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Google+ ApertureExpert Community

December 22, 2012 - 5:02am

Hi all,

For those of you on G+ (and I’m sure that’s a lot of you!) I’ve opened an ApertureExpert community there. I’m honestly not sure what to do with it, as I do like keeping the support forum here on ApertureExpert, but part of me thinks it’s a good idea to have that one running, too. Maybe it’s a bad idea though, and I’m open to suggestions!

2012; Aperture by the Numbers

By Thomas Boyd

December 19, 2012 - 10:00pm

The viewer will display the number of images at the bottom.

Take Stock of Where You’ve Been

At the end of every year I like to look my Aperture library and take stock. It helps me plan for the coming year. For instance, a quick look at January tells me I’ll be shooting my first Major League Soccer practice at the end of the month — so I’ll start thinking about that now.

I also like to look at the numbers. For four years I archived between 90,000 and 110,000 images per year — this year I set a record with over 137,181 images in my Aperture library! This does not even account for the weddings I shot and archived in a separate library.[more]

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Sandboxed Preferences for Aperture

By PhotoJoseph

December 14, 2012 - 2:22am

I was looking to trash my Mail.app preferences this morning and I know I’d looked before, and hadn’t found them. The file used to be com.apple.mail.plist and located in ~/Library/Preferences/ however that file no longer exists (and if it does, it’s just a holdover from a previous OS). Finally today I found a discussion online that explained because Mail.app is a “sandboxed” app, that the preferences have moved to a new location. And what else did I find in this new location?

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Tips for Importing RAW+JPEG when Shooting on Separate Cards

By PhotoJoseph

December 11, 2012 - 4:50am

I realize this is a tip that will be useful to very few of you, but I came across it today and thought I’d share. And even if you don’t have a camera that holds multiples cards, you may find some of the thinking here interesting.

Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 4.02 for Aperture 3 and iPhoto ’11

By PhotoJoseph

November 30, 2012 - 7:53am

Apple has just released another Camera RAW update, adding support for a handful of cameras including:

Constantly Rebuilding Thumbnails Issue with Aperture 3.4.x

By PhotoJoseph

November 28, 2012 - 11:24am

I’ve had at least two readers reporting a problem a thumbnail rebuild issue. If this sounds like something you’re running into, please try the solution below and let us know in the comments if it did or didn’t help — or if you have any kind of related problem.

Symptom

On every launch, Aperture starts rebuilding thumbnails (even though it doesn’t appear to need to). If you stop the rebuild, all is fine, but it will start up again on next launch. Odds are it’s always starting with the same number of images to rebuild; i.e. you see 78,415 thumbnails rebuilding, and you have 120,000 image in your library. So it’s likely not all of them, but most of them. Or more accurately, a single bad apple that’s ruining the batch.

Treatment

You may have tried repairing permissions, repairing and rebuilding the database… trashing preferences… repairing hard drive… reinstalling Aperture… and more, all to no avail. You’ve tried manually rebuilding the thumbs, letting it complete, but it still starts over on next launch. Ugh!

Cure

Well, this worked for one customer — hopefully it will work for you, too.[more]

Cyber Monday on MediaBytes

By PhotoJoseph

November 27, 2012 - 7:56am

UPDATE: There’s actually a discount code on top of this; use CYBERMONDAY on checkout for $20 off, making it just $27 for the series! (If you already bought today at $47 from my link below, just let Frederick know and he’ll take care of you — my mistake for missing the code earlier!)

Hi folks,

Black Friday Sale

By PhotoJoseph

November 25, 2012 - 5:41am

Hello readers!

In case you missed the news on the twittters, the facebook, the Google+, or the Newsletter, here it is again…

MacBook Pro with Retina Display; the ApertureExpert Review (part 3 of 3)

By PhotoJoseph

November 19, 2012 - 1:00am

Part 3 of 3 [part 1] [part 2]
A joint first-hand, hands-on review of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display
by photographers and ApertureExperts Thomas Boyd & Joseph Linaschke

Aperture plug-ins and other non-Retina apps

There’s something else to mention, and that’s the problem with non-Retina photography-centric applications. I knew that my favorite plugins from Nik Software were not yet Retina. Which is a bummer, but hey, it’s just the interface, so it’s not a big deal, right? Wrong. It is a big deal, because it’s not just the interface. As far as I can tell, this goes for any non-Retina photo-centric app. Even Photoshop is rubbish on the Retina Mac. Here’s why.

It’s not just that your sliders and buttons are pixel-doubled. Your photos are pixel-doubled. I found it virtually impossible to do any accurate pixel-peeping adjustments in Nik plugins, and everything looked so awful in Photoshop that I just stopped using it entirely. I had to do some text layout in Illustrator on the road, and my eyes bled. But back to my favorite plug-in, I didn’t do any B&W conversions on the road because it just wasn’t enjoyable making adjustments to a blocky image, then having to render that back to Aperture to see what it really looked like. Remember non-Retina iPhone apps on your new iPhone 4? Yeah, it’s that problem all over again.

Here’s a few screenshots to illustrate the problem. These screenshots and photos were gracefully provided by Paul Fletcher paulfeltcher.me and are of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, NV. Thanks Paul![more]

Close-up of Photoshop UI (non-Retina) on Retina display — notice all elements are pixel-doubled

MacBook Pro with Retina Display; the ApertureExpert Review (part 2 of 3)

By PhotoJoseph

November 18, 2012 - 1:00am

Part 2 of 3 [part 1] [part 3]
A joint first-hand, hands-on review of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display
by photographers and ApertureExperts Thomas Boyd & Joseph Linaschke

UPDATED 11/17/2012 12:35pm PST: USB 3 vs FW800 speed correction

Other advantages

[JL] I want to talk about some non-photo, non-Aperture related things on this beauty, too. Obviously, it’s thinner and lighter than it’s predecessor, which is always a Good Thing™. When it comes to the laptop that you carry in addition to the camera bodies and lenses however, I’ve always taken the thinner/lighter thing with a grain of salt, because shaving a pound or two off of 50 lbs of other gear really isn’t going to do much for me. But regardless of any weight savings, this MacBook Pro does feel amazing in your hands. It’s as solid as can be, and looks sexy as hell. And of course if that’s all you’re carrying, then that weight loss does make a difference. The SSD drive makes everything snappy and bootup is very fast; wake from sleep is virtually instantaneous (same experience as with my MacBook Air). The iSight camera for video chat is excellent, and made video chats back home even from a low-light hotel room better than what I’m used to on the Air. The Power Nap feature (where the computer pseudo-wakes up to get email, download software updates, etc. even when the lid is closed) is ridiculously cool. The first time I opened the lid after a night of sleeping and my mail was already waiting for me was a very pleasant surprise indeed. The built-in HDMI port is perfect for presentations. I was able to plug into an LCD TV screen for an Aperture demo with no adapters (so that’s one less adapter to carry, probably offset by others though; discussed later in this article) which was fantastic. Working the Photokina trade show where I was presenting at four different theaters, being able to just plug HDMI in and get a perfect 1080p mirror on the projector or flatscreen was a true joy. I’ve been plugging laptops into projectors since the mid 90s (nearly 20 years, goodness) and it’s never been this simple and clean. Plus, on a side-side note, when you plug into a projector, the Mountain Lion Notifications automatically get disabled — talk about attention to detail! [more]

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