I just buy PS CS3 and stop whining? (you may laugh, but I've always worked with Photoshop Elements and finally decided to upgrade)

Cheers,

Chris

As Aperture is a workflow programme, it seems to me that there is no need to bring any of your previous photographs into Aperture unless you actually plan to work on them, till then keep them in the old folders as before. As you bring stuff into Aperture over time, store them in folders named according to subject matter. That is what would make sense to me.

For me the single best reason for using Aperture is the way in which it stores different versions of a photograph in stacks. I like to have different versions of a photograph, for different uses - b&w, different crops, Photoshopped version etc. Aperture keeps all these versions together on display, I like that. I still use CS3, especially for photos that I want to make large prints etc. The nice thing is that when I'm done in CS3, Aperture stores it with all the other versions of that photograph.

I think you have to decide whether you like Aperture on future shoots as a workflow program; if not, and you prefer just keeping photographs in folders as before, I see no point in using Aperture or Lightroom for that matter.

There are lots of workflow programs. All take some learning and patience and investment before they pay off for you. Most have free trials. Not all will work the way you do.

So you can use "referenced" files and keep them in their original location - but you still have to "import" them, (which seems to take forever considering its not supposed to be copying the files) and reorganize them in aperture's "projects" and "albums". I don't have time for that. This is ridiculous. I also don't shoot many "projects" but primarily stock photos and organize by subject matter.

I use Aperture and like it a lot. Spend some more time to figure it out.

What it does with referenced files on import is:

1) it generates small low qulity jpg previews. It uses them later to display miniatures and also to show images that are not accessible online. You cannot change this behaviour.

2) by default it also generates high quality jpg previous. They are used for slideshows (if you choose best quality in slideshow preferences) and for sharing with other iLife applications. Bad news is it takes ages to generate them for a large collection. Good news is you can switch it off and generate previous at any time if you need them. You can do it for selected images only and you can choose their size and quality (eg. to meet your display resolution.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can also select import options to automatically generate projects sturcture that would mimic your existing folders structure.

Now, regarding migration to another software, you can always export your images with adjustments you made to TIFFs, JPG or whatever. You loose ability to "edit the edits" you made in aperture, but you still have your untouched original RAW and edited TIFF.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can also select import options to automatically generate projects sturcture that would mimic your existing folders structure.

Indeed you can

File>Import>Folder as Project

I used to have the same system as Chris, except for organizing by year rather than by subject matter. Each year was a top folder in the hierarchy of image storage, then each month would be a subfolder of that. So I just imported each year folder into the Aperture library as a project, and it then makes each month, subfolder etc etc a separate album in the correct hierarchy.

Subsequently, I have moved to a "subject driven" rather than date driven storage structure, so as you can see in the image below, I have a mixture of the two in my current Aperture library:

The projects-as-years projects are all managed images, while the projects-by-subjects are all managed by Aperture.

Looks like I need to run a backup :glare:

Chris, remember that Aperture is going to "edit" your images non-destructively, so it needs to read and make fairly big jpg previews of all the images, including the referenced files. When you make edits in Aperture it makes the changes on the preview jpg and keeps a track of the manipulations done in the database, then when you export the image in a final form (if you are exporting to tiff to burn to a DVD to submit to a stock library for instance), it makes an actual final file at that point. This means that your referenced files never get altered either. It takes some getting used to.

Chris, remember that Aperture is going to "edit" your images non-destructively, so it needs to read and make fairly big jpg previews of all the images, including the referenced files. When you make edits in Aperture it makes the changes on the preview jpg and keeps a track of the manipulations done in the database, then when you export the image in a final form (if you are exporting to tiff to burn to a DVD to submit to a stock library for instance), it makes an actual final file at that point. This means that your referenced files never get altered either. It takes some getting used to.

actually, I think it does and shows the manipulations to the raw files on the fly. The previews are only for a few things: having a local copy of your photo when your managed files are offline; enabling drag and drop; enabling a connection to the iApps.

I don't use previews. Generating them really slows up my old machine. It take a couple steps to turn preview generation off and delete them, all the separate options let you turn them on selectively, more powerfully, but that means killing them is a bit more subtle. RTFM.

I ought to use previews, I could keep the big raw files offline and just work with jpegs, save disk space and lower the load on my processor. But that would mean using managed files and I greatly prefer the vault.

To each his own. I've spent a lot of time over the years making a workflow with just folders, then iPhoto, then Extensis Portfolio. It's not something that pays off instantly. I'm really happy with aperture, but after 18 months with it, I'm still learning and evolving how I use it. I haven't given Lightroom a try at all, and I won't, I'm tired of Adobe treating me like a criminal and that buggy updater of theirs.

actually, I think it does and shows the manipulations to the raw files on the fly.

You say tomato and I say potato...

My understanding is that it is rendering to a large screen preview on the fly, including the RAW interpretation if relevant, but the changes only ever live in the database of alterations until finalized to an output file. If you open to Photoshop, it does then make a file with the changes to date rendered permanent, but as you know it is a copy of the Aperture version file. This applies to referenced files as well. I think that Apple's "working with RAW in real time" is not really "working with RAW in real time", but a real time interpretation of the layers of adjustments you have made over the top of the interpreted, but not edited, RAW. If they were making substantive alterations to the RAWs in real time then they would not be able to claim that the editing is non-destructive, and the generation of output files would be faster.

We're probably saying the same things anyway

You're right. we are saying the same thing. When you were talking about the preview jpeg a couple posts ago, I misunderstood.

There are lots of workflow programs. All take some learning and patience and investment before they pay off for you. Most have free trials. Not all will work the way you do.

The reality is that, with any workflow/cataloging program that attempts to read RAW files, you're going to wait. The only exception I know if is Photo Mechanic and its speed is due to the fact that it relies almost exclusively on the embedded JPEGs in your RAW files.

Both Aperture and Lightroom parse the RAW files and generate larger previews.

One notable difference is that Lightroom and Photoshop share the same RAW engine which means that adjustments made to a RAW file in either application can be read in the other. Aperture assumes you want to hand off a "rendered" version of the file.

daniel Brown

http://www.adobeevangelists.com/uw