Tag Archives: Photography

First Impressions of Aperture 3

by thomasfitzgerald on 16. Feb, 2010 in Aperture, Apple, Photography

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I’ve only had a little time to play around with Aperture 3 (as I’m still recovering from a fairly serious illness) but I thought I’d post my first impressions. I had installed the trial version on my laptop and when the boxed version came in the post I put it on my main machine. I should point out that both are about two years old. My laptop is a core2duo 2.4ghz and my desktop is a 24″ iMac 2.4ghz. In no particular order then here are some thoughts on the software:

Performance seems to have been much improved since the previous version overall. They seem to have implemented a tiling system, where as a low res version is loaded first and adjustments are made to that, and then if you choose to zoom in a higher res version is generated. It speeds up performance in general, but if it’s doing anything in the background it can take a little while to generate the full res version which can be a bit of a pain.

The whole interface looks like it’s been redone. Everything looks much more polished than the previous version. Icons are much clearer and text is more readable. There are some really nice features in fullscreen mode too. If you are making adjustments you can hold down the shift key (I think it was the shift key) and the rest of the adjustment hud fades out so you’re left with just the adjustment you’re working on. One cool thing they’ve added is the ability to see a focus point overlay. This basically shows your cameras focus points and highlights the one that was selected when you took the picture.

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Top 10 New Features of Aperture 3

by thomasfitzgerald on 10. Feb, 2010 in Aperture, Apple, Photography, Software

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Aperture 3 is an amazing upgrade. People had begun to worry about the future of the software, as it was two years since the last version came out, but I can see now that they’ve been doing some major work under the hood. I feel silly for doubting Apple’s commitment to the product now. What I find interesting though is that some of the features Apple has chosen to highlight as part of the marketing bumph, namely places and faces, while understandable from a marketing point of view, are not the software’s greatest additions. They really have put a lot of thought into this release and it addresses pretty much all the concerns most people had about it. It more than bridges the gap with Lightroom. There are so many new features though that it can be difficult to get your head around all of them. So then, here are my top ten, in reverse order !

10. Support for sRaw and mRaw

Owners of Canon’s DSLRs can now use the reduced size RAW format with Aperture. This has long been a bone of contention, as Lightroom had supported this feature. If you own a Canon DSLR with a high megapixel count, now you too can shoot at half the resolution, just the way your Camera manufacturer intended.

9. Import GPS Data from iPhone Photos

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Apple Finally Releases Aperture 3

by thomasfitzgerald on 09. Feb, 2010 in Aperture, Apple, Mac, Photography

aperturebox.pngAfter a two year wait Apple has finally released a new version of Aperture. The release has over 200 new features and I’m still absorbing all the information, but it looks like a great upgrade. It addresses the two biggest concerns people had about the previous version, which were the lack of a curves editor and the lack of adjustment presets. Both of which it now has, but goes one step further by having an “extended range” curves tool which lets you work with the full range of raw data.

There are tons of other great new features in it including some excellent GPS logging tools, a great new mobile workflow with the ability to sync libraries between a laptop and desktop, a very high end slideshow tool which can work with video as well as stills and audio. I’ll write a more detailed post when I get more time but for the moment Macworld has a good write up. Also, check out some of the Aperture in Action videos on Apple’s website. Oh, and so much for that Apertuere X Rumour. Told you so.

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TwentyTen365

TwentyTen365

by thomasfitzgerald on 06. Jan, 2010 in Photography, Site News

I’ve started a “photo a day” project for the new year. Well, I started it on New Year’s day, but I’m only getting around to posting about it here now. I wanted to have a few day’s worth of posts on it before really publicizing it. I tried to do this last year too but it didn’t work out to well. I think I got to day 17 before I gave up. Now that I’m working from home though it should be a bit easier! Anyway, I’ll try to make it interesting so please pay it a visit and subscribe or check back regularly. Thanks

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Nikon Queries Users About D700 Replacement

by thomasfitzgerald on 03. Dec, 2009 in Photography, Technology

From Nikon Rumors:

After going through the rest of the survey, it was clear that this whole campaign was created to gather information/data for the Nikon D700 replacement. Here are some of the questions (those are not direct quotations):

[Read NPS survey in Europe – all about the D700 replacement | Nikon Rumors]

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How to solve the problem of DSLR sensor dust, once and for all.

by thomasfitzgerald on 15. Oct, 2009 in Photography, Technology

Over on my Photography blog, I discuss an idea as to how camera manufacturers could create a DSLR which never has the problem of dust on the sensor.

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Autumn in the Park

by thomasfitzgerald on 13. Oct, 2009 in Entertainment, Photography, Technology

A little Video I did on the spur of the moment using the 5D Mark II. I’m beginning to like that I can do moving versions of scenes I would have previously captured as stills. I guess that’s why they call it “moving pictures”. Anyway, enjoy….


Autumn In the Park from Thomas Fitzgerald on Vimeo.

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Lightroom Vs Aperture: Giving Lightroom another look.

by thomasfitzgerald on 29. Apr, 2009 in Photography, Photoshop, Software, Technology

In my previous articles on this subject, I did my best to give you a reasonably objective opinion on the relative merits of each programme, however, I will admit that as I am an Aperture user, and I have preferred Aperture for a long time, I think that I was a little biased in that direction. However, recently I have started to give Lightroom another look for my full workflow, and I have to say, I’m beginning to see that maybe it might be the better choice for me after all.

I had been using Lightroom for its excellent print module but not much else. Lately though, I’ve been using it as my primary workflow tool. It started when I took some landscape pictures and I had some images with some mis-matched exposure between the top of the frame and the bottom. Normally I would have to export the image to Photoshop and then maybe do another version, export that and do a blend between the two. It occurred to me though that the gradient tool in Lightroom would handle the situation perfectly. So just as an experiment I brought my whole set of images into Lightroom.

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