!(alignright naked)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/aperture.png! So, after much neglect on my part, I have resurrected the nascent photographer in my heart. I made the plunge and upgraded from the it-was-working-for-me “iPhoto”:http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/ to the what’s-new-and-how-is-it-better
“Aperture”:http://www.apple.com/aperture/. I started with the free 30-day trial, and after the month was up, I had to have it.

The RAW workflow, the non-destructive editing process, the UI, the adjustment controls, and the metadata are light years ahead of iPhoto. Sure, I’m not a professional photographer, but I still sweat the details. I tag all my photos with each person’s name, I can now add location information (city, state, country), and best of all, the source-list organization of projects, folders and albums is _far_ superior to iPhoto’s one-level deep hierarchy. Add on the wonderful “Core Image”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/ powered imaging pipeline with user-definable export settings for size, format, metadata, and I have found the perfect photo-cataloguing, photo-finishing application.

The real beauty of Aperture shines with my new AppleScript that takes advantage of its export settings to create JPGs from RAW images for output to “sensory output photos”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/photos/. The AppleScript handles export of 3 sizes (1920×1280 px, 600×400 px, and 100×100 px thumbnail). Because the actual RAW photo is not truly 3 by 2 pixel for pixel, I export to a size just larger than each of these, and then use Image Events to crop. The picture quality compared to before really is quite stunning. Now the colors pop, as compared to the old web album pictures, generated with a combination of iPhoto, Photoshop, Image Events, and—shudder—”ImageMagick”:http://www.imagemagick.org/. Take a look at these before and after.

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Metadata is really starting to come into its own in terms of how Apple, Mac OS X, and its developers both see, use, and manipulate it. Aperture feeds into this by allowing the input of custom metadata, alerting me to when a picture has been put into one of my custom web albums. While not in your face, the “data about data” is always lurking in the background, allowing me to find pictures with a familiar face or taken on a specific date.

p.s. If you’ve made it this far, please take a look at my new all-time favorite picture: “Fingers”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/photos/lightning/fingers.jpg.