Lumière d’Argent

Colin Jago’s excellent blog is focused on colour problems for some time now. At the beginning I was reading out of theoretical interest. But the recent posts have me think about my own way of working. For several months my workflow has been:

1. Import from the card in Aperture, getting the basic filing/key-wording sorted out.
2. Backup, just two clicks in Aperture and my new pictures are on three disks.
3. Editing in Aperture.
4. For the interesting ones, refining the tones in LightZone.

Colin lead me to re-evaluate Raw Developer, for which I have a license. It is indeed an extremely good program. So the good ones will now transit through Raw Developer between Aperture and LightZone.

Stephane :: Jul.07.2007 :: Software :: No Comments »

I just posted the following on Colin’s blog:

I find raw converters are very much like film developers. Only in digital we can process the same photograph in several developers and compare.My main developer is Aperture. I find it very good for processing what is on the card when I return. At the same time I file and backup everything, it is so handy for that. It also allows me to get quite far near what a final print would look like. Then, if in doubt, I can process the very few interesting ones in Raw Developer and Lightzone. If none of those three will give me satisfying results then I give up. But it has never happened. Most of the time Aperture is enough.Of course, like with developers, it depends on what film you use, ie. the sensor. so for an M8 it is very likely my developer of choice could be different.

I then realized it would be a relevant entry here

Stephane :: Jul.02.2007 :: Software :: No Comments »

Today I came back from a photography day, eager to see some of the pictures I took. I take the card from my EOS 5D, put it in the FireWire card reader, run Aperture, ask it to import from the card and… no pictures. Aaaargh!Nothing, zilch, nada, gone.Total despair.I just let it go for a while thinking that’s life, things happen, it is not that bad, could be worse, was just a few pictures, some people are hungry, etc… but still, I could not really get over it.I decide to run a Google search on the problem and see what I find. Nothing interesting. I run the same search on the dpreview.com forum and there I find a message about how PhotoRescue saved a photographer with the same problem.I download PhotoRescue evaluation, run it, and after working about 20 minutes, it recovers all the pictures I ever took with the camera! It raises some interesting questions about what a formatting by the 5D actually does, but most importantly all my lost pictures were there. Of course, to be able to actually save the rescued pictures, I had to pay the PhotoRescue license, a reasonable $30.Now I wonder about that Seagate 8GB Microdrive. Should I? I am 99% positive I did not make any mistake in the manipulation. Since I bought it Compact Flash cards prices have fallen dramatically so maybe I should just replace it. I don’t know.

Stephane :: Apr.16.2007 :: Software :: No Comments »

OK, I have resolved that Aperture is after all the best compromise today as a foundation of my software toolbox. It takes care of storage, backup, editing, sorting, searching, cataloguing and RAW conversion so well it is enough to justify it already.

I still need PhotoShop, but I realize I use it as a stop gap until Aperture gets what is missing like local adjustments, a more developed print module where I could put arbitrary text on the print, and something usable for spotting. Seriously, that’s all I use PhotoShop for. And maybe when I get the Mac Pro spotting will turn out to be usable in Aperture too.

LightZone is great, but, as said before, using two external editors with Aperture is a mess and better avoided. So I’ll stop using it.

Given my PhotoShop usage, I seldom see the point of upgrading to CS3. CS3 will be faster on my Intel Mac but CS is already faster than on my previous 1 Ghz G4 and I never found it too slow. On the Mac Pro I’ll have all the speed I can dream of.

So Aperture and my ancient PhotoShop do it all for me, greatly reducing the software needs.

I wonder if many other photographers out there arrive at the same conclusions and what impact this could have on the photography software market.

Stephane :: Apr.09.2007 :: Software :: No Comments »

I am not about to engage in a rant about how Adobe products are too expensive. I don’t think they are. They are high quality products sold at a fair price.

In the US.

Upgrading to CS3 Design Standard is $399 in the US.

It is 685€ in Europe (without VTA).

That’s $913 at today’s rate.

That’s a 129% markup.

That’s 2.3 times the price.

The prices are on the Apple Store, on the web, so considerations about cost of doing business are largely irrelevant.

I don’t think Adobe sells at a loss in the US.

So, this is plain rip off. Unless I can buy in the US or at US prices, I won’t buy. Plain and simple.

Stephane :: Mar.29.2007 :: Software :: No Comments »