Time for another episode, this time on basic workflow – importing a few photos, deleting the crap, and processing the one(s) that don’t get nuked. This time, the dogs were quiet, and The Boy™ decided not to make an appearance. I might schedule him for a later episode…
Episode 2: Basic Workflow weighs in at 12.1 MB, and clocks in at 10:27. Or, if you want a full HD version, use the second link.
Digital Photography Sessions – Episode 2 (320×240, 12.1MB)
This was encouraging for me. I actually use a very similar workflow using whatever software I’ve had, Picasa, iphoto and then used Photoshop or Fireworks for the detail these programs don’t provide.
Still toggling between Aperture and iPhoto. Wondering if the keywords transfer to flickr? That’s been the most challenging thing for me is file management on the mac. I can find any of my nearly 5,000 photos on flickr in about 12 seconds because of tagging. While I realize the mac uses tagging, I hate to do it twice. It would be great if these tags transferred to flickr.
I didn’t do the full workflow – which almost always winds up with the surviving photos being uploaded to Flickr. The Flickr Export for Aperture does use the keywords I’ve added in Aperture when posting to Flickr. It also adds “Posted to Flickr” as a keyword after the fact within Aperture so I can easily find all photos that I’ve uploaded (I believe you can optionally turn this off, as well), AND it stores the Flickr photo ID and URL in the photo’s metadata in Aperture so I can update the photo later if I want.
Enjoyed that one – are you doing all those edits in RAW? Would you get less control if JPG?
thanks! I should have mentioned that. oops. All of these shots (99% or more of what I shoot) are RAW. The “Auto Exposure” button doesn’t work on JPEG.
Most of the adjustments work just fine on any image format (RAW, JPEG, PNG, PDF, etc…) but JPEG essentially throws away a lot of data to get the compression, so you have less stuff to work with. Might not be a big deal, but it’d be pretty noticeable on things like blue skies (gradients can show banding and compression artifacts in JPEG but generally not in RAW). With RAW, you can often pull detail out of shadows that wouldn’t be there in JPEG, or decrease exposure to recover detail in highlights that would just be blown out in JPEG…
Thanks for the workflow sequence. I did a lot of photo processing over the lat three years with Photoshop Elements 4.0 on my PC. I bought a Mac Book Pro last fall and I have to decide what processing software to use – thinking Elements or Aperture. Good to see your work with Aperture.
Just got through watching both episodes- the second one was inspiring. We just bought Aperture 2- and now, I can’t wait to use it. Really like the workflow- and compared to iPhoto- the pictures are presented in a much less distracting manner.
I’d like to see an episode about how to take your full rez photos- and resize for the web- and how and why you use Flickr.
Thanks again D’Arcy- I always learn from you.
@david a few people have asked about the flickr integration, so I’ll probably do an episode where I show how the Flickr Export plugin works. It is pretty sweet.