Post Processing with Aperture 3.0 Presets

Aperture has been one of my favorite image handling software since my switch to Mac OS. I have been using Aperture since its very first release, and now its third iteration.

I went through some old sets of images in my hard drive, trying to clear of some junks/old archives. And, I stumbled upon  a couple of images taken in quite bad lighting condition. I thought it might be a good chance to test out the presets. I never really make use of the Presets in Aperture 3.0, so I asked myself if I could do anything to improve the output for these two images.

Post Processing with Aperture 3.0

I shot this without flash, only with the stage lighting. The lighting seems rather flat here, which is not to my liking.

Post Processing with Aperture 3.0

Here's another shot which I took from the same stage, this photo was straight from Adobe's RAW processing, without much adjustment, if none at all. Not very nice.

I must say, the output is quite impressive. I applied the presets intuitively. I made use of the preview function before applying the presets. I’m sharing both the two images here for comparison.

Post Processing with Aperture 3.0

Comparison between the two images: There wasn't much adjustment or tweaking done on Aperture. I only stacked up a few sets of the Preset. I quite like the outcome.

Post Processing with Aperture 3.0

Comparison: Again, here's the before and after comparison. I think the image stands out more after applying the simple presets on Aperture.

 

These presets could be life savers, if not saves a large amount of time on post processing. Manual adjustment on post processing can be quite tedious and time consuming.

 

Post Processing with Aperture 3.0

Final Result: The final outcome is rather pleasing, surprisingly. (scroll up to compare to original image) NOTE: The original image is not quite in focus, despite so, after the post processing, the final outcome is somewhat acceptable.

 

Post Processing with Aperture 3.0

Final outcome: It's rather pleasing to see how the image turned out after a few clicks on the Aperture. I think it's rather amazing tool to use.

 

200GB Is Just the Beginning

In modern era, photography isn’t just about taking photos, and delivery photos only. Other than taking photos, delivery the final image, in prints or in DVD, we still have to take care of things like, data storage management.

I started digital photography with a simple Windows XP desktop set up. As time goes by, the need for a system with better performance grows stronger, and so does the need for larger storage capacity. I then shifted from one platform to another, shifting from Windows to Mac. I then bought a 1TB external storage to accomodate the fast spinning need of more GB in digital era.

My 1TB external storage has now reached a critical point. I’m running short of space, and I seem to encounter problem with one of the four partitions I set in this storage disk. The partition alone is 200Gb in total size. That is a lot of data to be backed up before I do anything to that partition.

It took me several hours to get the partition finally ready. After which, I gotta sort the structure for my archive drives. One thing I learnt from this exercised is that, the Aperture 3 library does not support FAT file system. (You may have gotten this from forum, or websites, or even the user manual) In other words, if you have any of your Aperture libraries seated at a partition with FAT file system, you would not be able to get the Aperture running. You will need to format the partition, and change it to Mac OS Extended format.

Disk Utility

Mac OS: Disk Utility — You need to ensure the format for that partition where Aperture library is sitting is in Mac OS Extended format.

Other wise, you will be hitting error messages saying the disk volume does not have support to run the Aperture library.

With all the above done, I need to proceed with the sorting, and cleaning now. Most of the old libraries I have in this external disk are still in the old format, version 2.0. I’ve gotta do the upgrade the hard way, by clicking each of the libraries one by one. It’s a long process.

I hope my simple sharing here do provide you some info if you encounter this in future. Cheers!

Apple Releases Aperture v2.1.3

I got the following from dpreview.com:

Apple has released an updated version of its Aperture image processing software. Version 2.1.3 fixes minor issues related to the image library and improves the overall functioning of the software. The update also rectifies an error in thumbnail display of Nikon camera files when the camera is connected directly to the computer.

Here’s the URL from dpreview.com for the release: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0904/09041501appleaperture213.asp, while here’s the link to the download at Apple’s site: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2683