Hi folks,

For those 1Password users out there, you may have noticed that my site doesn’t properly support automatically logging in with your account saved in 1Password. Twitter follower @robdeloach pointed this out in a tweet this morning, and I responded that it simply wasn’t properly supported.

Fortunately a little digging (ok, one quick google search) turned up a solution.

I’m about to start on the last chapter in my new eBook, entirely titled “The ApertureExpert’s In-Depth Getting Started with Aperture 2 – a beginner’s guide”. Here’s the introduction…

Over many years of working with Aperture, and helping other people with Aperture, I’ve noticed one very common trend—no matter how much they love Aperture now, most people had a hard time getting started. This guide is designed to get you on your way. It doesn’t really matter too much where you’re coming from to use this guide; be it any other photo management application or none at all. This guide aims to get you moving efficiently, and possibly more importantly, to set the stage for a lot more learning. There are loads of free videos on apple.com that show you the basic of basics—I’m more interested in getting you started with a very solid understanding of what your choices are. So while some of the basic instructions like “Importing Your First Photos” takes up a seemingly bizarre six pages, after reading it you’ll truly understand what’s happening to your photos and what options you have.

I wrote a section in the eBook “10 Tips on File Management in Aperture” about reconnecting missing files, and in there I discussed techniques to force stubborn reconnects. I just discovered something new… sometimes if the “reconnect” button isn’t available, and you know it’s the right file, all you need to do is wait.

Apple released a new iPhone/iPod Touch app this morning called “MobileMe Gallery” [iTunes link], which allows you to view not only your own MobileMe Gallery on your iPhone, but also those of friends and family by simply adding them as contacts. I’d say Apple’s a little late to the game with image sharing using iPhone app’s, but as is expected from Apple it’s a really nice implementation. It might even get me to start using my MobileMe account for photos again!

So why is this of interest to Aperture users? One of the great things about carrying an iPhone or iPod Touch as a photographer is it’s an easy way to show off your photos to others—friends and family, or more importantly, to potential clients. I’ve always advised keeping a reasonably sized collection of images in a “portfolio” album in Aperture, and syncing that to your iPhone so you can always have an up-to-date portfolio in your pocket. But the fact remains that to update your portfolio on your iPhone, you have to physically sync your iPhone to your computer to do it. Since the introduction of over-the-air syncing for contacts and calendars quite some time ago, I’d wager that most people don’t physically connect their iPhone to their computer all that often anymore—leaving that portfolio potentially woefully out of date. Further, for a lot of pro’s (myself included), the “iTunes computer” my not be the same system that Aperture is on. Which means not only do you have to physically connect your iPhone to your iTunes computer to sync, but you also have to manually copy files from your Aperture system to your iTunes system. Way too many steps, which leaves yourself open to having an out-of-date portfolio in your pocket.

Aperture provides a 5-star rating system, which is pretty much universally standard (I think every app does a 5-star system). Which is of course actually 7 “ratings”, including –1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Ratings in Aperture

So what qualifies as a 1-star, or 3-star, or 5-star picture? How do you decide if it’s worth, say, two or three? Is it because you really like it, or you really really like it, or really really really like it? Probably not the best criteria to go on, especially as you want to search your entire library years down the road, and you won’t want to search for 3-stars and be thinking “why on earth did I give that a 3-star rating”!

As with anything in this business, there are no right answers. But here are some guidelines to go by that I think work quite well.

Welcome to your resource for tips & tricks, eBooks and education on Apple’s Aperture! This site will fill up with free tips on using Aperture, as well as eBooks for sale to make your Aperture and photography experience the best it can be.