He brings me stuff like new lenses and photo editing/managing software.
Tell me this isn’t sweet? The other day Israel read my blog posting about being ready to increase my Photoshop skills. So he brought home Apple’s Aperture.
Until two days ago I’ve been importing all my photos to Apple’s iPhoto. Then I’d edit using Photoshop and save the final versions (usually a PSD or TIFF file plus a JPEG for the web) to Adobe Bridge, the software I used to manage my photos. I’m still learning Aperture and trying to figure out my system, but it looks like I’ll be using Aperture for everything except for when I want to do some detailed Photoshop work on certain pictures.
From Apple’s website, here is one of the best reasons to use this software:
“And for Aperture, protecting your RAW images is Job 1. No matter how you modify the images you capture, Aperture preserves the integrity of the RAW original, never changing a single pixel of the image.
Instead, whenever you use Aperture’s controls to make a change  from improving exposure to increasing edge sharpness to eliminating dust spots  Aperture records them in its database as an instruction set. It doesn’t modify the RAW original in any way. It simply creates a new “version†of your image, modifying the way it appears on screen based on the input you provide. Tell Aperture to make an image brighter, and it does. Following your instructions, it changes the way the image looks but without modifying the original RAW image itself.”
You can have ten different versions of one photo without ever having to save or rename them. This takes up much less space on your hard drive. Plus you can stack all those versions together so you don’t have to search for them individually and you can view multiple images side by side to compare and choose.
Apple is so cool. Well, this is my project for the next little while: to learn how to use Aperture in conjunction with Photoshop.
