Before I continue with the theme of my switch from iPhoto to Aperture I thought I'd comment on the recently released iLife apps as they relate to image management and sharing. I've not used iPhoto yet but I'm sure I will before too long. I certainly won't be switching back but I do like to stay current in my skill set should the need arise that a client need training or help with troubleshooting. The iPhoto upgrade looks like a solid and useful upgrade but nothing earth shattering. Of particular note is that iPhoto continues to make back-up copies of each image the user edits which was my primary reason for switching to Aperture.

In regards to sharing images via the web, I'm happy to report that Aperture, with the recent update to 1.5.4 works just fine with the updated iWeb 08. I'm an avid user of Flickr and have been from the early days but I do not pay for the Pro account which means that only my most recent 200 images are accessible. I'm okay with that because I can still tag my photos and add them to group pools which is the point of Flickr, to share and comment on photos. Flickr is as much about social interaction as it is about images. Back in February I decided that for the purposes of sharing older photos, I would set up my own image archive here at MacProductive. My intention was to use iPhoto and iWeb. The main drawback was the size of the image output of iWeb: the files were gigantic, often twice the size of a properly optimized image. My work around involved the time consuming process of optimizing with Photoshop. Not the end of the world but the point of iWeb is to make the process quick and easy.

When I switched to Aperture I tried using the built in gallery creation of Aperture and was disappointed with the layout of the galleries as well as the web optimization. I'm not sure why this seems to be a problem for Apple. Rather than continue with iWeb for my photo pages I went in search of a third party solution. I settled on Myriad's Galerie photo gallery software and have been pretty happy with it. The images are optimized as they should be and updating changed galleries on my server is much easier than iWeb. I can also customize the gallery design as much as I would like and Myriad hosts a free commenting system too.

With the new release of iWeb 08 I was curious to see if Apple had addressed any of the items on my iWeb wishlist. They did improve image optimization in some instances and the new photo album features are mostly an improvement. The ability to preview the images in the albums by hovering over each one is fantastic though I think the slideshow is a bit heavy on the reflections. The final verdict is that my updated image galleries are larger because of new files and effects. I might be able to deal with that but Apple continues to make updating to non .Mac servers a pain. Still no way to upload directly to a server and publishing to a folder marks all files as updated so a selective upload of only changed files based on date is not possible. For now I think I'll stick with Myriad's Galerie. Would have been great to just be able to rely on Aperture and iWeb... oh well, maybe next time?

You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream.

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Macintosh, iPhoto 08, iLife, iWeb 08, Aperture

To continue with the process of my switch from iPhoto to Aperture I thought I'd briefly discuss a few issues I faced that may be of interest to other potential switchers. First up, can your Mac even run Aperture. iPhoto will run pretty well on any G4 or better, not so with Aperture. You'll want to check Apple's page for Aperture's hardware requirements. It requires a good bit of juice. Even if your machine meets the requirements you may want to close certain, resource hungry apps when running Aperture. When I'm not using Aperture I often run Safari, Mail, Vienna for RSS, iCal, iTunes, iChat, a text editor and an ftp cilent. When I start up Aperture I usually close every other app but Safari. I'm running on a MacBook Pro with 2 gigs of ram I notice a major slow down with those other apps open.

Next, importing images into Aperture and setting up the library can be a bit tricky. It's possible to import your iPhoto Library right from Aperture but the keyword import can be a mess. It is also possible to manually import the folders of images in the iPhoto Library. There is no "right" way to do it. My suggestion would be to experiment. I decided to take my time with a manual import of the folders into projects that were based on the folder names. I then condensed everything into projects based on each month's imports. I also reevaluated all my keywords and changed certain aspects of my keyword process. Because I was a bit uncertain that I was switching over for good I experimented with a partial import first and spent a week learning about the workings of Aperture.

In my experience, taking my time during the import process as well as learning during the process proved very helpful. I knew that all my images were still safe in my iPhoto Library and any mistakes I made could be discarded by simply throwing away my new Aperture Library. After one week I felt comfortable enough using Aperture and completed the transition. I spent the second week of the process importing the rest of my iPhoto library and tagging with my newly refined set of keywords.

You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream.

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Macintosh, iPhoto, iLife, Aperture

In my previous post I mention that I had switched from iPhoto to Aperture. I've been using iPhoto since the very first version and have always enjoyed it. Over the years, as Apple has improved it that enjoyment has grown. It's never been perfect but worked weåll enough for the number of images I worked with. However, soon after I purchased my DSLR it became very obvious very quickly that I would have to do something about storage of images. Not only were my images 2-3mb each, up from 500kb, but I was also taking far more. In fact, I'm taking 500 images a month rather than 500 a year! I expect that during the winter months I'll take fewer but regardless, my shutter is clicking far more often so saving hard drive space was my first and primary motivation in the switch.

As much as I enjoy iPhoto it does require far more hard drive space when editing photos. While most of my editing is very subtle I do edit almost every photograph. With iPhoto that means a copy is made of the original. Imagine, my monthly total of 500 images, averaging 2.5 mb that's 1.2 gigs a month. With iPhoto that would be nearly doubled!! I hope to begin to pair each months photos down to 300 images or less but that is still around 750mb a month. By comparison, Aperture's method of non-destructive editing results in a small text file of a few kb for each edit version. If I want to use my Aperture images in other applications such as iMovie, Keynote, or Pages I have to make previews of those images, which results in an additional file of 125 - 250 kb. I don't make previews for all of my images, just my highest rated so my previews are still under a total of 100 mb.

The actual process of switching was relatively painless but certainly required a bit of effort. I'll discuss that as well as some of the other differences between iPhoto and Aperture in a future post.

You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream.

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Macintosh, iPhoto, iLife, Aperture

I'm still around!! Been following the latest Mac news which, this summer, has of course meant the iPhone. I've daydreaming of the upcoming Leopard release which is certain to be an excellent upgrade based upon Apple's WWDC preview. My summertime is usually spent with a preoccupation with my garden and photographing it. This summer has been particularly fun because I purchased my first DSLR, a Canon Rebel XT! Also of note is my switch from iPhoto to Aperture. You can check out my growing archive of images at Dennyville or via my Flickr stream. Perhaps my next post will address the switch from iPhoto to Aperture? I've also been trying out Myriad's Galerie photo gallery software as a substitute for iWeb's image galleries. Much better!! Perhaps that also will be an upcoming post!

Technorati Tags: Apple, OS X, Macintosh, Canon, iLife, iWeb