Chapter 1: How Do I Get Started with Aperture?
Aperture is like iPhoto on steroids in some ways; but in other ways, it’s a completely different beast. Unlike iPhoto, it’s designed to be an incredibly flexible image, video, and audio file asset management tool that you can integrate into your existing workflow. However, this flexibility means that Aperture has more jargon, settings, and buttons than iPhoto. This chapter helps demystify Aperture’s jargon and shows you key fundamentals you need to know when using Aperture.
Understanding Why Aperture Is a Key Part of Your Workflow
Working with Aperture’s File Structure
A Brief Tour of Aperture’s Interface
Basic Customization Options
Understanding Why Aperture Is a Key Part of Your Workflow
Most photographers agree that the time you spend behind the lens shooting is the best part of being a photographer, and all the other stuff (processing an image, categorizing it, trying to sell it, or using it to promote business) is really just annoying. While digital photography enables you to be more creative as a photographer, from being able to see right away whether you got the shot to being able to experiment as much as you want with the only cost being hard drive space, the “other stuff” arguably gets more frustrating because now you have to manage digital files instead of physical film and learn to use multiple programs to develop and output your images. That’s where Aperture comes into play. Aperture is a central point for all of your image management from the moment you download an image from camera to computer until you search for an image and click Print to make a physical copy for a client. Aperture makes it relatively easy and fast to organize and manage your digital files, and that lets you spend more time having fun shooting. However, Aperture isn’t the only digital asset management tool out there. Let’s look at what Aperture gives you over iPhoto and Lightroom.
Seeing the difference between Aperture and iPhoto
If you’ve been using iPhoto to manage your images, then you know that our explanation of why Aperture is a key part of our workflow could apply to iPhoto, too. While iPhoto is great for managing images of your family and friends taken with your point and shoot, it’s really limited when you put it under a microscope. For example, while you can make basic retouching adjustments in iPhoto like a levels adjustment, Aperture lets you fine-tune those adjustments to develop your image exactly the way you want it to look, perhaps adjusting the levels in just one color channel or using the quarter tone controls (which we cover in Chapter 6) to adjust the levels in a specific part of your image. If you really like the effect your adjustment creates, you can save it as a preset to easily apply to other images, even on import. Aperture 3 has the ability to brush those adjustments selectively onto just part of your image, meaning you can make one levels adjustment in the sky and another on the ground, something iPhoto just can’t do. Oh, and if you prefer using curves to levels, Aperture 3 has a curves adjustment, too.
However, more advanced image-adjustment controls aren’t the only difference between iPhoto and Aperture. Aperture provides tools to manage a far larger library than iPhoto can manage. For example, Aperture lets you make complicated searches for images, such as the search in Figure 1.1 that finds all your top-rated images taken in 2010 in San Francisco that have the keyword water. If you want to know specifics about Aperture’s tools to help categorize and search for images, check out Chapters 5 and 6. Aperture is also a lot more flexible with managing your photos, and unlike in iPhoto, images in Aperture can easily be stored on multiple hard drives. Aperture 3 also adds great new tools to merge and split off collections of images, making it easy to share image collections between two machines.
1.1 An image search that’s easy to do in Aperture but just not practical in iPhoto.
Lastly, while there are similar features in iPhoto and Aperture, like Faces, Places, books, and slide shows, they are just more powerful in Aperture. Aperture’s Book tool, which is covered in Chapter 7, has advanced layout options that let you completely customize the image and text boxes on your page, or even use a photo to create a two-page background spread. Aperture’s slide shows, explored in Chapter 8, let you go beyond iPhoto’s click-and-play slide shows, creating custom titles, transitions, and music. You can even include HD video within an Aperture slide show.
Fortunately, starting with Aperture 3.3, iPhoto and Aperture have a unified library and adjustment format. This means you can seamlessly move between the two programs using the same library data. As an example, you could use Aperture to split your library over multiple drives and to adjust your images, and then you could switch to iPhoto, load up that same library displaying your adjusted images, and then order a card or calendar, something you can’t do in Aperture.
In summary, while iPhoto is great for the casual consumer, just as you move from a point-and-shoot camera to a dSLR to upgrade your photography, moving to Aperture from iPhoto lets you upgrade your image-management tools.
Choosing Aperture over Lightroom
For many photographers, Adobe Photoshop is the number one program for image work, and we certainly agree that it’s a great image-manipulation program (although Aperture’s adjustment tools combined with third-party Aperture plug-ins have made it so that we do more than 90 percent of our manipulation work in Aperture instead of Photoshop). You might be asking yourself why you shouldn’t just use Adobe products, such as Adobe Lightroom.
While in some ways the Lightroom-versus-Aperture debate is a bit like a religious Mac-versus-PC debate, there are specific reasons that we find Aperture to be a much better choice than Lightroom for our workflows. The main reason is that Lightroom has different modules that you must switch between for different tasks, whereas Aperture does not. Practically speaking, adjustments affect editing decisions, and it’s faster to make those decisions in Aperture than in Lightroom. For example, you may frequently look at an image and say, “This is good, but if I straighten it, will it be great?” In Aperture, you can use one keyboard shortcut and then drag the mouse to straighten the image. In Lightroom, you need to switch from the Organize to the Develop module, adjust the image, and then switch back to the main module to continue making editing decisions. Less time having to switch modes to make a decision means more time shooting and having fun!
We prefer Aperture for specific, technical reasons as well. One is that Aperture has a more powerful hierarchy (we dig into the specific parts of its structure shortly) that you can customize, such as moving albums wherever you want them to be, whereas Lightroom has a relatively flat hierarchy with limited customization options. In Aperture 3, like in Lightroom, you are able to brush adjustments onto an image, but Aperture provides far more control over how those adjustments are applied, such as only affecting the highlights or shadows. Furthermore, only a few adjustments in Lightroom can be brushed onto an image, whereas most adjustments in Aperture can be selectively applied. Aperture’s curves control is far more powerful than Lightroom’s parametric curves, too. Some tools, such as book authoring, have been in Aperture since the first version and have undergone a lot of refinement, whereas in Lightroom they are just appearing and are not as mature. Then there are also features that Lightroom just doesn’t have, such as Faces.
We should mention that while we far prefer Aperture to Lightroom, Lightroom is not a bad program, and if you have a PC, it’s a very good choice. However, if you have a Mac, we enthusiastically recommend that you use Aperture.
Working with Aperture’s File Structure
If you’ve used a program like Bridge before (one that is essentially an image viewer and metadata editor for the files on your drive), then you’re accustomed to the folder hierarchy on your hard drive being exactly what you see in Bridge, and when you move images around within Bridge or make new folders, it also creates new folders and moves files around on your hard drive for you. Programs such as Aperture (and Lightroom) take a different approach. Your images live in a particular location on your hard drive (more on this in a minute) and appear within a different structure within Aperture. When you move images around within Aperture, between albums for example, they don’t move around on your hard drive (although there are special commands to let you move the files around), and when you create a new folder within Aperture, that folder doesn’t actually exist on your hard drive. Let’s take a minute to explore how Aperture stores files and the different terms for the various collections of images.
We frequently use the word image to talk about any file in Aperture, including movie and audio files, as Aperture treats them all in essentially the same way, especially as far as the file structure is concerned.
Understanding the Aperture library and where your files live
One of the fundamental concepts in Aperture is a library. A library refers to a collection of images. On your hard drive, a library, like the one in Figure 1.2, stores and tracks information about...
