Flickr Synchronization Woes

Aperture 3 inherited the ability to synchronize with Flickr from iPhoto 09. I was pretty excited to use this feature but after dealing Aperture's native synchronization, I think I'm going back to the Flickr Export Tool for Aperture. Creating a Flickr album is as simple as creating any other album so I won't go into the how. I'd rather get into what's wrong with this feature.

• It deletes then uploads. Flickr allows its Pro users to replace a photo so it retains its comments and view count. With Aperture sync, the photo is deleted then uploaded AND it's tagged that it's been replaced. So now I fear tweaking any of my photos after I've uploaded because I don't want to lose my count and comments if I accidentally hit the sync button. This is my #1 peeve and my deal breaker.
• No individual picture permission controls. While 99% of the pictures I upload are available to anyone, I like to upload the occasional pre-processed image. Then I link to it within the comments so people can compare without having the picture show up in my stream. Example.
• It's slow. Aperture and Flickr initially syncs a bunch of metadata before the actual picture uploading. As the album grows, that sync gets longer and longer. I would edit photos, add to album, upload, and repeat. Now I'm adding a bunch of sync time every time I add some photos to upload. I would have been better off creating a local photo album, process all the photos, then create the Flickr album. It really doesn't save me any time. If anything it's just extra processing.
• There's no synching of existing albums. It would have been nice to be able to pull all or some of my old photos in from Flickr, but there's no ability to do that. Aperture only has access to the albums that were created within Aperture. I deleted my Flickr login from Aperture, entered it back in, then lost the connection for that album between Aperture and Flickr.

It's not all bad. There are some nice features. It has two-way sync similar to MobileMe albums. If you add photos to a sync'd album, then Aperture can pull that picture in. GPS coordinates are also shared between Flickr and Aperture.

The tool can be useful as long as you are aware of its limitations and are willing to work within its confines. For me, it's just too restrictive.

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Brushes and Adjustments

One of the most exciting features in Aperture 3 is the ability to apply a mask on any of your adjustments by "brushing" them in/out. Having multiple adjustments and brushes feels very similar to layers with masking. In any adjustment panel, click on the gear and select "brush adjustment in/out." In the picture to the left, I made an enhancement adjustment, dropped the saturation and ran the contrast up. Then I used the brushed the adjustment off of the hydrant. The process was further expedited through the use of the "detect edges" feature. This first came out in Aperture 2's repair tool. I'm glad that this technology made it over to the brushes because on something like this photo with all hard edges I was able to do this in about 2 minutes.

Not quite content with the color, I then added another Enhancement adjustment panel by clicking on the gear and selecting "Add New Enhancement adjustment." On that adjustment, I bumped up my saturation and vibrance. This made the hydrant pop even further. Neat. So remember that localize color post I had a while back? Yeah, this makes it way easier and all native and non-destructive.

One of the side effects of having multiple adjustment panels is that you no longer have any limits to the max value of an adjustment. For example, the max value for saturation is 4.0. Well, if you want to go beyond that, then add another Enhancement adjustment. Now run that saturation up to 4.0. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

There's some really exciting effects you can create natively within Aperture now. For example, you can touch up the sky without affecting the rest of the image. I'm pretty excited about this and hopefully I'll do something cool enough to share on here.

On a completely unrelated note, explored some interesting spots to shoot in Seattle. Only problem is that they are best with morning light. Any volunteers feel like being my model at the crack of dawn?

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Software Update

I'm now back to running Aperture 3 at 64-bit after the last update. I also recommend running the ProKit update as well. It seems to have fixed some issues around crashing when using the new brush feature. So far so good.

Aperture 3 seems a little more adept at switching between libraries. So I might take some time and retire/archive some of my old projects and just keep a library offline. It'll reduce the weight of the library that I carry around with me on my laptop and hopefully it'll also improve performance.
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Back to 32-bit?

My time with Aperture thus far has been less than stable. I've turned off the Faces feature because it was causing my machine to hang as it tries to identify people. It's mostly wrong anyways (no, we don't all look the same) so no real loss there. But a quick search into some of my woes today I discovered that a lot of other people are also having problems. Apparently the frequency of crashes drop dramatically when you switch to 32-bit mode. Seriously? Back to 32? You really know how to make it hurt, Apple.

To make Aperture open in 32-bit mode, select the application in Finder. Select File > Get Info (or just ⌘I). You should see a checkbox for "Open in 32-bit mode." Close the window and then restart Aperture.

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Still waiting to use Aperture 3

It's been 4 days since I've installed Aperture 3. I'm still reprocessing and identifying faces. Granted, this is my primary machine so I've had to pause the processing during the day but seriously? I've basically been locked out of using my machine since the processing takes so much memory. I have about 35k photos in my library. I really don't think it's that large, but I guess Aperture 3 is having an issue with that.

On another note, Faces is terrible. When it works, it's like magic. But when it doesn't, it sure makes Apple like dumb. Some of the mistakes that it makes are best described as comical. I normally would post a screenshot, but to protect the identities of the people who have been gracious enough to allow me to photograph, I'm skipping it this time. Somebody should make Aperture take the "All look same" test. Cuz I'm pretty sure it'll fail. Badly.
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C01 Cross Processing

Ok, so I've been bad. I haven't posted an update in over a month. The silly thing is that I had already processed this image weeks ago. Regardless, here are the steps for this one:

1. Select the Red Channel
2. Apply these values:
• B: 0.00
• 1/4: 0.19
• G: 0.28
• 3/4: 0.47
• W: 0.92
3. Select the Green Channel
4. Apply these values:
   • B: 0.00
   • 1/4: 0.16
   • G: 0.31
   • 3/4: 0.66
   • W: 1.00
5. Select the Blue Channel
6. Apply these values:
• B: 0.00
• 1/4: 0.30
• G: 0.59
• 3/4: 0.80
• W: 1.00
7. Exposure: -0.54
8. Highlights: 42.5

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Cross Processing: Part 1 of... um, maybe a lot?

I'm a big fan of Aperture's plug-in architecture. The one I use most often is probably Color Efex Pro 3.0 by Nik Software. But the downside of using plug-ins, is that once the image goes through the plug-in, you lose the non-destructive nature of editing photos in Aperture. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to attempt to recreate as many of the cross processing methods in Color Efex by just using the Levels palette within Aperture. I'm going to just go down the list starting with B01.

The adjustments that have to be applied aren't terribly complicated, but there are a lot. So once the settings are approximately what you desired, it's probably a good idea to save the levels adjustment as a preset.

Here's the picture that I'll be attempting to recreate:

First thing to do is to enable quarter-tone controls in the Levels palette. It's the icon right below the gears. It looks like a rectangle with two lines down it. Once it's on, you don't have to turn it on again.

1. Select the Red Channel
2. Apply these values:
• B: 0.21
• 1/4: 0.42
• G: 0.61
• 3/4: 0.71
• W: 0.92
3. Select the Green Channel
4. Apply these values:
   • B: 0.00
   • 1/4: 0.25
   • G: 0.42
   • 3/4: 0.63
   • W: 1.00
5. Select the Blue Channel
6. Apply these values:
• B: 0.00
• 1/4: 0.15
• G: 0.33
• 3/4: 0.77
• W: 0.94

With those settings, I get the picture below.

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