Apple today introduced the Mac App Store. In addition to Apples iLife and iWork suites, Apple now sells Aperture 3 through the Mac App Store.

Most interesting, though, is its price. Instead of charging $199 for the boxed version, Aperture 3 is available for just $80 on the Mac App Store! At that price point, you get a worthy competitor to Adobes Lightroom for less than a third of its price.

Tags: Apple, Aperture, App Store, Bargain

Apple just released updates to extend Mac OS X system-level support for digital camera RAW formats adding the following camera models:

• Canon EOS 60D
• Canon PowerShot S95
• Hasselblad H4D-40
• Nikon D3100
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5
• Sony DSLR-A290
• Sony DSLR-A560
• Sony DSLR-A580
• Sony SLT-A33
• Sony SLT-A55

This update allows Aperture, iPhoto or any other application using Apples APIs, such as Pixelmator, etc., to open RAW files originating from those cameras — even within the Mac OS X finder you will now be able to use Quick Look on those newly supported RAW image files (select the file and hit the „Space“ bar).

Support for those cameras is added through the release of Mac OS X 10.6.5, go get it through „Software Update“ or download the Combo Updater.

The extended RAW image format support is available as separate download as well, though if you are going to install the Mac OS X 10.6.5 update you won’t need to install the RAW compatibility update separately (read „About the Mac OS X 10.6.5 Update“ ), it is part of the larger update.

Tags: Update, RAW, Aperture, iPhoto, Apple

In my previous post I mentioned that Apple’s new version Aperture 3.1 adds support for GPS heading (direction) metadata. With my Nikon D300 I am using the Solmeta Geotagger N2, which features an electronic compass (unlike Nikon’s original geotagger, the Nikon GP-1). I had briefly reviewed the Solmeta Geotagger N2 in this blog before, and I remain happy with its performance. However, Aperture did not fully support all provided GPS metadata until its current version 3.1. Though Aperture 3 introduced the “Places” feature, GPS ‘heading’ was neither used for map presentation, nor did the heading information show up in the metadata inspector.

The release notes of Aperture 3.1 announced support for GPS ‘heading’. However, upon first inspection this missing piece of information still does not show up in the metadata inspector. In fact, there are a few steps you have to take to get to that info, specifically for photos you had imported before Aperture 3.1 was released! This may be clear for many advanced users, but I have encountered some confusion about this in various discussions since the release of Aperture 3.1. For those running into problems, I would like to walk you through the necessary steps…



The metadata inspector (shown above) allows for selection of a predefined metadata view. You can change those views, or create new ones. A metadata view consists of a set of fields reporting specific information. By updating Aperture to version 3.1, the existing metadata views are not changed though — which is good, you may have spent quite some time to customize them according to your needs.

To add the ‘heading’ field to you views, click on the views selector and go to the end of the selection list that pops up. There is an “Edit…” entry, which opens the “Metadata Views” dialog. This dialog lists all currently defined views in the left panel, with your current view already pre-selected. The right panel lists all available metadata fields, with those fields making up your current view checked. To add the GPS ‘heading’ to your view, find the “Direction” field in the “EXIF” section and check the corresponding check box.



Closing this dialog, go to the metadata inspector and find the “Direction” field for the view you have just edited.



As you can see, the Direction field shows up. However, there is no content.

What happened?

The photo selected was imported before the update of Aperture to version 3.1. The working copy of that photo contains all metadata information that was supported before the update, and the heading information was not part of that set of metadata!

You could create a new working copy from the original, but there is a way to update all your current working copies. Its quite simple, and this can be done in one step specifically for those photos in your library containing GPS information.

First, select the “Photos” section in your project view. Within all photos in your library, we are going to search explicitly for those we want to update: Open the “Filter” HUD and add the rules shown below. All other rules that may be shown in the filter dialog from previous searches should be removed or disabled.



The last rule restricts my personal search to only those photos shot with my Nikon. Only for those I expect heading information to be available — I do have photos in my library taken with my iPhone 4, but even though it features an electronic compass, photos taken with the iPhone do only include GPS position, not heading information (as of iOS 4.1). I hope Apple adds this feature with the next release of iOS. If you can’t wait, there is one App that supposedly does embed heading metadata as well — that would be ProCamera (since version 2.95, though I have not tested this feature myself).

Using the filter settings above, all photos in need of a metadata update will show up. Depending on your throughput, many thousands of them… Updating one photos metadata does not take long — it adds up, though. That’s why we searched explicitly for those photos that actually do have GPS information embedded.

Now, select all photos that have been found. From the main “Metadata” menu, select “Update from Master” and wait…



You can open the Activity Viewer (using the key combination Cmd-Shift-0, a new shortcut introduced with Aperture 3.1 as well) and watch Aperture process your request.



If you get bored, check for an already processed image. Hopefully, you will see correct heading information in the metadata inspector.



What you are not going to see will be any kind of visual indication of heading in the map view directly. I am still waiting for that one, I hope Apple is going to add this feature with one of the next updates!

Tags: Aperture, Update, Apple, GPS, Geotagging, Solmeta, Geotagger N2, Nikon

Apple has just released a new version of Aperture. Aperture 3.1 adds compatibility with iLife ’11 and addresses a long list of performance issues and bugs.

Many small changes should improve ones every-day-workflow, such as “Metadata Inspector can now display GPS Direction if this data is available in geotagged photos” (taken directly from my personal wish list, though Apple still does not indicate heading in the map view directly… ).

Go get it through the “Software Update” entry in the Apple menu. Software Update will install a new version of “ProKit” first (the GUI toolkit for Aperture and other Apple Pro software). Once ProKit is updated, Aperture 3.1 will show up. Upon first running Aperture 3.1, it will briefly update your media libraries.

Tags: Aperture, Apple, Update

Note: This is one part of a multipart installment about my personal experiences with the iPad. If you are interested and haven’t read the previous parts, start here:

• What is iPad? — Introduction

The iPad is for Photographers…

Using the iPad for photography is a mixed bag. Let me start with the positive aspects. If you use the iPad you start to see where digital imaging is heading eventually. It just feels natural to “touch” your photographs and manipulate them by direct interaction with the image itself, not having to use some device “in the middle” such as a mouse or a pen tablet. I can imagine that professional solutions such as the Wacom Cintiq pen displays may offer an experience similar or even superior in respect to direct interaction with the image, but those solutions are expensive and require a more complex setup (inherent to any “multiple devices” solution). And, though I haven’t used such a pen display myself, I have a hard time to believe that, e.g., running Photoshop on a classical desktop computer with such a pen display feels nearly as fast as the interaction with the iPads user interface.

The iPad allows to import JPEG as well as RAW images from your camera or SD cards using the Camera Connection Kit. The workflow is a no brainer, just connect everything and turn on your camera. Ether all photographs or a selection will be imported, with reasonable speed. iPad offers you to automatically skip images you may have imported before. The iPad’s iOS comes with a variant of the Mac OS X RAW converter creating JPEG previews, and you can browse your images as natural as it gets, with swiping gestures for switching to the next image or pinching gestures for zooming in or out. The experience of these interactions are unrivaled by any user interface I have experienced. Performance is incredibly fast, there are no delays or “hiccups”.

Apple has brilliantly designed a system that feels much faster than more powerful hardware. Many aspects of the systems design come together in the creation of this perceived performance, and it is not all UI design. One design decision obviously was to remove virtual memory management from the Mac OS X core to create iOS. That means, any application running gets to use only the amount of RAM that remains after iOS itself gets its share. With only 256 MB of RAM, that is not too much.

Though this clearly contributes to the creation of the incredible user experience, it is a trade-off that currently limits the iPads use for digital imaging. There are many Apps available that provide a rich environment for your image processing needs. However, any App can only keep a certain image size in memory. For most Apps, that’s an image size of roughly 4 megapixels. Larger images will be scaled down automatically, but don’t start to sweat — you will always work on a copy of the original file. In fact, Apps cannot directly access the original files of the images imported, they get access only through an API that makes available the image data and not the actual image file.

Though this “sandbox” approach greatly increases security (something that cannot be underestimated for a system that handles your precious photographs), it further restricts possible use cases. Any photographers workflow that involves on-set retouching of images and/or submission of the high quality, full size images via the internet to clients or stock photography agencies are currently left out in the rain. What works, though, is quick retouching and upload of web-ready images to Facebook, flickr, etc., depending on the image processing App you use. My personal recommendation would be Photogene, but there are many more good ones. Once you sync your iPad with your desktop computer, iPhoto or Aperture will import the originals as if you had connected your camera or a card reader.

That said, recently a very interesting article has been published by Rob Galbraith on his blog, that explains how to overcome many of the restrictions of Apple’s Photo app “vault” approach. Rob Galbraith is a digital pro photographer that came to my attention in 2007, while a heated public discussion about the autofocus system of Canon’s flagship DSLR EOS-1D Mark III was going on. Essentially, he started the whole discussion with an article he wrote…

In his recent article, he discusses his wireless workflow during photo shoots, which involves the iPad as an essential component. Running the app ShutterSnitch, he uses the iPad as wirelessly connected FTP server collecting — and at the same time presenting — the photos taken right during his photo sessions. Key strengths of the iPad he points out are, among others, its display quality that “…offers a degree of colour accuracy that isn't far off the best laptop screens we've tested…”, and the iPad’s battery that “…just won't quit…”.

There’s much more to his elaborate setup, I recommend to work through his eight (!) pages going deep into the details of wireless transmitters, routers, and the correct configuration of the whole setup. The bottom line of his approach is not to go directly into Apple’s Photo app through the camera connector, but to intercept the photo stream with a 3rd part app by using an alternative transmission method.

Conclusion: For me, the iPad is the perfect vault to keep an immutable copy of my photographs while traveling. The originals are kept safe, and in addition you have the possibility to review your days work and send out emails or publish on the web for quick communication. For more demanding usage scenarios, there are ways how to meet those requirements as well.

Next installment coming soon: The iPad is for Readers…

Tags: iPad, Apple, RAW

With the release of new versions of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, both including Adobes 6th version of their RAW engine, automated and profile-based lens correction has become “mainstream”. This is a relatively old technique, though, with several commercial offerings specializing on this task (e.g., DxO Optics Pro).

The very fist application to automate this process was PTLens, released in 2002. Its developer Tom Niemann was searching for a tool analyzing a JPEGs EXIF data, matching the photographies properties to a database of lens profiles and automatically correct for distortions. There was none, so he developed one himself. PTLens became a shareware add-on for Panorama Tools — these days it is available as stand alone program, command-line utility and as plug-in for a variety of image editing applications. PTLens has received lots of very favorable reviews over the years, and has always kept pace with more expensive commercial products.

Its price is very reasonable, the PTLens database of lens profiles is huge, and it is available as 64-bit plugin for Aperture 3. The results one can achieve with PTLens are great, and smoothly integrated as it is with Aperture, it has become a vital part of my digital editing workflow. I mentioned PTLens before, and I got a few emails asking about my experience with this tool.

One should carefully consider the application of lens correction. It is always better, of course, to use a superior lens distorting a photography as little as possible, than to rely on “tricks” after the “damage” has been done. Unfortunately, one can spend a fortune on lenses and often you just want to travel light, not carrying a wide collection of lenses each optimized for a very narrow range of use cases.

That’s where lens correction can help. My travel lens is a Nikon AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED. I am very happy with it, it has an extremely fast and silent autofocus and its VR system really works well. Image quality is very good overall — with such a wide zoom range you have to live with trade-offs, though. At its low end this lens is very sharp. However, there is noticeable distortion of the image at that range. At its long end, distortion is much better, but then this lens becomes somewhat soft. With this lens, distortion correction for images taken at its low end really improves things. The source image is sharp enough to “survive” the rather radical image transformation and the end result is still sufficiently sharp.

The following example illustrates the effects of lens correction with PTLens. Mouse over the thumbnails to view a larger image, moving back and forth between the thumbnails allows to compare the photo with and without lens correction. The left thumbnail represents the photo with lens correction. I have marked a few prominent lines in this example, taken from the distortion corrected image.

Figure 1: Mouse over to compare images

With PTLens available as plugin for Aperture, usage is as simple as one can hope for. Select one or multiple images to correct, and select the plugin menu entry from the main “Image” menu. The modal dialog of PTLens opens, already presenting a preview on the end result of the correction. Typically, your lens is automatically recognized, and the correction is applied taking into account the focal length the photo was shot at. Click-and-hold the preview image with your mouse pointer, and the image temporarily switches back to its unmodified state — so it is easy to compare the “before” and “after” images. PTLens has a number of parameters you can play around with, but I won’t go into the details…



One last word of caution on using PTLens — in fact, on using any plugin in Aperture 3… The great benefit of Aperture 3 is that any image modification in Aperture 3 does not actually alter the original image. Any change you make becomes an instruction how to change the image upon “publishing”. If you view images in Aperture 3, these change instructions are applied on the fly. If you export images, their change instructions are applied on the exported image, the original photography actually remains untouched. If you duplicate a working copy of an image, you just create a copy of the instructions set, which still refers to the unchanged original image.

However, once you process an image with any plugin, Aperture 3 writes a 16-bit TIFF with all currently existing change instructions applied. The plugin then modifies the 16-bit TIFF. You can continue to edit the image with build-in Aperture 3 tools, but they will become “change instructions” on the plugin-processed 16-bit TIFF, not on the original RAW file. Therefore, my recommendation is to apply plugins at the end of any image editing process. If you correct lens distortion, make sure to recover highlights and retouch the image before going into PTLens or other plugins. That way, you make sure the Aperture 3 tools have the biggest leverage — use them on the original RAW file, not on a 16-bit TIFF copy already missing some information otherwise available with the RAW file.

Tags: PTLens, Aperture, DxO Optics Pro, Lens Correction, Panorama Tools, RAW

In June 2009, Qualcomm and Nvidia introduced a new category of laptop computers not based on Intel CPUs, but running on ARM-derived chip designs — the same hardware used with modern Smartphones. Thus, those Netbook-style devices were aptly named “Smartbooks”…

Smartbooks were supposed to solve the main issue of any ultra-mobile computer, including Netbooks: Short battery life caused by Intel’s relatively power hungry CPUs (to be fair, looking at general efficiency Intel’s current lineup is much better today than it was during the days when Intel got stuck with the NetBurst architecture). Based on the ARM-design, Smartbooks using e.g. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon CPU were supposed to fulfill on a promise made by virtually any vendor in this industry: Availability of an always-on, Internet-connected mobile device with all-day battery life, which doesn’t weigh much and is small enough to be carried around while still being more productive than a typical Smartphone.

Sound familiar? That definition, sure — but anyone still waiting for the first Smartbook to hit the market? (I think, HP has released one officially — have yet to see it in any store or on the streets, though). Even before that market was shaped, one vendor single-handedly killed it. Today, you can buy Internet-connected, small and light devices that last all day and provide reasonably good productivity (if you don’t want to tinker with the innards of your system). That would be the iPad.

The introduction of the iPad got the whole crowd of computer vendors hurrying to catch-up with Apple. Head over heels, Smartbook designs were canned, or refitted into a tablet form-factor. At least, that’s the impression one gets. And the CEO of the guys having introduced the term “Smartbook” in the first place admits as much.

But, Google’s Chrome OS was supposed to power Smartbooks — it is still due this year. Maybe we will see a revival of this comatose device category. More likely, though, Chrome OS will power tablets. But, what happens then to the soon-to-be-released Android-based bunch of tablets? If you bought one of those, will you be happy once Chrome OS has replaced those “temporary” devices?

Tags: iPad, Apple, Google, Smartphone, Smartbook, Netbook, ARM, Intel

Apple iOS 4.1 is now available, you can download it from iTunes right away.

I just installed it on my iPhone 3G, and on a quick first assessment I can confirm that the performance of the user interface increased noticeably. Though I did not experience the severe slowdowns some blog writers reported after upgrading their iPhone 3G’s to iOS 4.0, my 3G does feel “snappier” after todays update nonetheless…

Tags: iPhone, iOS, Apple, iTunes, Update

I almost missed that one: Apple Aperture 3 wins the EISA Photo Awards 2010-2010 in the Photo Software category. The official statement of the European Imaging and Sound Association describing the “European Photo Software 2010-2011”:

Apple Aperture 3 is a winner when it comes to organising your pictures in a smart and effective way. Thanks to face detection and GPS tagging, this software package makes it very easy to index, sort and retrieve your photographs by searching for the people or the places in the pictures. The program is very easy to use, and offers many new additional features together with high-class album printing and multimedia slide shows set to music. The new edge-aware ‘Quick Brushes’ tool is particularly useful for precision retouching.

Important Reasons

• Face detection tagging
• Sort and search by location
• New photobook integration
• Easy to use brushes with edge awareness
• Ready-made picture styles

Can’t really shorten that one… in fact, I could add various points to that praise myself.

On their site, the EISA features a nicely done visual citation of Apple Aperture 3. Other winners of the Photo Awards 2010-2011 are, e.g., the Canon EOS 7D as “European Advanced SLR 2010-2011” and the Nikon D3S as “European Professional Camera 2010-2011”.

EISA is an association of 50 special interest magazines from 19 European countries. Since 1982, each year the editors-in-chief from all EISA member magazines meet to decide which products deserve the internationally acclaimed EISA Award.

Tags: Aperture, Apple, EISA Awards

Visiting Siena was the first real opportunity for me to put my new geotagger to the test. In the past, I have used my iPhone’s GPS using the Trails App to record my location during day trips. For the subsequent photo tagging, I was initially using HoudahGeo, then later I switched to the nicely integrated Aperture plugin Maperture Pro. This was with Aperture 2, with Aperture 3 no additional software is needed any more... However, I got tired of the hassle of importing and synchronizing tracks, so I decided to get a GPS receiver for the hot shoe of my camera.

Though the Nikon GP-1 unit looked quite promising at first, I decided to go for the Solmeta Geotagger N2 — even though I had to import the unit from China. Almost half the price of the Nikon product (considering the exchange rate at that time, not including import duty), the Geotagger N2 has the additional benefit of an electronic compass recording the heading of the camera. The Nikon D300 supports GPS heading data and the Solmeta GPS unit comes with all the right cables for the D300. In addition, the Geotagger N2 has a build-in rechargeable battery, delaying depletion of the cameras battery-pack quite a bit. If you want to use a flash, you can clip the geotagger to your camera strap. Then, of course, the heading will be off…



The Geotagger N2 is a rather plain plastic box, as you can see in the photo above. In the hot shoe, it is a very tight fit. But, because it’s all plastic, I am confident that gets less and less of a problem over time… The unit has a socket for a cable remote and Solmeta adds a reasonably functional one. The 10-pin socket of the Nikon D300 itself is occupied by the Geotagger N2 wiring.

Using the geotagger is simple. Turn it on — or put it on “auto” and turn your camera on — and wait for a more or less short time for the unit to acquire its position. The chip used for the Geotagger N3 is a SiRF Star III, and the time it needs to get a lock is comparable to other systems using this chip. It takes longer, if you haven’t used the unit for a while or if you have traveled a great distance with the geotagger turned off. Personally, once I use the tagger I actually leave it on the whole time I carry the camera. I don’t use its “auto” position. With the build-in rechargeable battery of the Geotagger N2, a fully charged Nikon EN EL3e and an Eneloop-loaded MB-D10 battery grip you keep on shooting for at least one, two days or more…

The accuracy of the tagger seems OK. I have done a few tests comparing the location of the geotagger with the one reported by my iPhone. Those two match quite well. In addition, the location reported on the same geographical spot at different times and different weather conditions are pretty close and match my actual location pretty good. Unfortunately, I have not yet tested the recorded heading with any supporting software - Aperture 3 does not visualize heading (that would be a feature request for Apple...), and I had not time yet to test any other software.



Overall, I am quite happy with the Solmeta Geotagger N2. Its price is reasonable and the feature/function set is superior if you compare it with the Nikon GP-1. There are few negative points: its design is plain and the plastic material feels a bit cheap. Though where it matters most, actually recording an accurate geographical location, this gadget performs admirably.

Tags: Geotagging, Nikon, D300, Aperture, Siena, Solmeta, Geotagger N2