Spirits in the Digital World - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Microsoft is the Reason I Switched to Apple

A few weeks ago, I turned on my XBox360 to play a game.  It’s not something I do that often these days.  In fact, it had probably been about six months since the last time I used this system.  Even so, I’ve been a pretty loyal customer for Microsoft and the XBox platform.  When they introduced XBox Live, I was one of the beta testers and had an early crack at setting up my Gamer Tag – the name players use on the service.  All this time, I’ve had the same Gamer Tag – until I couldn’t log onto XBox Live.

For some reason, it just wouldn’t let me sign on a few weeks ago.  All of the network connectivity worked right, so I contacted XBox Live support for some help.  The tech advised me to download my profile from the service.  That killed me.  When I started earlier, my Gamer Tag was on my system.  After downloading my profile, It just listed my real, full name.  My jaw dropped.

I’ve been trying to work with XBox Live Support for several weeks now, but they’ve given up with the lamest of excuses.  My original Gamer Tag isn’t in use, but yet it’s somehow locked and flagged that it can’t be used.  We have no idea how it got into that state. As I said, I’ve been offline for months.

So here’s the part that just ticks me off.  They say they can’t do anything about it.  What nonsense!  A Gamer Tag is an entry in a database.  Changing it is a clerical function.  If the goobers at tech support don’t have permission (as they claim), I would expect them to contact someone who DOES have permission to resolve my issue.  I’ve been paying for a Gold membership for nearly a decade.  All I want is to have a glitch corrected.  I don’t want credits, games, or anything else.  I just want the name that I’ve had all these years.

Yet, they persist in telling me they can’t do it.  While I don’t know exactly what programs Microsoft uses to operate XBox Live, that answer is just a load of crap.  It’s data.  It’s a data entry field in a database.  Someone has the permissions to change it.  It’s not like they’re running on an old UNIVAC system with punch cards.

I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never see my original Gamer Tag again, though.  Not because Microsoft couldn’t do it, but because they won’t bother to do it. What the hell.  Infinity Blade II looks pretty good on my iPad.  I guess that’s the future of gaming now.  Microsoft is making sure that XBox is the past with its poor customer service.

One of my favorite sayings is “Money goes where it’s treated well.”  Microsoft, you should embrace that quote and spend five minutes to make a long-time customer happy.  Shame on you for not even trying.

Capitol Hall of Columns - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Capitol Hall of Columns

This is another area of the U.S. Capitol building that just displays beauty and grandeur in architecture.  The corridor is about 100 feet long and lined with 28 columns.  It also includes part of the National Statuary Hall Collection of statues donated by the states. You can see one of my favorites on the right – Father Damien (now Saint Damien since 2009) by Hawaii.

I’ll say it again.  If you haven’t visited the U.S. Capitol, it should be on your must-see list.  I could spend days taking photos in here, if only they’d let me.

Review of Wacom Intuos5 Tablet

Thinking about getting a graphic tablet or wondering if you should upgrade from your Intuos4 to the new Intuos5?  If so, please check out my review. It’s completely changed the way I interface with my computer, but with some caveats that take a bit of adjustment.  You can find my article under the Reviews menu, or just click this link:

Wacom Intuos5 Tablet Review

Resistance is Futile - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

The Hive Mind at Work

Shhh!  He’s sleeping.

I wanted to share this photo to prove a point. The Borg – for those of you who aren’t up to speed with Star Trek – are an inter-connected species that process and share information by parallel computing.  Essentially, each Borg processes information in support of the whole collective. Some people have used this idiom in reference to the Internet. We all share individual pieces and it connects to the larger knowledge base of humanity.

Of course, that’s not what’s important here.  If you look behind the drone, you can clearly see that he connects to the hive mind using a series of tubes!  Senator Ted Stevens was right.  The Internet really is a series of tubes.

The Apple Collective

We’re seeing our science fiction come to life. When the first iPad came out, people made obvious comparisons to the Star Trek PADD. However, I think that Apple’s iCloud is going to have more impact in getting us to that science fiction future. The thing that made the PADD so great wasn’t its display, but its instant access to almost any kind of information – the same information or controls that displayed anywhere else.

So now I have a plethora of devices connected to the Internet at broadband speeds (LTE rocks!).  I can get all the information I want from most places I go. The cool thing is that I don’t have to take it with me. I can pull it down as I need it.

Let’s put that in context of entertainment. How many movies have you bought on DVD, iTunes or Blu-Ray?  Now, think about how many times you’ve watched those movies.  There are a few that I know I’ll watch over and over again. In most cases, I’m content to watch a movie once and then I’m done with it.

I can rent a 1080p version of the movie for $4.99 from iTunes (or less for some titles), buy it for $19.99 in HD, or buy a Blu-Ray for about $25. Netflix is streaming content for about $8 per month.  Amazon Prime memberships have streaming entertainment for $79/year. Physical media is dying because we have ubiquitous broadband to stream entertainment to us.  It’s going to be very disruptive to the entertainment industry, not to mention folks in stores like Best Buy who sell those little boxes of discs.

It’s also going to disrupt other distribution channels, like those overly-expensive movies on demand in hotels. Why pay them when you can slip an AppleTV with an HDMI cable in your bag for your next trip on the road, and then access you entertainment from iCloud or Netflix? Most of the hotels I’ve visited for the last few years had WiFi and TVs with HDMI ports. Even if you don’t have an Apple TV, you can hook up your computer or iPad to do the same thing.

Of course, there will be resistance. Anyone who is riding the cash cow now will want to block disruptive systems that change the flow of distribution. It won’t matter, though.  People love convenience and value. Who will want to drive to a Best Buy to pay $25 for a movie they’ll watch once or twice when they could fire up their home entertainment system and rent it for $4 or $5 per view? It costs less to rent and it’s convenient.  People will demand change and it will be the new market.  Resistance is futile.

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.

Endeavour Prepares for the Afterlife - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

I didn’t plan on ever showing this photo. In fact, I didn’t plan on ever doing any processing of this photo. You see, NASA has this way of simultaneously exciting and disappointing me. For instance, I wanted to get a photo of the Space Shuttle on the launch pad. Being somewhat anal-retentive about preparation, I called up to inquire about what I’d see, since they enclose the orbiter to protect it while it’s on the pad.  However, I was assured that the orbiter would be in view on a specific day and I booked my tour to go take my photos.  The first announcement they made on the tour was that we wouldn’t see the orbiter itself, so I came home with this photo.

On the occasion of the last shuttle launch, I really wanted to photograph the rollout. Once again, I called and did my preparation in advance, filled out forms, etc.  On the day before the rollout, I called to confirm my application again and was told they gave me the wrong form.  I was very pleased to find a pleasant lady on the other side who was willing to work with me to get my application approved.  She asked me to gather some info and call her back.  I did, called back and someone else answered the phone.  I asked for the nice lady, but “someone else” killed my dreams that day by telling me there was no way they were going to approve my access for a photo., and then she hung up.

When Kennedy Space Center started including the Vehicle Assembly Building on a tour again, my friends and I signed up and went out with high expectations. The tour was, once again, less than we expected. I almost didn’t get this photo, but it worked out at the last moment before we had to leave and go to the area where you see the image above.

You could almost hear a collective gasp of disappointment. There we were in this great building with the Endeavour Orbiter before us as it was being prepared for display at New York’s Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. We were standing on a space geek’s hallowed ground with part of the holy trinity before us – one of the last orbiters…and our view was blocked by not one, but two fences.

NASA had its own trinity of protection.  First, there was a yellow painted line.  We were not allowed outside the confines of that line, and nobody went out of bounds on our tour. Just behind that line was a knee-high, bright orange plastic fence.  If you somehow got past the yellow line before one of the security people watching us could tackle you, then you had to also hop over that fence.  However, someone at NASA probably decided it was insufficient, so the next barrier was a six-foot high metal fence, as you can see at the bottom of the photo. If that fence wasn’t insulting enough, it was covered with plastic notices, signs, and other ugly obstructions of the view.  Kennedy Space Center touted that you could see one of the orbiters on this tour, but they never promised you’d get a very good look at it.

A recent news story showed the last time that Atlantis was powered down, just another step to the end of an era.  That got me thinking about these images again, and my curiosity was piqued as to how it would look after processing. I’m still heartbroken about that damn fence, but I’ve decided just part of the story.  You can go this far, no farther. Many other photographers can relate to that feeling. We all clamor for access, but only a select few can realistically achieve it. With that in mind, I was very impressed with Ali Elhajj. He wanted access and made it happen.  Check out his photos on Google+.

I’m still disappointed with my own efforts to photograph the wonderful stuff at Kennedy Space Center, but Ali gives me hope.  There’s a way to get inside, but we have to be creative and persistent.  Way to go, Ali.

Geordi's Office - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

If I had a hard time getting a shot of the USS Enterprise’s bridge due to all the people strolling around, there was no problem setting up for this shot.  The place was practically empty. I don’t know if that’s because people didn’t know about this set existing in another building, whether it was due to an Original Series vs. Next Generation bias, or just the fact that this one didn’t have a Captain’s chair. Both of them seemed pretty cool to me.

Part of it is a geek thing, but the other part is just enjoying the colors and symmetry of the place.  I’ll never fly around the stars or fire phasers, but it’s a good place to pretend that I did – if only for a moment.

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.

What Can I Do to Improve Photoshop Performance?

As it happens, there are some very simple things you can do to make Photoshop run more smoothly. Some cost money, but many options are within your grasp without any expense at all. The first thing you need to do is visit your Performance Preferences.

A few simple changes here can improve your performance. Let’s start with your Memory Usage. By default, it’s set to use up to 70% of your RAM. Adobe claims that you can use up to 100% with no performance degradation if you’re running Photoshop in 64-bit mode and not running any other applications. Personally, I keep mine at 70% even though I have it running in 64-bit mode. There’s never a time when I’m not running another application.  I generally quit other major applications, but I need my iTunes music playing while I process.

The Photoshop Optimization section on MacPerformanceGuide.com suggests you would do well to keep your default settings, though, due to a bug on Mac OS X. Using a larger percentage of RAM could seriously degrade your performance. However, the site notes that adding more RAM is perhaps one of the best performance improvements you can make. That makes sense, since you want to eliminate reasons for the application to touch the disk. Surprisingly, too much RAM yields worse results. 24 BG seems to be the sweet spot, but 16 will do nicely. Even if you have a laptop or older system that won’t accept that much RAM, add what you can.

If you can’t add enough RAM to prevent Photoshop from needing to use a Scratch Disk, then make sure it’s using the fastest scratch disk you have. In my screen shot above, I have three disks available. The first one (checked) is my internal hard drive – a 7200RPM 1GB drive. The next is my RAID array, connected by FireWire 800, and the last one is a USB drive. While the multiple disks working on the RAID array may be faster than a single drive, the slow connection of FireWire or USB rules out those other drives.  Ideally, using a Solid State Drive to boot and use for a Scratch Disk would yield the best performance. Check your settings to ensure you’re using your fastest disk.

While you’re doing that, check how much usage is on that disk.  Hard drives give their best performance when they are less than 50% full. If your fastest drive is 80% full, it may not yield your fastest results.  Better to move some of those files elsewhere to get your best performance.

The History & Cache section has three buttons with presets to change the fields below them.  Ignore them. You can figure out the best settings by yourself.

History States are basically the number of times you can Undo changes while editing in Photoshop. 20 is the default, but it can go up to 1,000. Keep in mind that every one of those states takes up resources – reducing the amount of RAM you have available for other actions.  Use that RAM for 1,000 history states and you increase the likelihood that Photoshop will use your scratch disk – which is much slower than RAM.

Cache Levels also use resources, but it can help speed up redraw times. Think of it as an investment. If your resource is holding something that you’re working on at the moment, Photoshop doesn’t have to go back to load something from disk to redraw it.  According to Adobe’s Tech Note to Optimize Performance, this setting should be greater than the default value (4) for images over 10 Megapixels. If you’re editing images from a modern DSLR, that’s almost certainly the case if you load the full size image for editing.

Cache Tile Size comes with the lowest default setting (128K), which is almost certainly the worst choice for Photoshop. Mac Performance Guide notes that this setting is critical to performance. Think of your Cache Tile Size as a bucket that fetches bits from your Cache Levels.  A smaller bucket means the system has to make more trips to get everything it needs. Help it out.  Give it a bigger bucket and select 1028K.

These are just a few tips, but they can give you some interesting improvements.  You should check out the Adobe Optimize Performance note and the other recommendations from Mac Performance Guide for more ideas, even if you run on a Windows machine.

Happy motoring Photoshopping.

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.