TrevorCarpenter.com

Yesterday I was in a special mood. I don’t know why, but I was grouchy for a bit. However, as usual, I wander the internets reading blog posts and articles.

Apparently, I stumbled upon one of my dailies, and posted a comment. Well, I guess my comment was a bit off topic, or something. I was also critical. I know, I know, that’s out of the ordinary for me. Usually I’m such an amicable kind of guy.

Well, the blog post in question was over at Scott Kelby’s blog. The article is titled, Camera Raw, Bridge, or Lightroom? Basically, Scott had a question about the confusion over using the RAW converter in Photoshop, Bridge, and Lightroom. Rather than answer the question directly to the asker, he blogged it. Makes sense. I’d do the same. In my special mood, I read the article and was curious about why Scott didn’t mention anything about Apple’s Aperture.

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Now, let me be clear. I was a bit harsh in my comment. I was being sarcastic. I guess it was enough for Scott to reply with a blog post today.

However, I am still curious about Scott deciding to take a specific question, from one fan, and answer it generally for the public. Now, if the original question happened to come from a Windows user, then a Windows based answer is appropriate. But, to bring the discussion to a more open forum, and attempt to become more general, why not include a wider set of variables to the question?

Why not consider the RAW converters in most of the industry standards for photographers? I’m sure if you included Apple Aperture, Nikon NX, and maybe an open solution, he’d have generated a much more curious dialogue. I expect a more narrow conversation from lower level bloggers, like myself. But from the top bloggers, I expect more.

So, I apologize for my attitude. And I wish I had posed my question differently. However, I am still curious. I understand that Scott has made his brand loyalty choice. That’s fine. However, when reading his awesome book, The Digital Photography Book, you don’t have him telling you all about his Nikon cameras. Yes, he prefers Nikon. But, his book looks more generally at the issues facing all photographers. Scott is a great writer and instructor. Why can’t I expect that a blog at ScottKelby.com would provide me with the same high level of fairness in evaluation?

Popularity: 50% [?]

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to shoot another architectural photo shoot. I shot two residences and earned enough to acquire a copy of Apple Aperture 2.0 and step a bit closer to my first real strobe kit. I’ve been shooting with my one speedlight and renting more when I need them. Yesterday, I rented a pair of genuine dyna-lite strobes, from Samy’s. I’m very grateful to have been able to shoot with those nice lights. I’m sold on strobes!

Additionally, I tested out Aperture 2.0, with their 30 day trial, over the last month. My trial expired a week back, and I was actually sad when it did. Not that I don’t have decent alternative asset management  and editing. I have been using a combo Adobe Bridge and Photoshop system. It has worked well for almost a year. Unfortunately, upgrading to Adobe’s Lightroom is really the professional step they want you to make. I trialed Lightroom late last year, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the modular system. I didn’t like how it performed on my slower Mac Mini. I simply didn’t like how it flowed.

I had played with Aperture in version 1.0, and quickly didn’t like it. But I think the biggest killer was that it was dog slow. Then came version 2.0.

The most important change to 2.0 was the speed enhancements. It’s now quite smooth, even on my slower Mac Mini. I can’t afford to upgrade the Mac right now, so a software solution that can effectively operate on it, is more than likely going to get my vote. In the next week or so, I’ll review what I do with Aperture, and show you my workflow. I have noticed that many more people use Aperture than I originally thought. So I’d like to help increase Aperture’s awareness just a bit.

So yesterday, I got it installed and processed the photo shoot with it. Lovely.

Today I woke up to see a big announcement from Apple about Aperture 2.1. What?! No problem, a free upgrade for me. It’s not loaded with a huge number of improvements. However, it is loaded with one massive feature addition. PLUGINS!

Now third party developers can design plugins to assist and enhance the editing within Aperture. Over time, I may not need to load Photoshop at all. I don’t have a problem with Photoshop, but how sweet will it be to only need one clean solution for my photo processing needs. I’ve heard great things about the solutions from Nik Software. Maybe they can be enticed to produce their plugins for Aperture too.

To show us how nice this new plugin system is, Apple included one nice plugin with the update.

“Dodge & Burn Plug-in. A sample plug-in is pre-installed, taking advantage of the Edit API introduced in Aperture 2.0. The plug-in adds brush-based tools for Dodge (Lighten), Burn (Darken), Contrast, Saturation, Sharpen and Blur.”

I was actually poking around the manual last night, looking for dodging and burning. Sweet! I’m real excited about all these new tools and how I’ll get to use them.

****edit***

StudioLighting.net is reporting that several top notch plugin developers have announced…

Expected additions to Aperture plug-ins include:

• Nik Software’s Viveza plug-in, powered by U Point technology, which provides a powerful, precise and easy way for photographers to selectively control and adjust color and light in their digital images;

• PictureCode’s Noise Ninja plug-in that delivers advanced high ISO noise analysis and reduction;

• Digital Film Tools’ Power Stroke plug-in that features a simple, stroke-based interface to quickly mask and intuitively perform targeted adjustments;

• The Tiffen Company’s Dfx plug-in that provides an expansive suite of creative filters and effects;

• dvGarage’s dpMatte plug-in, which is a high performance chroma key tool for creating seamless composites, and the HDRtoner plug-in that enables the selection of multiple photos to create a single high dynamic range (HDR) image; and

• Image Trends’ plug-ins that include Fisheye-Hemi to quickly and effortlessly correct fisheye lens distortion, ShineOff which automatically removes shine from faces and PearlyWhites that automatically whitens and brightens teeth.

Sweet! I shot over to Nik Software’s page and discovered that they’re already announcing compatibility with Aperture 2.1 in May 2008. (less than 2 months away)

Popularity: 89% [?]

So, it’s been a while since I’ve said anything about my Ubuntu travels. Well, it hasn’t gone away, I promise. I ran out of money and time in building the older machine. However, we did get a couple of Mac minis, which are Intel boxes, and perfect Ubuntu testers.

So with that in mind, I’ve loaded up the Fiesty Fawn Live CD a few times, playing and testing. It’s amazing!  Even on the Live CD, all I had to do to get the desktop effects was check a box in the settings. Sweet! Also one of the coolest is that I get the Flash plugin, since the Mac mini has an Intel chip. (The pre-Intel Mac’s have processors that are not supported with the Flash plugin.)

I must say, I’m ready to dump OSX on one of the machines. My wife’s is probably the most likely candidate, since all she has that is Mac only is a bunch of iTunes purchases.

My machine is used for a bit more, like Garageband, iMovie, etc. I’m also quite comfortable with my Mac’s podcasting software apps. And since I’m getting ready to record my last Scribe Music Show, but also getting together the stuff to launch a new show, with a coworker, I’ll need my podcasting stuff. Until the Linux multi-track audio editors get much better, I may need OSX for quite a while.

The only thing holding me back right now is the iTunes purchases. I’m stuck on having my music library on this exact Mac, so, moving it to my machine is out.

I’ve scoured for some open-source tool that will easily convert my DRM’d AAC’s to plain AAC’s or MP3’s, but nothing works with the newest iTunes. We also have too much to just burn to CD and then re-encode. So what do I do?

Popularity: 24% [?]

Ohhhh! No one is reporting this that I can find.

No one will care, because only like 4 people read my blog, but I just wanted to say that I broke a story.

Apple just announced a new 24″ iMac, and some other stuff. I’ll update this with more tomorrow.

TUAW is reporting in more detail, just go there.

Popularity: 5% [?]