Aperture (Mac)

[NDA]

I've recently moved away from owning a PC and now have an iMac.... which is great.

However I'm struggling to get to grips with Aperture - just learning really.

Is it possible to create layers in Aperture? I don't think it is... if I wanted a B&W shot with just one colour coming through, is that possible and if so how?

Many thanks

[AndWhyNot]

Layers aren't possible but spot colour should be achievable. It's been a couple of years since I used Aperture but I think you can either use HSL (hue, saturation, luminance) sliders to desaturate all colours except the one you want to keep. Within that function I seem to remember there's an option to use an eyedropper tool to accurately select the tone you want to keep; or if the coloured subject is all in one place like, say, a London bus, you could use the selective editing to desaturate around it.

There may even be a plugin that's designed to assist but I never explored the software to that extent.

Which version of Aperture? And why do you want to process selective colour? It can often end up as more of a distraction than improving the image.

[NDA]

I'm using 3.5.1

I shall play around with the settings you suggest.... thanks.

[Beau Nash]

Aperture's brushes are useful for "colour popping". Select the "Saturation" brush and set it to zero with maximum softness and brush over everything except the object you want to retain colour. If you do go over the object accidentally, just pick the eraser option and brush over the wrong bits. Use a colour overlay to easily see where you've gone wrong (as all of us do).

Layers as such aren't possible in Aperture. Have you set up an external editor? The beauty of DAM/parametric raw editors such as Aperture (and Lightroom and Capture One etc) is that you can "round-trip" files for pixel level editing (e.g. Photoshop/Elements, Gimp, Pixelmator) that are then automatically reimported back into your Aperture library.

Edited by Beau Nash on Saturday 8th March 19:59

[Beau Nash]

And I agree with AndWhyNot. Colour popping is a bit last year now, if not last decade.

[NDA]

Great thanks...

Yes, a bit old hat, but there was a pic I was playing with.

Thanks.

[Beau Nash]

NDA said:

Great thanks...

Yes, a bit old hat, but there was a pic I was playing with.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

And yes, ignore what I said (and what AWN said); shoot and process for yourself.

[NDA]

[Beau Nash]

Done in Aperture?

[Beau Nash]

Oh and that cool shot is crying out for some vintage treatment. Get yourself to PresetPond (and Google "Aperture Vintage Presets") for some '70s colour film jiggery-pokery.

[NDA]

I can't seem to really get comfortable with Aperture - it's obviously a great bit of software, but I'm so familiar with Photoshop and I do like to tinker with photos.

Would Elements 12 be a better alternative for me on the Mac?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Photoshop-Elements-1...

Advice welcome as I'm not an expert.

Thanks.

[Beau Nash]

NDA said:

I can't seem to really get comfortable with Aperture - it's obviously a great bit of software, but I'm so familiar with Photoshop and I do like to tinker with photos.

Would Elements 12 be a better alternative for me on the Mac?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Photoshop-Elements-1...

Advice welcome as I'm not an expert.

Thanks.

Contact Adobe and for a small fee they can change your licence from Windows to OSX. This assumes that Adobe haven't banjaxed that option with their CC system and that your copy of PS is kosher.

I'm not sure if you realise this or not; my apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs - Aperture isn't an image editor in the way that PS is. Aperture is essentially a database program with the ability to decode raw files with a limited ability to do further edits. Lightroom is the same. They are known as DAMs - Digital Asset Managers.

PS and the like are destructive editors in that they alter the image. So you're always best editing a copy rather than the original file.

Aperture & Lightroom are non-destructive (so-called parametric) editors in that the original image is not touched; a set of instructions are recorded in the database and your image is rendered after combining the image with the new set of instructions. That way, you can revisit the same image over and over and do different edits. You can create as many different Versions (known as Virtual Copies in Lightroom) as you like. And these take up next to no space on your HD unlike the multiple copies you'd create with PS. Aperture's Versions only take up significant space if you choose to export the file for some reason.

The power of Aperture is its organising ability so that with a bit of keywording and captioning, you can find that picture of Auntie Nora in Paris with the ice cream or that red Lambo that you drove on that track day in 2007. You can drill down really deeply so that, for instance, you can find all those pictures of the London Eye but only if you shot them with your wide angle lens with a shutter speed of 30s after 9pm. When you've got tens of thousands of images, shot over many years, you'll be glad of something like Aperture.

Whilst you can get by using just a DAM for your photo editing (and many successful 'togs do), to get the most out of Aperture, set up an external editor such as PS or PSE or Gimp to which you can export your decoded raw images as jpegs or tiffs for pixel level editing. Aperture can also store jpegs, tiffs, gifs, pngs etc as well of course.

Edited by Beau Nash on Sunday 9th March 11:23

Edited by Beau Nash on Sunday 9th March 11:24

Edited by Beau Nash on Sunday 9th March 21:57

[NDA]

Really useful post - I didn't know most of the stuff you mentioned. And you really don't want to see Aunty Nora with the ice cream in Paris - her case comes up next week. I think they'll lock her up.

Well I took the plunge and bought Photoshop, your post helped me understand the key differences so I really appreciate you taking the time out to write it.

It looks a little bit different on a Mac, but it's what I want.

Thanks.

N

[Beau Nash]

Happy to help!