Processed with Aperture 3.2 - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Aperture’s Photo Processing Tools

Is Aperture useful for post processing? Absolutely! I received some comments recently about Aperture’s photo processing tools and I wanted to share some examples of things you can accomplish without having to go into an external editor, like Photoshop.  For comparison, I’m posting the original image below to show you what came right out of the camera.

Original image out of camera - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Selective Editing

Although Aperture doesn’t have layers & masks like Photoshop, it’s still capable of doing some selective editing. The tools stack up on the Adjustments Panel in blocks.  Many of the different adjustments may have multiple blocks. Here’s a list of the processing I added to this image.

• Darkened the image using a Curves block. Selectively brushed it over the background.  The Detect Edges box on the brush made it easy to paint without affecting the motorcycle or model.
• Used the Repair brush to remove blemishes from the model’s face and loose hair on her top.
• Removed the reflection of my Octa Box on the motorcycle headlight with the Clone tool.
• Enhanced her lipstick with a Color block.
• Enhanced the color of her jean shorts with another Color block. (Way over the top for the demonstration)
• Added texture to jean shorts using using Definition on the Enhance block, brushed selectively on the jeans.
• Brushed in Skin Smoothing on the model at 50% Intensity.
• Brushed in Highlights block to bring down the brightness on her hair.
• Dodged her eyes (iris and whites brushed in separately).
• Burned edges of her face & nose to add a bit of sculpture to her features.
• Global edits for Levels, Definition and Vibrancy.
• Added a Vignette.
• Added a 16:9 Crop.

That’s it.  Although the list may seem a bit lengthy, it didn’t take long to finish the image. I didn’t need any plugins to selectively process the exposure, enhance colors or do the retouching on her skin.

There are different methods to handle some of the same techniques.  Instead of using a Curves block to darken the background, I could a Polarize (Multiply) block for the same effect. Instead of using Definition to bring out the texture on her shorts, the Intensify Contrast (Overlay) block could do the same thing.

The possibilities don’t end here.  Instead of using a plugin to create a glow, we can achieve the same effect with the Blur tool.  We can selectively brush an effect in or out of the photo, even further refining it to only affect Shadows, Midtones or Highlights. When used with the Detect Edges feature of the brush, Aperture provides exceptional control for your selected editing. If you’re unsure, you can turn on Overlay modes to see where you’ve processed part of the image.

Best of all, the edits are non-destructive.  I can hit the M key to toggle between the Master (original) view and my edits to see how the image changed, or I can create a new Version to try other editing techniques.  Aperture is a robust tool as a digital asset manager, but it also offers some comprehensive features for post processing.

The Escape Route - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Escape from Hoover Dam!

These steps inside of Hoover Dam are the ultimate stair master!  They’re at such a steep angle that they have more in common with a ladder than a staircase. Just imagine being deep inside this mammoth concrete structure and something goes wrong – like a power failure or explosion. The elevators aren’t working or safe to use, so you need another way out. This is it, folks. You’d be trudging up these stairs, perhaps in the dark if the lighting fails.  Kind of creepy, isn’t it? Just think how creepy it would be to get stuck without those stairs and they suddenly look a bit friendlier.

Why I’m Still Not Switching to Lightroom 4

Photographers all over the Internet were broadcasting the release of Adobe’s Lightroom 4. I admit, I retweeted the news when I saw Adobe’s announcement at midnight.  Why do we do this marketing effort for corporations that pay us nothing for our efforts? I’m not even a Lightroom user and don’t plan on becoming one, so my own participation was…well, it was just sad.

As I’ve mentioned before, I use Apple’s Aperture 3. Both products are fine and do pretty much the same job.  It’s a major hassle to switch from one product to another, so it seems to me that you would need a very good reason to make the change. That’s why I paid close attention to a few folks who asked if they could import their Aperture library into Lightroom 4.

The short answer is that you can’t do it very easily, and you’ll lose the work that you already created in Aperture. The same would be true if you wanted to switch from Lightroom to Aperture. The thing I want to know is this – why would you want to switch?

If you’re going to spend money, disrupt your photography workflow, lose edits on photos you carefully created in the past, wouldn’t you want to have a real need before going through that experience? I would.

It’s not as if I’m trying to put down Lightroom.  I think it’s a fine product, but I’m already embedded with Aperture. So each time there is a new revision in the product lines, I do an evaluation to see if there is a compelling reason to change.  Does it solve a problem? Does it have a new feature that didn’t exist before and I can’t replicate with my current tools? What makes it worth the pain and expense of switching from one platform to another.

Unfortunately, I think some folks get caught up in the hype of a new product launch. People are going “ooh” and “ahh” over new features in Lightroom 4, and it’s tempting to want to get in on some of that affection. The problem is that is an emotional response, not a rational decision. Emotional responses are powerful, but they don’t last.  Digital Asset Managers are meant to last, so choose wisely.

At their core – their very reason for existence – Aperture and Lightroom are digital asset managers. They keep your media organized. Yes, they do other important things, but the view into your photo library and how you control it is – I think – the reason why you don’t just use Bridge and Camera RAW to process your photographs. With that in mind, I can’t help but notice that Lightroom 4 offers no improvements to file management.  I’m already of the opinion that Aperture’s file management is superior to Lightroom, so I know right off the bat that Lightroom 4 isn’t going to offer any huge improvements that I can’t implement into my workflow.

There are some nice enhancements to Lightroom’s Development module (why is any product limited to a modular approach in 2012?). Adobe added some of the features I already had in Aperture, and also a couple that I don’t have. Wait, those same features are in Camera RAW. So, I do have them if I absolutely need them. In any case, the new features fell into the category of convenience for me, rather than necessary for me.

As I noted in the Lightroom 4 Beta, most of the new features looked like Adobe was adding parity to many of the features I have in Aperture.  Book printing? Got it.  Maps?  Got it. Video support?  Got it. I don’t see anything compelling to make a switch.

If you have a previous version of Lightroom, it makes perfect sense to upgrade. You get more features in a package that easily upgrades your existing catalog. That makes perfect sense. If you’re using Aperture 3 or some other DAM, then weigh your options carefully. Unless you see a problem solved in Lightroom 4 that you can’t perform in your existing tools, I honestly don’t think it’s worth the expense & effort of making a switch.

The Pirate's Den - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Before I start discussing Aperture vs. Lightroom again, I just wanted to share the photo of the Pirate’s Den today. If you wander back into Adventureland in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, you may not notice this little area as you pass it.  That is, unless you happen to find Captain Jack Sparrow out front.  He tends to stop in here when it’s time to recruit new pirates for his ship.  Odd, though.  No one ever asks what happened to the pirates he needs to replace.

Lightroom 4 (beta) Announced and Released

You may have heard that Adobe released an open beta of its next iteration of Lightroom at midnight on January 11th. I happened to be up at the time and grabbed the download while it was still fresh and hot out of the oven. Mind you, I’m an Aperture 3 user, but I’m also an Adobe Photoshop user. Either brand is fine with me, so long as the tool does what I need. Both Aperture and Lightroom are very capable products.  Each one has features that the other lacks, and it seems that new releases from either vendor try to close the gap where they lack and expand it so the other guy has to play catch-up.  There’s definitely a lot of that apparent in Lightroom 4 (beta), as there was when Aperture 3 was released.

Ultimately, my primary reason for using this type of tool is to manage my photographs. Why did I choose Aperture? It’s pretty simple.  At the time I chose, Aperture existed and Lightroom wasn’t announced. When Adobe initially announced Lightroom (with a very long beta period), I checked it out.  I’ve also checked out every other release of Lightroom and compared it to Aperture, trying to determine if there is a compelling reason for me to switch products to manage my photos.

Is There a Compelling Reason to Switch from Aperture 3 to Lightroom 4 (beta)?

Let’s start with the short answer.  No.

Is there a long answer?

Yes. Before I get into that, I want to share this video of a Google+ hangout that Matt Kloskowski conducted during the midnight launch.  I was lucky enough to join (like I said, I was still awake) to see some of the new features. Thanks to Keith Barrett for providing a live stream to those who couldn’t get in the hangout, not to mention recording it for folks to watch later.

Let’s take a look at this list of new features in Lightroom 4 (beta).

• Highlight and shadow recovery brings out all the detail that your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights.
• Photo book creation with easy-to-use elegant templates.
• Location-based organization lets you find and group images by location, assign locations to images, and display data from GPS-enabled cameras.
• White balance brush to refine and adjust white balance in specific areas of your images.
• Additional local editing controls let you adjust noise reduction and remove moiré in targeted areas of your images.
• Extended video support for organizing, viewing, and making adjustments and edits to video clips.
• Easy video publishing lets you edit and share video clips on Facebook and Flickr®.
• Soft proofing to preview how an image will look when printed with color-managed printers.
• Email directly from Lightroom using the email account of your choice.

From that list of nine new features, seven of them already existed in Aperture 3. The first item, Highlight and Shadow Recovery, really looks great on the demonstration.  It looks like Adobe broke the Recovery slider apart to tackle problems in different areas of an image.  Definitely a very impressive feature that Aperture doesn’t have at the moment. The White Balance Brush is another step beyond fore Lightroom, since it’s a global adjustment in Aperture.

I was actually surprised that some of these features didn’t already exist in Lightroom 3, such as e-mail.  That seems like a no-brainer to me.  However, software development often has a longer list of features than time allows.  It could be that e-mail wasn’t high on the list and never got completed before. At any rate, it’ll work in future versions of Lightroom.

Lightroom has some features that I genuinely like, including a great noise reduction tool, gradient tool and lens profiles.  None of those are reasons to switch, though. As I mentioned, I have Photoshop CS5. That comes with Adobe Camera Raw, which includes the same features in the Lightroom 3 Development module.  There is no reason to believe that Adobe won’t update ACR to be comparable with Lightroom 4 at some point.  Aside from that, I think that Aperture 3 has a better RAW conversion engine than Lightroom/ACR.  However, the differences between the two get into the pixel-peeping range and it’s not a substantial advantage.  Nobody is going to look at a finished photo and say, “Oh, dude!  You used Lightroom’s RAW conversion instead of Aperture.  You really blew it there!”  Not gonna happen.

The biggest reason I don’t think it’s worth the switch is because Adobe did nothing to improve the core competency of Lightroom as a Digital Asset Manager.  At least, not yet.  After all, this is just the first introduction of a beta product.  Adobe has included features in shipping products that weren’t in the previous beta releases. Maybe they have something in mind and don’t want to share it yet.

What Would It Take to Switch from Aperture to Lightroom?

Pay attention, my Adobe friends.  Here’s my list of obstacles you need to overcome to sway me from Aperture to your side completely.

• A Migration Tool – I have thousands of photos in my Aperture databases that are filled with metadata.  Keywords, GPS data, etc.  I don’t want to lose any of that information.  You need to provide a migration tool that takes all of my images (not to mention audio, video & PDFs) with its associated metadata, folders, projects, albums, smart albums, etc…and seamlessly translate it into your product.  I don’t expect you to convert the photo edits from Aperture Versions to Lightroom (though that would be nice), but the metadata and structure is essential and non-negotiable. It needs to be dead-stupid simple, too.  Magical.  Press this button and bibbity-bobbity-boo – you’re migrated.
• Provide a Managed Library – Your referenced catalog approach is quaint.  Aperture can also reference images in directory folders, but I prefer the Managed approach. It simplifies many operations.  If I want to backup my photos, I press a button in Aperture to save them in a Vault, right inside of Aperture.  It doesn’t waste time copying each file over and over – it makes incremental updates so backs are quick and convenient.  If I want to move my Aperture Library, I drag it and move it to another directory drive or folder and it’s good to go.  No rebuilding of catalogs or any other myriad of problems involved with separate files & folders held together by the twine of a catalog, XMP sidecars, etc.  If I want to merge a Library into another one, I can either import it in Aperture or just drag one on top of another in the Mac Finder.  Simple. I know some people actually like using a referenced catalog, but I’ve found that’s mostly due to their lack of understanding how a Library system can work.  It’s like they think keeping their photos in a Library are the photographic equivalent of Schrodinger’s Cat.  Everything that someone has thrown at me explaining why their RAW files just have to be in a directory folder was bogus. They worry about database corruption and losing their images, and all sorts of imagined dangers.  Those fears are as likely as a directory corruption, which is why we all keep backups.  The benefits are plentiful & useful, and I’ve never suffered a setback.  Lightroom could benefit from providing a managed option to store data.
• Dump the Modules – What in the world was Adobe thinking when it introduced a modular digital asset manager? Such constraints are a thing of the past. An object-oriented approach in development should flow over into usability. I expect to be able to manipulate the properties and methods of any data object at any time. Again, Aperture does it.  I don’t need to be in a Library, Print or Development module.  At any time, I edit my photos. A slideshow, folder, book or print is just another container. The only variable is the selection of data objects (photos) in that collection.  I should be able to look at a book layout and decide that a photo would be better as a black & white image here, and then make the changes right there.  Hopping about from one module to another is tedious and obsolete. You could fix that issue.  You should fix that issue.
• Price Parity – Lightroom is no longer worth $300.  I think you know that, though.  I think that’s why we’ve seen so many price reductions to $150 over the past few months.  When you woke up one morning and saw that Apple dropped the price of Aperture from $200 to $79, I bet your jaw dropped.  I know mine did, because I paid full price & upgrade pricing over the years.  I missed out on all of that low-priced goodness, but no more.  Aperture 3 is a great tool, as is Lightroom.  So, why should I pay 3.8 times more money to switch to your product, particularly with the issues I listed above?  You have some stuff I like, but it’s not like you’re the only place I can get tools to manage my images.

If you want to sway me to abandon Aperture to use Lightroom, and to get those features that I truly do respect, then you need to make more of an effort.  Windows users don’t have a choice to use Aperture. Is the Mac market worthy of the effort I mentioned above?  I don’t know your analysis.  What I do know is that a lot of new users will look at the products and see price tags.  A lot of existing Aperture users will find that both price and migration issues stand in their way.  Only Adobe can address those issues.

Some Aperture users may look at other factors and come to different conclusions, and that’s fine.  For example, both Aperture 3 and Lightroom 4 (beta) now have templates for books.  There are 11 templates in Aperture.  There are 180 in Lightroom 4 (beta). Slideshows are another area of comparison with pros and cons on each side.  Aperture has a limited set of templates, but you have better options to time the slide transition to go along with music, or whatever timing you want. Lightroom 3 already had more flexibility for creating custom slideshows than Aperture, and the same is true of Lightroom’s print module.  By no means do I mean to convey that Lightroom is any kind of slouch compared to Aperture.  It’s just not compelling when I look at the core workflow, the burden of effort to migrate, and the price disparity.  I’m happy to peek fondly over the fence to see what Lightroom is doing, but it isn’t making me switch sides yet.

Despite the problems of updating my various iOS products to the latest operating system, I feel pretty good about something Apple announced. A new version of Aperture came out with iCloud integration.  You have to update your Mac OS before you see it in Software Updates (could be different if you bought Aperture from the Mac App Store). It’s a 1.04 GB download for iPhoto and Aperture, but it does what I’ve wanted – integrated offline backup of my photos.

Here are the prices for additional storage on iCloud:

• 5GB: Free (every iOS 5 user will get this by default)
• 10GB: $20/year (including the 5GB free, that’s 15GB total)
• 20GB: $40/year (25GB total)
• 50GB: $100/year (55GB total)

So, does this help me? Theoretically yes, practically, no. I have multiple Aperture libraries. Not a single one of them will currently fit in 50 GB of space. My largest library is 284 GB and my smallest (working) library is 192 GB.  I can squeeze a few gigs out of each one by changing the thumbnails & previews, but not enough.

At least, not initially.  You see, the reason I have such large libraries is because I have just about every shot in there. Most of those shots are never going to see the light of day.  Yes, I’ll immediately delete accidental shots of my foot, something blurry or technically unusable, etc.  However, there are always winners and losers in every batch.  Once I’ve processed the winners, why do I keep the losers?

It’s because I don’t process everything right away.  Oh, I used to be very diligent about trying to mark my keepers right away, but that fell out of my workflow.  As a result of dropping that practice, and also buying a 6 TB RAID array, I have a whopping load of images at my disposal.  It’s going to take a valiant effort to whittle them down to something usable.  Then, my library of keepers just may well fit in the space allotted by iCloud.

There’s another strategy that I’ll likely employ first, though.  Once I pick my keepers, I’ll export them to a new library and those lucky photos will be the ones that get uploaded to iCloud. That leaves me with some risk for the photos I haven’t examined yet, but it’s a start toward an integrated off-site backup.

Of course, I haven’t tried it yet.  Maybe it isn’t based upon Library.  If there’s any logic in the world of Apple, I should be able to use metadata to determine what goes in the iCloud. Building a Smart Album could be sufficient.  That would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath until I see it.

With that in mind, I still feel pretty good.

You Were the Girl That Changed My World - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

I’ve noticed that some photographer – like me – name their images, while others don’t. I suppose it’s just another form of creativity. In some cases, it may not make sense to name photos.  If you’re shooting an event and you have to turn in a collection of images, you may be required to follow a naming standard or convention that identifies details. Who, What, When, Where, etc. It seems boring, though useful.

On the other hand, a photo created just for the sake of sharing, fine art, or something that seems completely useless, deserves a name. That begs the question of how you decide to name your photo.

This Boeing B-29 Superfortress is known around the world – Enola Gay. It was named after the pilot’s mother. Maybe that was Paul Tibbets way of hoping the plane would take care of him, but I can only speculate. In turn, I suppose I could have named this photo “Enola Gay.” It would be descriptive and everyone would immediately understand. In fact, giving it that name would help Google’s Image Search engine correctly classify it for search results.  However, I didn’t choose that name (though I put it in the metadata – must keep the Google kids happy).

My own mind turns to history to find connections. The plane was named after his mother.  The payload Was named “Little Boy.” It could have some possibilities; e.g., “A Boy & a Girl.” However, the bomb wasn’t in the photo. It’s a photo of this historic and controversial airplane – one that evokes strong feelings from multiple perspectives. The title needed to reflect its place in the world.

Music is a big part of my life and influences me in odd ways.  Various songs and their lyrics pop in my mind as a response to things that I experience.  As I thought about this image, it became clear that the plane is famous because it dropped a bomb. That triggered a song in my head. The Gap Band – You Dropped a Bomb on Me.  I could’ve used the title of the song, but I think the first line of the lyrics made a better case for this image.

You Were the Girl That Changed My World

Spaceballs! - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

I posted this shot yesterday of Spaceship Earth taken during the World Wide Photo Walk at EPCOT. Someone who saw it on my Flickr page commented that it looked too shiny to be the real Spaceship Earth.  Well, it’s the real thing, but it doesn’t look that shiny when you walk up to it.  Neither did the sky have that split transition from warm to cool.  Instead of this being the result of some convoluted technique or expensive filter, it happened quite by accident with hardly any effort at all. In fact, I intended for this to turn out as a black & white shot. Here’s what happened.

The Original Shot

_WRB7997 - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

This is a JPEG exported right out of Aperture 3 without any adjustments. I was attracted to the way the sunlight hit one side of the sphere, but I didn’t particularly want those trees in the way.  In fact, I had to angle my camera a bit to get them out of the frame.  Unfortunately, increasing the angle to eliminate trees also affected where the sunlight hit the sphere.

Tree Trimming

Selection Before - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

This seemed like a job for Content-Aware Fill.  I made a sloppy selection on the lower part of the image, as you see above.

Content Aware Fill

No special settings.  I just used the default setting for Content-Aware Fill.

Selection After

Sometimes Content-Aware Fill does a great job, other times it smudges things.  Fortunately, it worked almost perfectly here.  The only thing I had to fix was a slightly visible line in the blue sky along the top of the selection.  Otherwise, it trimmed those trees out of there and let me get on with my processing.

Removing Spots

Curves Adjustment for Spot Removal - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

Scott Kelby shared this tip to make it easier to find dust spots on your images. You add a Curves Adustment Layer and drag a couple of points until they look like this image – sort of like a sine wave. It inverts the colors nicely so your spots stand out quite clearly.  Just remember to select your image layer before using the Healing Brush, rather than clicking away on the Curves layer (not that I’ve ever made that mistake).

With this image, the result was a bit different. That particular curve made the shot you see at the top of the post. The darker parts of the sphere became bright & shiny, and the highlight that initially caught my attention become darker.  The sky split into blue & yellow. It was quite unexpected.

As I started looking at it, I decided that I liked the results just as you see them.  The only other thing I did was to create a merged layer and sharpen the sphere itself using the Sharpen brush.  That’s it. Nothing more than a happy accident of color and light.

Once I decided I was going to keep it this way, I started rotating the image until I decided upon the wide-angle view you see now.

As I mentioned, this was supposed to be a black & white image.  The result came from a happy accident, but then again, so did penicillin. I decided I was happy with the image, even though my original vision was something else.

Would you keep the result of your own happy accident, or would you insist on completing your original vision?

It turns out that he was converting his Canon sRaw files to Adobe DNG. Aperture supports DNG, but it seems that not all DNG is equal. That’s kind of ironic, because incompatibility between RAW files and software is exactly the problem Adobe claimed it was trying to prevent with the DNG (Digital Negative) file format.

The logic from Adobe sounds rational. RAW files from various vendors are proprietary, and some programs may not support all file formats. The DNG specification was supposed to be a public archival format for digital camera RAW files. What could go wrong?

Apparently, not all RAW file formats get converted to the same DNG format, and that’s what bit my friend in the ass. His Canon sRaw files were converted into something called Linear DNG. It’s the first I’ve heard of it, but my research shows this problem has bitten people for a few years now when they tried to switch from one DAM to another. If you’re using DNG, which kind do you have? The difference seems to depend upon the type of sensor in your digital camera.

• Raw DNG or CFA DNG (colored Filtered Array): contains raw image data + added meta data and is not demosaiced. This Raw format is (usually) 4 channels coded with 12 bits (sometimes 14 bits) color depth.
• Linear DNG: contains RGB image data and is demosaiced. Linear DNG format is 3 (or more) channels coded with 16 bit color depth. Due to the bit depth coding, the size of a linear DNG is larger and much more important than a Raw DNG.

The good news for my friend is that his version Of DNG has more color depth than the other.  The bad news is that he’s stuck in Lightroom.  You see, this isn’t merely an issue of Aperture not supporting all aspects of DNG.  DxO users have also discovered that their DNG files aren’t quite on par with Adobe’s results.

How universal is a file specification if a number of programs don’t support it, or only partially support it? On the other hand, what incentive does a software vendor have to remove RAW file support that it’s already implemented? The theory of DNG is that we can’t trust camera vendors to be around to support their own file formats in 50 years or so.

• Nikon was founded in 1917.
• Canon was founded in 1937.

They’re still supporting their RAW files. Adobe fails to mention the different DNG file formats on its DNG page.  Of the choices before me, I think I’ll stick with the original RAW files. They seem to have better support than their supposed universal replacement.

Since my friend didn’t keep his RAW files after conversion to DNG (why would he?), he’s pretty much left to export as TIFF or PSD conversions if he wants to move to Aperture.  More likely, his old images will stay trapped in Lightroom and he can start working with his new images in Aperture using the original RAW format. At least that way, he has a better chance of migrating later if he feels the need.

Before this past weekend, I’ve never shot tethered.  Even now, my experience is really limited to just doing some test shots based upon things I observed at the Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It – Hands On workshop I attended on Friday. If you’ve been shooting tethered, you know everything I’ll discuss here. This was meant for folks who, like me, never got around to shooting tethered before.  Basically, I’m giving you a newbie view into something that I think is going to be pretty useful for me going forward. I’m bringing this up as disclosure, since I don’t want to sound like I’m an experienced old pro at this stuff.

Why Use Tethering?

I’ve watched a lot of online training and a few live courses where the instructor was shooting tethered. That in itself gives them the opportunity to share the results of each shot on a large screen, but it’s not something that matters to the rest of us. Quite simply, tethering gives you a much larger image to inspect when compared to the small LCD on the back of your camera.  You can’t accurately judge sharpness on a little LCD.  It’s quite frustrating to think you nailed a shot and then discover you missed focus when you upload the images to your computer. It’s much better to have the resources to make a judgment while you’re shooting.

What Do I Need to Tether?

I’m glad you asked, because I was curious about that, too.  At the very least, you need a USB cable with a mini connector that goes into your camera on one end and a regular USB connector at the other end.  You probably have one that came in your camera box.  It won’t reach very far, but it’s a start.  If you want a longer cable, there’s a vendor called Tether Tools that can sell you one. You may find other resources, but it’s a place to start.

Being tethered is a bit like being a dog on a leash. If you run to the full length of that cable, something’s gotta give. By itself, your tether may pop out of your camera or computer. Look for something called a Jerk-Stopper to prevent that from happening.

Now that’s one end, but what about the other?  You need a platform to mount your laptop on the tripod. You may want to tie that laptop down, lest you jerk it off the platform.

Do you need more stuff?  Maybe so, but I’m sure you can go explore now on your own to see what else may be useful, like a cross-bar for your tripod to support both your laptop platform and your camera bullhead.

 The Software Side

I don’t mean for this to be a battle between Aperture & Lightroom, as each of them are useful tools that do pretty much the same thing.  Both support tethering.  In fact, I was pleasantly impressed with Lightroom’s support for tethering during the LSR workshop. Fortunately, I found that Aperture and Lightroom both make tethering very simple.

• Each has an easy menu choice to begin a session
• Each allows you to decide where to locate your captured images
• Each allows you to define metadata on import
• Each allows you to assign a preset for each image on import
• Each allows you to manipulate the images once captured.

Between the two, I think Lightroom has a bit of an edge on tethering, since it has some presets and image processing tools that aren’t in Aperture.  However, you can overcome the differences and I don’t think they rise to the level of requiring a switch from one tool to another.

Tethering with Lightroom

I downloaded a trial version so I could share some screen captures. However, the first thing I want to note is a current problem between Lightroom and Mac OS X Lion that apparently broke the tethering feature.  If you have a Mac and want to use Lightroom for tethering, you may need to revert to Snow Leopard for the time being.  Since I’m on Lion, I wasn’t able to capture any images into Lightroom.

To start, connect your camera to your computer and simply go to the File menu and select Tethered Capture > Start Tethered Capture.

Lightroom - Start Tether

Once you start a session, you’re presented with a dialog box to create your Tethered Capture Settings.

Lightroom - Tethered Capture Settings

As you can see, you have options to define the capture destination, apply metadata presets or define keywords, or even define the file name structure. You’re essentially importing your images as you shoot, so it makes sense to let the computer do the work for you.  Once you make your settings and hit OK, you get the Tethered Shooting HUD.

Lightroom - Tether HUD

OK, I don’t know if Adobe calls this a HUD or not, but that’s what I’m calling it.  Due to the issue with Lion, it doesn’t recognize my camera.  However, it does accurately show my settings.  The F-stop doesn’t appear because I had an old lens without CPU connections, but it works.  If you look a bit further to the side at the Develop Settings, that’s where you can choose from a list of presets.

Lightroom - Tether Presets

There are a couple of differences here between Lightroom and Aperture.  First, notice that I’ve checked the menu item Same as previous.  That option doesn’t exist in Aperture.  What that does is very basic, but very helpful.  Remember that I mentioned you can use image adjustments while tethered?  A good example of this was when Scott made a shot during the LSR workshop and noticed the white balance was off. He simply gave his subject a grey card and made another shot, and then clicked the Eyedropper tool on the grey card in that image.  Once he selected Same as previous, all of the following images appeared color corrected without any additional effort.  Simple, but handy!

The other difference doesn’t show here, but Lightroom ships with its presets all on one long menu (too long to show here).  Aperture has many of the same/similar presets, but they’re in a tiered menu structure.  Either tool lets you create your own preset, and that’s how Aperture can work-around the missing Same as previous command.  If Scott were using Aperture in the scenario I mentioned above, he would have to create a new preset after correcting his White Balance, and then use it for the following images.  It’s one more step, but not a game-changer.

Tethering in Aperture

Aperture works much the same way as Lightroom, but the dialogs are slightly different.  You start from the File menu and select Tether > Start Session.

Aperture - Start Tether

Next, Aperture presents you with a dialog to define your import settings.

Aperture - Tether Settings

It looks a bit different, but you have options to select your image destination, metadata presets and adjustment presets.

Aperture - Adjustment Presets

One of the differences here is that you have an option to select an adjustment preset before you see the HUD.  In my opinion, this is a bit more awkward than Lightroom’s option.  In Lightroom, you could decide to change your adjustment preset from the HUD from one image to the next.  Aperture seems to require that you have to stop your tether session and start another one with a different adjustment preset.  Once again, you can get to the same place with Aperture, but there are a couple of extra steps necessary to do it.

On the other hand, there is an advantage with the Aperture HUD.

Aperture - Tether HUD

The tether HUD is much smaller.  It’s easy to get out of your view.  If you don’t need to see it, you can close it and still shoot tethered.  Just open up the HUD again to stop the session when you’re done.  This is a bit of an advantage over the Lightroom HUD, which is a long horizontal bar that you can’t close.[update: I was wrong, you can hide it.  You just can't ignore it when it's on the screen because it's so damn big.]  It’s going to be in your way as long as the session is active.

When I first tried shooting tethered in Aperture, I ran into a problem that caused the Spinning Beachball after three shots.  I had to Force Quit and tried it again but the same thing happened.  Fortunately, this isn’t a problem with Lion, but a problem with corrupted preferences.  The fix is rather simple and I found it on this post in the Apple Communities.

Aperture - Fix Tether

I was able to try both programs using my Nikon D700 and no other software.  Depending upon your camera, perhaps your mileage may vary. Now that I’ve had a chance to see how tethering works in person, it’s something I plan on using whenever possible.  That means buying a few more goodies to enable it, but what’s photography if not an expense?

Happy tethering.

When you do file in future to register a collection of your unpublished works, we are encouraging you to

1. give a collection title only in the primary application title area.
2. and to list all of your particular titles in the “Contents Titles” area.
3. and to upload a titles page as one of the links that you attach to your case.
4. We hope that you upload electronic editions of your works, but if you mail hard-deposits instead, you should still list all contents titles in the electronic application and include a titles page in the hard-deposit that you mail to us.

Right now, this isn’t a requirement.  However, it’s clear that the Copyright Office is giving us a strong nudge to start making this list of titles in order to protect our registered works. From the Photo Attorney blog, I gather this is because some court cases are challenging the validation of Copyright registrations because the photo titles weren’t listed. In other words, cover your ass and list your titles with the registration in case this becomes a real issue that could bite you later.

I just registered some photos this week and I already realized that I’m not fully following the advice given in the letter from the Copyright Office, so this little warning is as much for me as it is to share with you.  Let’s take a look at the eCO registration form.

New Copyright Form

Before you get to this page, you select the type of work – a Work of the Visual Arts for photographs – from a dropdown menu and then you get here to the title page. You need to hit that New* button twice to follow the suggestions.  Here’s what you see once you click New * and start the Title process:

New Copyright Title Type

I’ve always selected the first option – Title of work being registered, and then entered the title I wanted to use for the collection I submitted for registration.  That still happens, and it still happens first. Click the Save button, but don’t move on to the next section yet. While still on the Titles section, click New again.  Change the Title Type dropdown field to select Contents Title.  You’ll see a new form where you can enter the title for each work in the collection.

New Copyright Contents Title

I have to admit that part of the instructions confuse me here a little bit.  The letter from the Copyright Office states that you can enter a title per field, or you can submit all of your titles per field separated by a semicolon.  Since I only see one field, I’ve chosen the latter route.

If you’re registering many photos, you clearly don’t want to type each photo name by hand.  It’s tedious and prone to error.  There are a couple of ways to get your computer to generate this list for you.  Please note a couple of issues here that may be different from your situation:

1. I use Apple Aperture 3.
2. I use a Mac.

If you’re a Windows user on Bridge or Lightroom, you may have to adapt a few things, so good luck with that.

The first method is to use Aperture 3′s File | Export Metadata… command from the menu.  Unfortunately, you don’t get any options to choose which metadata gets exported.  All you can do is enter a name and a destination.  Aperture then creates a tab-delimited text file with all of the metadata from the photos you selected.

The good news is that you can import this into a spreadsheet program, select the Name field, and export it as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file.  Then you just open that file, copy the contents and paste it into the field on the Copyright Office web page.

Another method is to export your photos to a folder.  You can make this from the photos you export from Aperture to upload to the Copyright Office.   Then open the folder, select all the files with Command-A and copy them with Command-C. Now open the TextEdit program.  Use the Edit | Paste and Match Style command from the menu.  All of the file names will paste as text.  If you just use the regular Paste command, you end up with the photos being pasted into the document.  You still have to add the semicolon.

Assuming your photos all end with the same extension (e.g. .jpg), you can do a simple Find and Replace.  Change .jpg to .jpg; to add your separators, then copy the contents of the text file and paste in the web form.

Now that you have a text document with all of your photo names, be sure to include it with your upload of photos as a titles page.  Another alternative may be to combine your photos and titles on a contact sheet, as mentioned on this blog post.

I’ll grant you that this step adds a bit more to your registration process, but it’s a small issue compared to the possibility of having your registration invalidated if some of the cases working through the courts turn out that way.

Aperture Portraits - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

I suspect most photographers can relate to this dilemma. You go somewhere and shoot a subject, getting plenty of angles & options.  You come home and sort through the photos trying to pick your winner. While sorting through them, different things come to mind.  You like some angle or composition better than another. The light is better here than there.  That one looks a bit fuzzy. There’s something distracting in the background. Whatever the case, the shots you think are best emerge.

Now what do you do with the rest of them? They aren’t necessarily bad shots, but they didn’t make your first cut. Even if they’re great shots, you have to decide just how many shots of the same subject do you need to show off? Maybe a couple, three? Now what do you do with the rest of them?

I have five Aperture libraries dedicated to different topics. Each of them has a few thousand photos in them.  When you get right down to it, the photos I show are in the low hundreds, not thousands. There are some where I’m trying to make a nice portrait or art photo.  Then there are some I clicked because a subject seemed interesting at the time, but I’ll be damned if I know what I’m going to do with them now. The advice I often here is that great photographers only show their best work. The implication is that they screw up shots as much as the rest of us, but you just never see those photos. I wonder if great photographers also keep those photos they never show anyone?

There have been times when I’ve gone through a library and savagely cut out the crap.  Deleted, purged, gone from the face of this Earth. I don’t miss them a bit.  However, it took me a few years of living with those shots before I decided to blast them to digital oblivion?

Why?  My workflow is simple.  I go quickly go through all my photos looking for two things – those that I will mark with a Flag as a possibility, and those I mark with an X for immediate dismissal (e.g. blurry, horrible composition, not good enough to print for the bottom of a bird cage). Once that’s done, I go through the Flagged photos with much more care, looking for the best options out of this group.  Those will be the photos I show.  Even some of the Flagged photos will never see the light of day. So why the hell am I keeping photos that didn’t even merit a Flag? Don’t even get me started about Stars – I’ve changed my mind on that so many times that they’ve become a less than meaningful.

Some photographers have published their workflow and I’ve looked for things that help me with my own method. What I discover is that I’m doing the same as some, there are a few new ideas I’ve incorporated, and nobody is really taking a knife to cut out those other shots. It’s not about space.  Rather than deleting photos to save space, I’ve spent money on a RAID array and have 4.5 TB of space still available.

Ultimately, I need to be more ruthless about my editing. Maybe.  Someday.