Eastman Kodak, the bankrupt inventor of the hand-held camera, has agreed to sell its online photo services business to Shutterfly for $23.8 million, kicking off the bankrupt photography pioneer’s relaunch as a much slimmer company.

Apart from the sad nostalgia of a company like kodak  going through such troubles, this could directly affect Aperture users. Because Apple uses kodak’s online print ordering for is print services, (at least it used to) its not clear how this will affect the future of that service. Now its more than possible that Shutterfly will continue to operate the service as normal without any interruption. I’m also pretty sure that Apple could probably switch service providers without much of an issue either, but if you use Apple’s print ordering directly through Aperture, you might want to start looking around for other options just in case, especially if you rely on it for business purposes. Like I said, it’s unlikely there will be an interruption but there’s no harm in taking precautions.

[UPDATE] It’s been a while since I ordered any prints, so it’s possible that Apple no longer uses Kodak. John in the comments notes that his last print order was on Fuji paper, so perhaps this is a non issue. The only information I can find online suggests that Apple uses Kodak, so if anyone has any concrete information I would love to hear from you. I’m also wondering if Apple uses different providers in different parts of the world.

Related posts:

1. Some Printing tips and how to avoid some gotchas in the print dialog box
2. Preset: Art Print Red, plus a bonus tutorial!
3. Q&A: Change The Resolution of an Image Inside Aperture

Ever since Adobe announced the beta version of Lightroom 4 a few weeks ago, speculation has understandably turned to the next release of Aperture. There has been a flurry of opinions on various blogs, but no concrete rumours. While some have questioned whether or not we will even see an Aperture 4, the general consensus is that we will. Derrick Story had an interesting podcast this week on the topic and you should check it out. Personally, I think we will see it and whats more I believe we will see it pretty soon. I went so far as to make a bold prediction on twitter earlier in the week that it would be released this Tuesday, but in truth I’m as much in the dark as the next person.

So, reading the tea leaves then, what do I expect will be in Aperture 4? I know I’ve done similar posts before, but since then I’ve honed my expectations. We also now have an idea of what the competition is up to, so just for fun I’m going to take one more stab at a guess as to what will be in Aperture 4. (Oh, and for those asking, I believe it will be called Aperture 4 rather than Aperture X, but I could be wrong – At the moment I’d give it 70 / 30 in favour of “Aperture 4”) I’m just going to pick a few possible major features. There’s lots of minor things I’d like to see, but as it probably won’t be long till we find out for sure, I won’t go into too much detail.

Essentials

1. Lens Correction. This is an absolute essential in my opinion. I’ve blogged several times about the importance of having lens correction and I think that if Apple doesn’t include it in Aperture 4 there will be a lot of disappointed people. What requires a lot of tweaking and the use of several plug-ins in Aperture can be done automatically on import in Lightroom, so this needs to be added. For me, personally this is make or break. As this is a feature I use all the time, if Aperture 4 doesn’t have lens correction I’ll probably move on to something else unless the other features are outstanding.

2. Multiple External Editors. This is another Area where Lightroom has the advantage. With so many cool photo processing Apps available on the App store it would be nice to be able to set up more than one external editor. In lightroom you can do this, so you can use apps like “flare” or “Analog” almost as a plug-in. I’m pretty sure this can’t be that hard to implement, and I know people are crying out for it, so lets hope Apple ave listened.

3. Better Noise Reduction Aperture’s noise reduction is ok, but it’s not great. It was good when it came out, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what the competition can do now, so lets hope this gets addressed.

4. Camera Profiles Lightroom has them. Corel’s new Aftershot Pro has them. With Apple’s history of developing coloursync and the colour matching workflow, it would be nice if they provided Camera profiles so that what was shot in Raw matched what you see in the Camera. There is no reason why they can’t do this, it’s down to a matter of resources and if they want to commit them to it, as it would require in-house profiling of every camera available. Unless of course they could buy this in. Anyway, fingers crossed.

Not Essential, But Would Be Nice

1. Better Raw Processing. I know some people will probably take offence to my suggestion that Aperture doesn’t offer the best RAW conversion out there, but, well, it doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very very good. I would rate it in the top 3 but it’s easily beat by Camera Raw (in my opinion). Images from Camera Raw often address moire and aliasing issues that appear in Aperture. Aperture has problems with very fine detail too, which Camera raw renders much clearer. You can see this in particular in areas of fine foliage. I know for most people this is needless pixel peeping, but some clients and services (especially iStock) require pixel perfect images. Like I said, it’s not a huge issue – I just wan’t Aperture to be number 1.

2. Automatic Scaling Of Brush Masks. If you make presets or use presets a lot you will probably want this. One of the things you may have noticed if you use brushes in your presets, is that when you move from an image from one camera to another with a different pixel count, the brushed adjustments don’t scale, so you’re left with hard edges. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. If you do, you probably want this feature too.

3. Better Vignette Controls. I love vignettes. They add focus and dimensions to images and used creatively they can be great. I hate Aperture’s vignette controls. They are basic and limiting and are not much use creatively. Compared to the vignette tools in virtually every other piece of software they are woefully underpowered. Hopefully Apple will add something comparable to Lightroom’s Post Crop Vignette or even better, Nik’s vignette controls (from its plugins)

4. Better Social Media Integration. I would love to see Aperture integrate better into the various social media sites. Now that Mobile Me is dead, I think it’s important that they add more sharing options. Twitter sharing is noticeably absent. Facebook pages need to be supported too. I would mention google plus support but I can’t see that happening. 500px support would be nice too. Of course the obvious thing to do would be to make the sharing section extensible via a plugin, which would solve all problems.

Long Shots but Would Be Awesome

1. iBook Authoring. How cool would it be if Apple took the book module one step further and enabled you to create photo books for the iPad directly within Aperture? Ok, I could be dreaming here, but it seems like the next logical step.

2. Extensible Rendering Engine. This isn’t going to happen but one could dream. Imagine the actual raw conversion could be given an Api and you could allow plug-ins to replace the raw processing part of the Adjustments tree. I know this sounds far fetched, but I don’t think it’s entirely impossible. As it stands, RAW conversion is handled by the OS so Aperture is calling those routines. Theoretically, it would be possible to allow a plug-in to do this. You’re probably wondering what the advantages of this are, but think of it this way: manufacturers could write their own Raw conversions engines. Cameras that weren’t supported could be supported by the developers themselves or by some third party. It’s highly unlikely to happen, but one can dream !

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on the subject for now. Feel free to chime in in the comments, or head on over to the Forums if you want to discuss it further.

Related posts:

1. Editorial: Brushes, Aperture’s Secret Weapon
2. Aperture Road Trip (Or How I got on running aperture on a MacBook Air)

Here’s a link to the plug-ins I used in this Video:

PT-Lens

Sharpener Pro

Color Efex Pro 4

Related posts:

1. Video: Silver Efex Pro 2 Walk Through
2. Some Tips for Using Plug-Ins with Aperture
3. Video: Reconnecting Moved Masters

I’ve got the beta of the the Forums up and running. For the initial phase I was accepting members by invite only but now I’m opening it up to anyone who wants to take part. Simply head over to community.theapertureblog.com and follow the sign up process. You’ll be asked to confirm your email before being accepted. This is an anti spam measure and your email won’t be used for anything other than the forum.

Also, it’s still in the testing phase so your posts may get deleted if there are issues and I need to reset it, but it seems pretty solid at the moment. With all that’s happening in the photography world right now it’s a good time to get some discussions going.

As with any forums, I ask you all to please play nice.

Related posts:

1. Raw Support Broken for Panasonic GH2
2. A New Look for the New Year
3. Aperture 3 vs Lightroom 3 Beta 2 Noise Reduction

On Sunday I came very close to a disaster here on the Aperture blog. I awoke to a nice tweet from someone on my Twitter list wondering what had happened to the blog. So I went online to check and sure enough, where the homepage once was, a 404 page was coming up. What the hell? I logged into the back end and all the posts and pages were gone. Again, what the hell ?

So, long story short, the database had crashed, for some bizarre reason and the table that had contained the Posts and pages was corrupt and nothing I could do would fix it. Luckily, and it’s a sheer fluke, I had installed a plug-in ages ago to back up my database and theme to dropbox every few days. Restoring the database was a nightmare, as the database is so big now that I couldn’t restore it using the web interface and had to do it through the command line. Luckily I have some unix experience from several years of working on Silicon Graphic workstations some years ago.

Anyway, the site is back up now, and I don’t think I lost anything other than a few comments (so if your comments are missing, apologies). It has thought me a valuable lesson though. You never know what might happen to your data. I never thought I would have a problem like this with wordpress but there you go. The same could easily happen to your Aperture library (that has also happened to me!), so you should always try and have a backup of some kind.

Related posts:

1. Some Updates, and a Note About Comments

Automatically Import your Scans into Aperture

The first thing to do is set up a workflow to have your scans automatically imported into Aperture. While Aperture doesn’t support a watched folder out of the box, there’s a great workflow that you can download from Automator.us that sets one up for you. It’s actually set up for working with tethering shooting, and was developed before Aperture added this functionality, but it works perfectly in conjunction with stand alone scanner software.

Step1

So, the first thing to do is set up your scanner software to save its scans into a certain folder that you want to use for this purpose. I have created a folder in my pictures folder for this called “Film Scans”.

Step2

Go to the automator website (use this link) and download the Aperture Hot Folder workflow.

Step3

Once it’s downloaded copy the resulting App to your applications folder and run it. Follow the onscreen instructions which walk you through setting up the workflow. It’s pretty straightforward so you shouldn’t have a problem. It will ask you for the folder you want to watch, so select the folder you created in step1. It will also ask you to select a project so you can either use an existing one or create a new project for the purpose. It will also ask you if you want to import your images into the Aperture library, or leave them in the folder and import them as references.

Step 4

Start scanning. Once you save your scan it will automatically import into Aperture. This is very useful if you’re batch scanning a bunch of slides or a whole strip of negative.

Step 5

When you’re finished, quit the Aperture hot folder application and it will shut down the watched flyer. when you want to start scanning again, just relaunch the hot folder application first. (of course you can just leave it running in the background if you want)

Adjusting Date & Time

The problem with scans is that they have no metadata, so you’ll have to add it yourself. The first thing you might want to do is change the date and time. If you’re scanning old negatives you may want them to have the date they were taken rather than the date you scanned them at. This is relatively straight forward in Aperture.

Step 1

Select the image you want to change

Step 2

From the Metadata menu, choose Adjust Date & Time

Step 3

Enter the new date and time from the pop up sheet.

Be sure to check the box that says “Also change master file”. This will change the date on all the versions and also the master. (Otherwise it will just change the current version)

Create Custom Metadata for Film Type

If you want to keep track of what type of film your photos were shot on you can easily add some custom metadata to track this.

Step 1

From the Aperture menu select Presets > Metadata…

Step2

From the cog menu in the bottom of the Metadata preset manager that opens, choose Manage Custom Fields

Step 3

In the sheet that slides out click the plus button at the bottom

Step 4

This will create a new field in the custom presets sheet. Enter whatever you want to call it into the field. In this case I’ve gone with “Film Type”. If you want to create another preset for film speed go ahead and click the plus again to create another entry

Step 5

Click Ok and then close the metadata preset manager

Ok, this has created a new custom metadata type. however if you go to the metadata vie on an image you wan’t see it. So, what ou now want to add it to the standard view in the metadata tab of the inspector so you can easily add the information to your images.

Step1

Switch to the metadata tab in the inspector, and from the popup where it says general, go all the way to the bottom of the menu and select Edit

Step 2

Here you can change what’s displayed for all the metadata view presets (and create new ones). For the purposes of this exercise we’ll amend the “General” preset. On the right hand side of the panel simply scroll down the list of metadata fields and when you come to “Film Type” check the checkbox and this will add it to the view. Click ok when you’re finished

Step3

You should now have the extra metadata field in your metadata tab.

So, that’s about it. If anyone has any more suggestions on working with film in Aperture please feel free to post it in the comments. By the way, if you’re interested in some of the images I was using in this example, I have a blog post about them over on my photography blog if you want to check it out.

Related posts:

1. Some Quick Tips for Managing Your Interface
2. Using Lightroom With Aperture: A Workflow
3. Using the Keyword Control Buttons In Aperture

Of course, it’s easy enough to invert an image using the curves tool, but there’s more to it than that, as negatives have an orange backing and are not just an inverted positive. So I dusted off my old film scanner that I haven’t used in quite a while, and after searching for a while to find all the parts, and to find compatible software to get it working under Lion, (thank you Vue Scan) I scanned some negatives and worked out the best way to do it. It was actually a lot more difficult than I thought it would be but in the end I was able to re-create what I believe is near enough to the correct results.

Here’s the thing though – you shouldn’t have to use this. If you’re scanning images yourself, you should always use your scanner’s “negative” function. This has the necessary colour adjustments built into the software and you will end up with a positive image. Most, if not all scanners capable of scanning film should have this function. Still, I can concede that you might have some images that were scanned incorrectly and you need to fix them, so feel free to use these presets – but be aware that they are not the best option.

I’ve taken some scans of some old film I had (from 1997 I believe) and they’re of noting particularly interesting, but it should give you an idea. For the purposes of this excersise I scanned them twice, once as a positive, and again correctly as a negative. I then used the correct negative scan to use as a reference to get the image right

Here’s a negative scanned as a positive

Here’s the same image, scanned as a negative using the scanner’s built in negative function.

Here’s the result of my adjustments in Aperture to “fix” the first image above to be correctly displayed.

Here’s another example – this one has been scanned correctly in the scanner software…

…. and here’s the Aperture version using the preset to correct a version with the negative scanned as a positive. Confused yet?

I’ve created these through guesswork and eyeballing the result too so your mileage may vary. I’ve two presets included in the pack – each with varying strength. They seem to work well, but I can’t guarantee anything.

Another thing to bear in mind is that I’ve used a curves adjustment to invert the image, so if you’re making adjustments, anything you change above the curves adjustment in the hierarchy will have the opposite effect. For example, playing with the recover slider will actually increase the blacks and so on. I hope this is of help, and please let me know if you use these and they are of some help.

Related posts:

1. Preset: A Better Vignette
2. A christmas Preset: Winter Chill
3. Preset: Art Print Red, plus a bonus tutorial!

Happy New Year to all my readers and your families. I hope you had a good night and I wish you all the best for the new year. As you can see (unless you’re reading this in a RSS reader) the new look is now up and running. I hope you will find it better and easier on the eyes! If you find any problems or broken links, please let me know!

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year
2. A New Look for the New Year
3. Welcome to the Aperture Blog 2.0

Related posts:

1. Apologies for the Down Time
2. Aperture 3.02
3. Apologies

To whet your appetite, here’s a quick preview of the work in progress…

I still have a few changes to make but I think you’re going to like it. There may be some down time on New Years Eve as I switch the system over, so apogees if you’re trying to access the site then, but hopefully it will be no more than an hour or so.

Then, sometime in January I’ll be adding forums to the site. There is a really good community of readers here and I want to give you a place to talk among yourselves as it were. I’ll be starting it on a limited basis at first to check that everything is working ok, so if you’re interested in taking part in the testing phase, please send me an email to webmaster@theapertureblog.com and I’ll add your name to the pile. I’m also looking for moderators, so if you’re interested in being a moderator, please let me know. Once it’s up and running, the popular “ask a question” section will be moving to the forum.

Content wise, I’m planning to start a new “beginners” section, where I’ll walk new users through using Aperture. I’ve been working on a new approach to teaching the software, and I hope this will cumulate in a book or a video, but I’m going to post it to the blog too for people to see. I’m also hoping the podcast will return too, with a new format.

I’m also open to the idea of having guest bloggers on a semi regular basis too. If you’re interested, let me know. It might be a good opportunity to share your knowledge with the community, and also serve as a way to showcase your work too. Again, if you have a proposal send me an email to webmaster@theapertureblog.com

I hope everyone had a good Christmas / Holiday season and I wish you all the very best for the new year.

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year & The New Look Aperture Blog is Live
2. Happy New Year
3. Aperture 3.2 is out

Here’s a before and after:

Before:

After:

I hope you enjoy the preset, and have a very Happy Christmas for those celebrating the holiday.

Related posts:

1. Preset: Brownify
2. Preset: The Green Shadow
3. Adjustment Preset – Fake Polarizer

Related posts:

1. Apple Releases Camera Raw Update 3.6 and Fixes GH2 Problems
2. The issue with sending PSD’s to Photo Stream and a simple Automator Workflow to address the problem
3. Aperture 3.2.1 Released – Fixes bugs in 3.2

Scaled down to this tiny web size you can’t really see the problem, so here it is at 100%.

Now before someone complains about pixel peeping, trust me, you can see this when viewing it at normal size on my 27″ iMac and you can definitely see it printed too. It looks like a bunch of noise that shouldn’t be there.

You may be thinking that it’s just a by product of water refraction and that it’s supposed to be there, but if you look at the camera jpeg they’re not there. Also, I tried processing the file in both Photoshop’s camera raw and Lightroom, and in both cases they don’t have the problem. So, the question then is how to fix it in Aperture or if it even can be fixed?

I tried a few different things. Playing with the moire sliders, and trying to see if it was the default sharpness that was contributing but to no avail. Even the “halo reduction” brush didn’t work. ‘t the end I managed to get rid of it by using a colour adjustment and reducing the saturation of the colours affected. Here’s the result:

You’re probably thinking, that it’s going to ruin an image because you’re knocking all the saturation out of various colours, but it actually seems to be relatively ok. Plus you can always brush it in to the various parts of the picture that needs it. Here’s an example with an image that’s not so backlit:

Here I have applied the effect to the whole image and then brushed back in the section of red where the girl’s jumper is. I’m sure there are situations where this trick won’t work, but it solves the issue for some situations anyway.

The colour adjustment that I used is contained in the preset I’ve created for this, so you can click here to download it and try it out the next time you come across an image with this issue. Hope this is of help to someone, and let me know how you get on.

Related posts:

1. Preset: A Better Vignette
2. Preset: Art Print Red, plus a bonus tutorial!
3. Using Curves to Add Warmth to an Image – Plus Bonus Preset !

Since lion arrived and iCloud went live i’ve been playing around with photo stream. While most people will probably use it to get images from their iPhone onto their computer, it’s also very useful for doing things in the opposite direction. For example, if you have an iPad and you want to show a client / friend / family member a new picture, you can just click on the photo stream button to send your picture to photo stream  and hey presto, a few minutes later it’s on your iPad (or iPhone). Unfortunately there’s one little limitation. It only supports JPEG, PNG, TIFF and RAW files. If you have any Photoshop files in your image library they won’t work.

Luckily there’s a pretty simple solution. All you need to do is export your image as a JPEG and re-import it. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Thomas, that’s not that simple, and it’s kind of a pain”. Yep, you’re absolutely right, however thanks to Aperture’s pretty good automator and apple script support it’s pretty straight foreword to automate the process. To make life really easy I’ve created a simple automator application that will export your currently selected images as jpegs to your pictures folder, then re-import them. If you’re worried that it will clog up your pictures folder, don’t worry, when the action asks you what project to import them into just make sure you have import as reference ticked OFF and delete originals ticked ON. This will put them back in your aperture library and delete them from your pictures folder.

To download the Automator Action please click here. Please note that this is supplied “as-is” and you use it at you’re own risk – and please see the notes below.

I know it’s not a perfect solution, but until Apple decides to do this internally using the built in previews, it’s a quick fix. Unfortunately, Automator support seems to be a little buggy in the current version of Aperture so please read the following:

WARNING:

There seems to be a bug in the current version of either Aperture or Lion that causes an error if you create a new project. Just accept the error and it will still create a project but it will call it untitled.

Secondly, this bug also seems to cause issues if you try to open the workflow in Automator to edit it, so don’t be surprised if you get a bunch of errors if you try to open it. I’d really appreciate some feedback if you have the same issues. I’d like to send a report to Apple to help identify the problem. This shouldn’t do anything bad to your Library or otherwise affect you, but just be warned.

Related posts:

1. Aperture Update 3.2.2 Out. Fixes Photo Stream Bug
2. Using Lightroom With Aperture: A Workflow
3. Problem Reconnecting Masters

Canon PowerShot S100
Nikon 1 J1
Nikon 1 V1
Nikon COOLPIX P7100
Olympus PEN E-PL1s
Olympus PEN E-PL3
Olympus PEN E-PM1
Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ150
Sony Alpha NEX-5N
Sony Alpha SLT-A65
Sony Alpha SLT-A77

Full details here.

Related posts:

1. Apple Adds another Camera Raw Update!
2. Camera Raw Updated
3. Raw Compatibility Update 3.2

What’s New in Aperture 3.2.1

• Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly at launch on Macs with Core Duo processors
• Addresses problems that could cause the Crop tool to switch to the incorrect orientation or resize incorrectly
• Resolves rendering issues when cropping images with Onscreen Proofing enabled
• Location menus are now displayed correctly on the map in the Places view when “Photos” is selected in the Library Inspector

Related posts:

1. Aperture 3.1.3 Released
2. Aperture 3.2 is out
3. Another Slideshow Update released for Aperture

Update: Apple have released 3.2.1 Which addresses these issues

Related posts:

1. A Possible Fix for Some Performance Issues
2. Another Possible fix for Performance Issues
3. Pro Kit Upgrade

What’s New in Version 3.2

Aperture 3.2 supports compatibility with iCloud and iOS 5. This update also addresses minor stability, performance and compatibility issues, including:

• Resolves an issue that could cause the “Loading” indicator to reappear in the Viewer when cropping a photo
• Aperture now automatically relaunches into Full Screen mode if the application was in Full Screen mode when last quit
• Pinch-to-zoom gesture now automatically activates Zoom mode in the Viewer
• Left and right swipe gestures can now be used to navigate between photos in the Viewer
• Microsoft Outlook can now be chosen in Preferences as the application used by Aperture for emailing photos
• Fixes a problem that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to quit unexpectedly when using brushes to apply adjustments
• Loupe now correctly displays magnification levels between 50-100%.
• Fixes an issue that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to display the incorrect color profile on externally edited images
• Import window now includes an option to delete photos from iPhone and iPad after they have been imported into Aperture
• The Lift & Stamp tool now displays the correct cursor icons when being used in Split View and Viewer only modes

Related posts:

1. Aperture Lion Diary
2. Aperture 3.02
3. Lion

Here’s an example:

Anyway, whatever the reason (and if anyone knows the technical reason, please let me know) if you have shots with this purple cast and want to fix them, it’s juts a simple matter of tweaking the white balance, in particular the tint control. To make it really easy for you I’ve made a preset. You may have to tweak it a bit depending on your image but this should get you in the right ballpark. Here’s the above image fixed with this preset:

Click here to download the preset

Related posts:

1. Preset: Art Print Red, plus a bonus tutorial!
2. Using Curves to Add Warmth to an Image – Plus Bonus Preset !
3. Aperture’s Handling of Colour in 5D Mark II Files, and a Preset to Fix it

Thank you Steve, you will be sorely missed.

Related posts:

1. Q&A: Smart Folders
2. Using the Keyword Control Buttons In Aperture
3. Video: Reconnecting Moved Masters