Nerve Endings Firing Away

Experimenting with Aperture

Recently I switched to RAW image formats as a default on my Nikon D40 and am using Aperture 2.0 on my Mac for image editing. Although I am not professional photographer by any stretch of imagination, I was curious what would I gain by switching to RAW especially given the powerful editing capabilities of Aperture 2.0. I admit that my not-so-keen eye still isn’t able to distinguish between RAW and the default JPEG but Aperture sure adds layers to your editing abilities; at least more than iPhoto.

The only hitch with Aperture is that you get stuck editing your photos ad nauseam and with tons of photos in your queue, this takes a while. After posing a question on syncing Aperture and iPhoto on Aardvark, I decided that I would launch iPhoto when my camera is plugged in for my photo dump and import selected photos to Aperture for additional processing. I’m posting some of my photo experiments from over the weekend:

How and what do you use for image processing? Do you similarly have two programs – one for light and quick editing and other for detailed editing? Any tips regarding using Aperture or exploring hidden powers of RAW would be appreciated.

“Experimenting with Aperture” [Short URL: http://www.ipatrix.com/?p=3137] was published Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 12:34 pm by Patrix, filed under 9rules, and tagged as aperture, image editing, images, macosx, photography. Both comments and linkbacks are closed.

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2 responses to “Experimenting with Aperture”

1. Supremus said:
   

   I almost always shoot in RAW. I shoot in JPG only when I am about run out of memory ;) – RAW gives me greater flexibility in correcting exposures / sharpness / color etc. You can do spot removal, cleaning, yada yada much much better with RAW. JPG is compressed, so when you work on your photos, you are destroying the quality of the image adding layer by layer of settings; unless you do no touch up to JPG, your end quality is always pretty much lower than what you shot. Once you start dibbling with RAW there is just no going back ;)

   Not sure how Aperture works, but as a user of Lightroom, I can say its my one stop tool for doing all processing on photos. Aperture also has some plugins that you can install to do stuff like auto correction / white balance etc. I generally use plugins on lightroom and then modify the image according to my tastes.

   S

   8 months ago reply
2. Patrix said:
   

   Thanks. I did notice greater flexibility and less loss of quality editing RAW files. these RAW files can be huge though so I doubt you would shoot in RAW for all occasions (e.g. I doubt you want RAW for baby showers unless it is your own baby?).

   Aperture is the Mac-equivalent of Lightroom and I’m sure has equally strong capabilities. The Apple Download Store has plenty of plugin links too. Now I have to find out what exactly do they do. I haven’t really dabbled much in photo editing yet. I just shoot, touch up a little, and upload. You must share your must-dos sometime.

   8 months ago reply