When Aperture first came out, there was nothing like it on the software front. There were tools for converting your raw photos and organizing your images, but none combined the two. I first started using Aperture almost immediately after it came out. It was not just a huge change in the way I went about managing my images, but the way I approached photography in general. It was a liberating experience and it meant that I spent less time managing folders and files, and more time enjoying the art.
Over the years, Apple has added more and more features to the software, and it has become more and more complex, yet it retains a high degree of approachability. But that ease of use hides a degree of complexity underneath the surface that makes it a powerful tool in the right hands.
It was the release of Aperture that led to a whole new class of photo management software and it is Aperture that is responsible for the phrase "photo workflow". Before Aperture, this concept didn't exist. Now, the model that Apple developed is pretty much the standard way to approach post production of digital photography, and while Aperture has attracted a number of competitors to the space, the software still has many unique features, especially if you dig beneath the surface. Digging beneath that surface is what I hope to achieve with this book.
The idea behind the book was simple; I wanted to approach it in a way that solves a problem that I personally have found with a lot of books written about software. You've probably run into this yourself. You know the basics of a piece of software and you want to increase your knowledge, but most training material is written with absolute beginners in mind. You end up going through a book and trying to sieve through the basic information that you already know, while searching for the nuggets of knowledge that are not just aimed at beginners. This can be so boring and tedious that one often gives up. On the other hand, you have books that are written for very advanced users that, while skipping out on the basics, also miss out much of the intermediate information that a person might want to know.
So, Mastering Apple Aperture, is aimed at the middle ground. It's for people who know the basics, but want to learn more. If you know how Aperture works, but you want to know more details and want to learn some of the not so obvious tips and tricks, then this book is for you. It is not a book for absolute beginners, as it was written with the assumption that you already know how to use Aperture a little bit. There are no boring explanations of how to install the software, how to use the menus, what each part of the interface is, and so on. Instead, this book will build on your existing knowledge of the software and help to turn you into a true master.
Chapter 1, Advanced Importing and Organizing, teaches the reader some of the advanced functionality of Aperture's import functionality, as well as techniques for organizing and sorting your library.
Chapter 2, Advanced Adjustments, introduces the reader to the theory behind how the camera RAW format works, and how to make use of Aperture's advanced image editing functionality.
Chapter 3, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Curves, takes an in-depth look at Aperture's curves tool as well as the theory behind curves and the histogram. You will learn how powerful feature the curves tool is and some of the many things you can do with it.
Chapter 4, Aperture in Action, builds on the previous chapters, and provides a set of real-world examples of how to use Aperture to complete various tasks.
Chapter 5, Extending Aperture, takes an in-depth look at Aperture's plugin architecture as well as looking at workflows for working with third-party software.
Chapter 6, Exporting and Outputting to the Web, looks at the many ways you can get your images out of Aperture and share them on social networks, photo sharing services or your own websites.
Chapter 7, Making Metadata Work for You, looks at the subject of metadata information, how to enter it, and how valuable it can be.
Chapter 8, Getting Better Prints from Aperture, looks at the subject of printing from Aperture, and how to get better quality and more accurate prints.
This book is designed for people who are already familiar with the basics of Aperture. It assumes you know how to use a computer, and more specifically a Mac. It also assumes you have a copy of Aperture. This book was written for Aperture 3.4 or later version. If you have any version of Aperture 3, 3.4 is a free upgrade, but 3.3 and 3.4 added some key features that are covered in various parts of this book. It also assumes you have a digital camera which can shoot in a RAW format and you have access to RAW files.
This book is designed for those who have a basic understanding of Aperture and photography software in general. It is not designed for absolute beginners, and it will not teach you the basics of using the software. You need to have a beginner's level of experience with Aperture specifically, and photography software in general. This book occasionally discusses photographic terms and concepts, so the reader needs to have a basic understanding of photography and photographic theory.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking on the Next button moves you to the next screen".
We also provide you a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/3561OT_ColorGraphics.pdf.
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