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Batch Metadata Changes in Aperture 3

PhotoJoseph's picture
August 1, 2013 - 4:00am

The Batch Change window in Aperture 3

The most efficient way to add metadata to your photos (copyright, contact info, etc.) is to do it on import. But what if you forget, or what if the metadata changes (your address or email changes), or what if you have old photos that never got the metadata in the first place?

In this tip, we’ll look at the Metadata Batch Change tool, and how to create your own custom presets.

NOTE: Updated to include video version of the tip![more]

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The New Eye-Fi mobi Card

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 30, 2013 - 4:01am

The Eye-Fi mobi card

The Eye-Fi card is a particularly cool camera accessory. Different models allow you to shoot on your dSLR, micro four-thirds camera, or any device that takes SD cards, and instantly transfer photos to your computer, various social networks, or even your smart phone. In this post, we’ll take a look at configuring the all-new Eye-Fi card “mobi” to an iPhone, and talk about why you’d want to do such a crazy thing.[more]

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Last Week's Newsletter, and a Poll

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 25, 2013 - 4:00am

Did you see last weekend’s newsletter? If not, check it out here, and if you’re not subscribed, you can do that too. Also I had a little poll in there that I’d love your feedback on… if you haven’t voted already, please do![more]

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Unsupported Image Format in Aperture 3

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 20, 2013 - 4:00am

Unexpected “Unsupported Image Format” error… uh-oh

Have you seen the “Unsupported Image Format” error pop up on images you *know* Aperture used to read? It could come down to permissions. We’re actively tracking these issues down and trying to sort out the problem(s), so if you’re facing this at all, check out these possible solutions, and let us know if any of them helped you, and of course share any other ideas we may have missed![more]

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User Tip: Quicker Lift/Stamp Workflow in Aperture 3

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 13, 2013 - 4:01am

I just discovered a pile of user-submitted tips (that’s the ones by you guys) that were never published. I promise, this will ALL get better with the new site, where User Tips and ApertureExpert tips will be integrated together. At least that’s the idea.

In the meantime, I’ll be releasing these User Tips over the next few days, starting with…

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Do You Want to Work at Apple?

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 11, 2013 - 4:01am

Do you want to work at Apple? Do you know photography, DAM, post, and have the ability to translate complicated ideas into simple written explanations?

If so, then this could be your lucky day.

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Using TextExpander for Keyword Entry in Aperture 3

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 9, 2013 - 4:00am

TextExpander is a amazingly useful tool throughout your system. One of our readers posted a comment on a previous tip about using TextExpander for keywords. It turns out this is a fantastic way to not only save time and keep your keywording consistent, but to also apply multiple keywords at once, to entire collections of images! Click through to see how this technique can be put to real-world use, then share with us how you might use it in your workflow.

Create the TextExpander snippet, and fill in all the important bits

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Teeth Whitening in Aperture 3

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 4, 2013 - 4:00am

Be sure to check out the video version of this tip at the end!

Reader Dane [@danebert on twitter, manfesto on flickr] suggested writing a tip on teeth whitening in Aperture. I asked what technique he used, and he replied “I actually use a saturation brush - cover the teeth and drag saturation down”. I tried it, but found it to be a bit heavy-handed, so started experimenting with using Curves, which is what’s described below. In the meantime, he went back and tried it with the Color adjustment, and reported that this worked even better: “I’m testing the color brick and eye dropper, looks more natural since only yellows get desat’ed and I can brighten too!”. This is one of the great things about Aperture, isn’t it… there are so many ways to achieve a similar goal, and by knowing as many tricks as you can, when one doesn’t work as expected, you can try something else (or even a combo of the two).

Below I’ll outline a few simple steps to doing this using Curves, but try it yourself as Dane described, using the Color adjustment. Maybe that’ll work better for you!

Using Curves to remove color tint on teeth

I’m cropping this photo slightly tighter than you might normally, out of respect for the subject :-) You can clearly see that the subject’s teeth could use a little whitening. It didn’t help that this guy is normally pale as a sheet, but came to the shoot sunburned. By the time I “fixed” that, the teeth were even worse.

The starting point… notice that the teeth need a little help

The tool I want to use is Curves. Again this is just one way, but it worked out quite well.[more]

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Creating Split Tones in Aperture 3

PhotoJoseph's picture
July 2, 2013 - 4:00am

Check out the video version of this tip at the end!

Split toned images are those photos where the original color is gone, and the shadows shift to one tint while the highlights shift to another. If a monochromatic image has only one tint added to it, such as a brownish tint making a sepia image, that’s simply a color tint. But when you split the shadows to one direction and the highlights to another, you have a split tone.

I released a preset pack called “ApertureExpert’s Preset Pack Split Tone” quite a while ago, and while of course you can reverse engineer those to see how it’s done, I thought I’d share the process here. It’s quite simple, and this way you can make hundreds of your own presets, too.

The starting point

Like any effect, there are images where this treatment works very well, and images where it simply doesn’t. Here’s the photo I’ll be starting with. It’s largely monochromatic to begin with, but that’s actually not terribly important. What’s more important is that it has good range from shadows to highlights. In this shot the sky is blown out (it was a terribly overcast day) but the statues themselves have good range from dark to light, and that’s the part of the image we’ll be focusing on.

The original image shows good tonal range in the statues, making a great candidate for the split tone effectUndoubtedly you’ll want to experiment, and you’ll find that some photos look awful with this treatment, while others look great.[more]

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