You are here

Q&A for Live Training—Submit Questions Here!

PhotoJoseph's picture
May 12, 2011 - 11:53pm

As discussed on the twitterverse, the next ApertureExpert Live Training will be entirely Q&A based, instead of just doing questions at the end. This means questions will be vetted in advance, and we’ll probably wrap it up with a live Q&A, specifically for follow-up questions on what we just covered.

I don’t have a date set yet, but this one will likely be next week, on a week day, in the evening US time. But don’t worry if you can’t be there to see your question answered live; you can always get the video later.

So… submit your questions below as comments. Here’s what I want you to think about when posting:

  1. If your question can easily be answered in a paragraph, like “how do you get out of Full Screen mode?”, please post it in the forum instead. Think of harder, workflow-type, has-to-be-demoed-live-to-make-sense kind of questions. (btw, the answer is [esc] or the f key to exit full screen mode :)
  2. Look at the questions posted before yours. If you want to expand on an existing question, please reference it. For example, “Bob asked about how to do X; I’d also like to know how to do X+1”.
  3. I may combine mulitple questions where it makes sense, and craft my own “question” to answer. When we do the show, we’ll reference you, such as “Bob and Sue asked…”.
  4. Questions can be on any Aperture topic; I’m not limiting this to the importing and organizing that we’ve covered so far in Live Training. If you want to ask about Slideshows, for example, that’s fine. Fire away!

That’s it… let’s get some rockin’ questions up! If there’s enough good content to cover, we may go longer than the normal 45 minutes total for this show.

-Joseph @ApertureExpert

App:
Apple Aperture
Platform:
macOS
Author:
PhotoJoseph

Based on previous comments seen on the forum, I’d say the following might be appropriate:

When you work on the road and then come back to the studio/workstation, what is your process going from the road to your desktop? So things like: Saving your files on the road, importing them and process to import, throwing out what you don’t want as you import.

How do you maintain and manage an ongoing portfolio of images in APerture. Images you know you feel are done, and are a set of images that represent your work well. Kind of the old style portfolio book we used to carry around to discuss our work.

What are some of the ways you can use Aperture to work with agencies like Getty images to get your photos prepped and published for sale. This would include workflows, appropriate watermarks, copyright registration and such.

My questions are about Lightroom envy.

First is about converting presets. What is the best method and what are the gotchas of converting that sweet LR preset you saw to Aperture. This is not a question seeking a pushbutton method, or a script or app that does this for you. I am talking about manually converting a preset to Aperture - studying the preset, seeing what applies and what doesn’t, and creating that LR preset in Aperture, bit by bit. What are the pitfalls, what works and what doesn’t, where is the equivalent of that obscure setting, etc.??

My second question is (again stemming from LR envy): how can accomplish gradients in Aperture? I have tried brush strokes with different settings side by side, but that proved to be a difficult and poor substitute. Again, not searching for the easy solution, but searching the best way to do this myself.

People may ask, what is the point of not using an app or a plugin? WhenI become an Aperture expert myself, I can afford to use shortcuts, but for a beginner, the best way to learn the intricacies of a program like Aperture is to do it the hard way.

My question comes from using iPhoto. How do I create a photo book using pictures from multiple projects without having to move them from all of the different projects. My example is I separate my photos into different libraries by year. Then into different projects based on the date.

My wife wants to create a photo book of our son, but it isn’t as easy as it is in iPhoto, where you can just drag photos from any event to a new book.

If I was going on tour and traveling very light and I
Shoot in Raw
Transfer photos to an iPad for back up
Delete SD card to carry on shooting
When I get home I need to get photos in to Aperture 3 BUT will they transfer over in Raw from iPad

Joseph-I do not know if you plan on doing this in one of your future live training sessions, but I’d like to know how to set up libraries, especially on a back up hard drive and how you go about using these files in a workflow format, for example, loading all of your pictures to the backup HD then bringing them into Aperture, or visa versa.

thanks
Florian

Florian Cortese
www.fotosbyflorian.com

@ Graham, yes they will. The iPad creates an optimized JPEG version of each image. You can use that image the same way as you would any other kind of photo on the iPad; include it in slideshows, e-mail it, or edit it in third-party apps. Your original file remains un-altered and will transfer to your computer exactly as it was on the camera or SD card.

Aperture and Photobooks, something I am going to start using a lot more. I have watched the apple introductory but I would like to know more about designing my own layout pages.

Joseph - I have 2 questions. (1) In your latest live session, you talked about how you rate photos. It seemed your strategy was based on the number of photos you need to submit to a client. If that is true, how would that strategy change for working with personal photos? (2) I understand the mechanics of Keywording and am interested in what strategies you have seen work well for you and other pros. I have been trying to build my strategy around 5 W’s (and 1 H) which seems ok but am wondering if there is a better one. Thank you!

I’m working off a library that was blindly imported from iPhoto 09. I say blindly because I just did it, without really reading up on how to best prepare both applications for it. As a result I have a mess in my keywords and locations. I’ve been cleaning up the keywords as I go, but Locations have been a mess and a nightmare. I’m having a hard time editing/changing locations of shots. What’s your strategy with Location. Do you use it?

Hey Joseph
You may have to put this in the dumb question pile but I’m going to ask it anyway!!!
I have been conditioned by many top class photographers including yourself, via podcasts , to shoot in RAW because there is more detail that can be adjusted if required. Some of my older photos are Jpeg and I have adjusted the sliders to get the required result I like what I was going to ask is what am I missing? I then looked at the question and saw that I may have answered the question myself. Is it all about the detail.

I have decided to leave this question here because if you don’t ask you don’t know.
You may laugh if you want!!

I too would like to know more about managing an ongoing portfolio in Aperture, particularly across multiple libraries (some managed, some referenced). I think the last point can get quite tricky, especially when syncing with say an iPad as your portfolio display device (I gave up on counting on iTunes to properly look into my Aperture projects, and just created a folder on my desktop that I export 1024px JPGs to. Still figuring out a filenaming convention so that I can maintain control on the image order).

I would also like to know any workflow tips on WB/color correcting, particularly for large projects such as for weddings when you constantly are adjusting for flash vs ambient, window vs artificial lighting. Lift-and-stamp just does not seem elegant, especially when I have to constantly “delete” other adjustments that I don’t want to stamp (and I also thing Aperture screws up sometimes by keeping two WB adjustments on one image).

Is there a way to navigate through all the adjustments bricks with only keyboard strokes? I think if I can key in values like “+0.3 Exposure” and “1.1 saturation” instead of pushing and pulling sliders with a mouse or tablet, I could really work faster.

Any thoughts on how to get the most out of Aperture with an SSD drive? I plan to upgrade, and I’ve been going back and forth on deciding how to divide up my libraries on and off the smaller SSD. Managed vs. referenced, etc.

Hope to catch this live training at a decent Asia hour!

Hi all, thanks for submitting your questions. For those that aren’t going to be addressed in the Live Session [LINK], please post them in the forums. Some clarification however on a few of them…

Robert — I don’t use Getty or any stock agency so I can’t give you direct advice, but I’m sure some of the users here do. Definitely post this question.

Argun — Since I don’t use Lightroom at all, I can’t really give comparative advice. However I’d suggest that you simply break it down piece by piece, look at what LR has applied, and find the matching adjustment in Aperture. Apply the preset to the same photo and keep moving back and forth between the apps. But just do one adjustment at a time. That’d be my advice. Post the question though; former LR users may have more ideas. Also, I don’t understand your question on “what’s the point of not using an app or plug-in”. Please clarify and post.

Graham — Chris answered your question in the comments above.

Florian — I’m not sure I follow your libraries setup question, and I’m not likely to go back to that since we’ve wrapped up importing and organization. Please try to rephrase the question, and post.

Leo — I don’t know what you mean by “5 W’s and 1 H”. Please clarify and post, and if it’s big enough I may add it into the Live Session.

Iain — I’ll do Location in a future session in-depth. It’s too big to hit as a single question here.

Kenneth — ”navigation adjustment bricks with keyboard shortcuts” — sadly, no. Sucks. Big time. Also your SSD question is good but better suited to the forum. There’s nothing for me “show” in a live demo, just talk about.

Thanks all, I really appreciate the questions!
-Joseph @ApertureExpert

@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?

You may login with either your assigned username or your e-mail address.
Passwords are case-sensitive - Forgot your password?