Away to Me

iGoogle is not only a convenient homepage where you can see your email, RSS feeds, weather, etc. in one easy place, but the choice of themes is expanding at a rapid rate.  I currently have the Dale Chihuly theme.

If you prefer to utilize your own photos in an iGoogle theme, I found igThemer is a quick and simple way to make your own iGoogle theme.  In just a few minutes, I took my Cinque Terre photo at the top of the blog and turned it into my own custom iGoogle theme.

Who can resist getting away from the computer and  going out to play with these do-it-yourself pinhole  cameras from Corbis?  No chimping possible with these.

Makes me glad I kept my darkroom and a hefty stash of film.

Thanks, Photojojo!

In the ongoing saga of trying to sort through problems with Aperture 2.01, I’ve encountered a new and scarier problem. A couple of images that I’ve tried to work on that experienced the cropping issue, have disappeared from my Aperture library after I quit and re-opened it. While trying to crop and then remove the adjustments (since the crop ratio wasn’t working correctly), an “X” has appeared in the lower left hand corner of the image that I am unable to remove and the image disappears.

The vaults are still showing either yellow or black meaning that no images have been added or removed. Luckily, I had never deleted the images out of a folder that stored them before I imported them into Aperture, so I was able to re-import them.

Before trying anything else in Aperture, I have now decided that a good course of action is to export all of my masters onto a hard drive so that I have copies of them outside of Aperture in addition to inside Aperture. With about a 90 GB main Aperture library, this is taking a little while and is definitely going to fill up the 500 GB drives quickly since they house either the library or vaults plus now a folder with all of the master images. If I had done extensive editing, I’d also want to export the versions, but I am satisfied to at least have copies of all my master images stored outside of Aperture.

One of the nice features in Aperture is how it lets you control so much when you export images. I’ve opted to have them exported into subfolders by year, month, day and have them retain the master file names that I gave them. It is an organized structure and makes it easy for me to find any image that I need.

With hard drives at the low prices they are at, redundancy pays off, paranoia pays off, and keeping your images stored in different ways pays off.

During the day yesterday, the artifact issues and Aperture crashing seemed to clear up, but other problems appeared. Cropping was not working properly and trying to export a full-size JPEG (from a RAW image) resulted in a thumbnail being exported instead of the full-size JPEG. After posting about my problems on the Apple Aperture support forum, I received an email with some suggestions as possible fixes. They were:

Upgraded to 2.01 this morning and now I am having some serious problems. I am pretty much unable to make any adjustment without everything freezing. I am unable to even do a force quit and am having to resort to re-booting with the power button. Haven’t had time to see where the problem is coming from or if I’m alone in this, but just a word of warning if you haven’t already upgraded.

Not only is everything working EXTREMELY slow or freezing, the adjustments are causing strange artifacts. Here is before:

Here is with shadow adjusted to about 20:

Here’s what my browser looks like after moving “Highlight” up to 7:

and my desktop and secondary monitor had the same artifacts even after I quit out of Aperture until I re-started my computer again.

One of the wonderfully flexible features in Aperture is the ability to name your files just about any way you want to. The default is the file name from the camera.   My preference is a name that includes the date and time the photograph was taken.  Since I store the images taken by 3 family members within one Master Aperture Library, I chose a custom naming preset that included their initials along with the date and time the image was taken.  If I ever choose to move my images out of Aperture, it will be easy to keep them organized by photographer and date.  (note - Aperture allows you to re-name images on import or export, so if you haven’t named your images on import, don’t despair).

Here’s how to set up a custom naming preset:

1.  When you choose to import images, an information box appears that allows you to add metadata at import. 

Under “Version Name”, choose “Edit”.

2.  A naming preset box will appear. Click the plus button under “Name”, Aperture allows you to set up a new naming preset. In the format box, drag the buttons from below in the order that you want the name to appear.

I opted to start the image name with our initials, so the first button I chose was “Custom Name”. After moving the custom name button into the format box, type the name you want in the “Custom Name” box. You might choose to name your images “Europe” or “Wedding” or some other identifying element.

After identifying the photographer, the next thing I wanted was the time the image was taken. I chose the year, month, day format, followed by the time. An underscore between the day and time makes it clearer. Click “OK” and you’ve developed a new naming preset.

Since your master image name can only be changed on import or export, think it through before you move your whole iPhoto library into Aperture.

I just installed Aperture 2.0 and what a difference! Things work MUCH faster, especially in Quick Preview mode. It is a much simpler design than 1.5 and seems like it would be very easy for new users to learn to use.

Using the non-custom installation results in about 3 GB of sample high resolution images to be placed on your hard drive. The user manual uses these images as a teaching tool to guide newcomers through the basics of Aperture. Anyone who has used it before will want to delete these images so they don’t take up so much disk space.

Aperture 2.0 provided support for the Canon Powershot G9 without me having to upgrade to Leopard yet. So, finally, I can verify that the hiking trail down from the Schilthorn in Switzerland was indeed as steep and narrow as I recall it being.

After a long wait, apertureprofessional.com is announcing the release of Apple’s Aperture 2.0. Finally, a chance to see 6 months worth of Canon Powershot G9 raw images!