I think this installment might have to verge towards Lightroom only, since I have not used Aperture in the intervening month as Apple has not updated it’s raw preferences to support the M8…..we are waiting….
In this installment I want to focus on the Library mode since it is the weakest of the four modes. As I said before, in the development of Lightroom it seems there was a mass flowchart for the workflow and certain functions were demarcated to be Library only, when in fact you use them at other times…
Stacking for example, a feature that was added late, only works in Library mode. Lets say I am working on an image in develop, and I want to make a virtual copy to continue down a different path with an image. I have to go into Library to make that copy, I cannot make it directly from within develop. The same is true of stacking, if for example, I am working on a group of images shot at the same time, and a good example of this is when I bracket a room interior so that i can choose the best exposure later, in this case, I do need to be in develop to perform adjustments to see which indeed is the best exposure. This would then be the top of stack image. That is, if I could create the stack from within Develop. But you can’t, you have to traverse back to Library to stack and to promote the pic to the top. And then back into Develop. All of this is a waste of time.
The other interesting limitation is that you cannot stack in a quick collection, which is part of the Library mode. So even modal behaviours are not consistent. I am not sure why you want a quick collection other than to quickly collect a group of images to concentrate on them. Stacking could be very useful there. But once you have the quick collection, you are pretty limited in terms of going forward in the Library sorting mode. So it makes it a dead end feature. Also, the add to quick collection circle in the thumbnail row is dammed annoying. If you are not paying attention to what is a very small target of thumbs, you can inadvertently add an image to a quick collection. At least the fade in fade out menu alerts you to the fact. But it seems to be a feature in search of a problem. You can rate, flag and color code images hierarchically. There is no need for a dead end collection.
Stacking also introduced me to overlapping keyboard shortcuts, “S” in Library toggles the stacks, and in Develop it crops to the same aspect ratio, whatever that is. Given the number of times you need to move around the program using shortcuts, making them modal was not the smartest move.
Library mode in general is pretty limited to Folders and Collections. They are separate, there is no way to create a collection inside of a folder. For example, you have an edit of a shoot in a Folder, how do you represent that and keep it together with the original shoot-you can’t, the Collection has it’s own window. And in this I think Lightroom really belies its weakness as a pro level tool, the Library function, the digital asset management part, is at least as important, and often times more important than individual images, a funny statement for a photographer. But it is true, you come home from a shoot, and you have hundreds of images to sort and somehow represent a cohesive edit to a client or editor. You can create a slideshow or a web gallery, but going forward, successive iterations of this cannot be done, it is a one shot deal. In Aperture, you can create unlimited web galleries or blogs or slideshows and they all can live within the Project, and ultimately get archived with the project should you decide to export it and get it out of the Library.
I have been reading around the web and over on O’reilly there is the InsideAperture blog where they are covering a whole lot more than I am, but a post a while back caught my eye, the author was attempting to organize an image catalogue of 80,000 (yes that is right folks, EIGHTY THOUSAND) images. I was really tempted to post an answer to his welll meaning query-how do you catalogue 80,000 images, well, you start by THROWING AWAY 78.000 of them…har har. I guess I should take my own advice with all the contact sheets I have filed away. So let me tell you the structure of the archive, DAY MONTH YEAR! Is there really any functionality to be gained by sorting pictures solely by the day they were taken? And is that information not already in the exif? So you have a set of nested folders, and lets do the math, for example, three years, twelve months, 30 days each, something like a thousand folders to drill through, not that you would, mind you, but for what? Organization? But back to Lightroom, when you import to the Library, this is exactly what the import dialogue offers, to create subfolders inside Pictures with year month and day.
Organization is definitely a personal fetish, but I cannot fathom the need to see in the folder column, a series of folders named 2007-05-10, 11, 12, etc. If I am trying to recall a specific photo, asking me what day I shot it on is not likely to jog any neurons. Asking me what project or job I was shooting will however, because it is a context, and it has memories and associations. So, of course you are allowed to create your own folder structure, and I have. And I have managed to find a use for Collections, I use this to focus on a set of pictures for some particular task, like building a portfolio edit, or a set of prints for an exhibition. But this sort of reduplicates the folder structure, since the groupings are similar, Street, Portraits, Portfolio, New York Times assignments etc. Which brings me to my last gripe, when you begin moving pictures around in the Library, some dumb ass determined that you also move a copy of the enclosing folder! Which would make sense only if you thought it brilliant to keep your ducks ordered by the aforementioned year-month-day. So now I have some odd folders duplicated bearing the names of the jobs they were originally attached to, sitting in other folders. And for no good reason.
“Gowanus Antlers”
This is pretty much it for my general applies-to-all users commentary about Lightroom. Anything further will apply specifically to coverting M8 files, of which there are some tricks you may not know. I may also indulge in a little comparison with Capture One, a heinous example of UI welded onto an industrial strength Raw converter. At least for M8 files, it provides excellent conversions, a major crow-pie swallow for me. Fortunately I only have to haul it out for the odd tough nut. Lightroom does an excellent job otherwise.
You may think I have been hard on Lightroom and perhaps unfairly, but it is borne out of using it every day in production work. I have learned to live with many of it’s foibles, and I am glad that I have had this chance, with Aperture so slow out of the gate on the M8. We’ll see if Aperture can manage to extract all of the excellent characteristics of the Leica raw file, hopefully better than Lightroom, so I can go back to my sane folder structure. Otherwise, it will be a little bifurcated…
Don’t you think that captioninformation should go into the metadata (IPTC) and not in the filename? Using the date + a unique term avoids duplicates. For example 2007/2007-05/2007-05-12/yourname-2007-05-12-001.ext
Simon
I am not sure what you are proposing, the caption data goes in the iptc yes, assuming I have caption data. For NYtimes jobs, it goes there. For myself, I don’t usually bother with caption data.
But in terms of avoiding duplicate file names, I have never had a problem, and the likelyhood of two files ending up in the same folder with the same name seems low to me, plus there would be a finder warning should it occur.
I messed with renaming files in the beginning and was put off by the resulting string of numbers, it is just too confusing in the finder to look at a folder containing 2007_5_10_L10001xxx.DNG’s over and over. So the original L1001xxx.dng is fine for me. Plus enclosing folders, year, month day, I really don’t get as I said.
Basically, I have street work which is ongoing, a gowanus project which is ongoing, some mall stuff which is stalled, and then jobs, unique to the client, plus just a random unflied folder for whatever stuff. But pretty much if I am shooting it is in one of these areas, so the date is irrelevent.
I think what i am avoiding saying outright is if you can only think to catalog your work by day, then maybe you need to spend some time thinking exactly what it is you are making? A way of catloging time?
We have lost the contact sheet in digital. Those indeed were numbered according to the year and successive rolls, ie 1991-125. But this was mainly because the images were anchored to rolls, cutting individual frames out was a no-no. Now, in digital, the “frames” are unanchored. There is no reason to keep them in shot-order. I know i am losing the pleasure of seeing how I was working on a particular shot to shot basis, and who knows, I might miss that ultimately. But the gain in seeing an idea build is worth it in my opinion.
I totally agree with you. I also ofter work more than a day on a particular project. The scheme based on the date splits my shots into days (or even months and years). But to put them together I use DAM-software. Because I think it is risky to rely on a proprietary DAM-software I organize the collections through tags. Like this I can easily switch to another application which can read IPTC without losing my collections in the folder structure. It would be nice if LR would allow to set up “smart collections” as aperture does.
Hope you understand what I mean. English isn’t my first language.
I can begin to see the wisdom of your approach, let the library be a monolithic structure of arbitrary shape, simple dates, BUT, use the IPTC to organize it through tags….which could be read by the DAM.
I think this can make sense if you have a lot of subjects, or perhaps are trying to ornanize a stock library. I am sure it works for you, and i like the non-reliance on proprietary software to do your organizing for you.
I gave up on stock a long time ago…
Quote: or myself, I don’t usually bother with caption data.
Then you aren’t helping yourself save time. A few minutes adding caption and keywords to a new project will save considerable time down the road when you’re trying to find specific images. Even in a “non-stock” library.
It may also make the folder structure less relevant. I have to admit, I have not looked at Lightroom yet, so maybe it is important.
Maybe your digital image library is manageable now, but in 5-10 years or later? Even with extremely tight editing you will end up with tens of thousands of images.
This is where DAM software comes into play. But you can get some of that functionality, and probably enough of it for simple image searches, even from Spotlight built into OSX. Other apps have incorporated Spotlight functionality, such as Photo Mechanic, which will open a contact sheet with all images found based on a keyword search. Quickly checking the specs for both Lightroom and Aperture, it appears they both support keyword searches (I would be surprised if they didn’t). Even if it only takes you a minute to find an image, a keyword search will take a second or two…
It also appears both Lightroom and Aperture are similar to DAM software in that they apply the caption/keyword to the database referencing the files rather than embedding directly into the image files. This is fine if you only plan to use one app for all of your organizing. While you can embed the metadata to images upon export from either app, it will mean that while files are within the Lightroom or Aperture system, they are essentially hidden from caption/keyword searches made by other apps and probably also Spotlight (Spotlight searches metadata embedded within files).
My point is that adding caption and keyword info has value, even if your current library is manageable without it.
This brings up a whole other issue, how Lr and Aperture treat metadata. As it is now, the captions and keywords are invisible to Spotlight because neither program writes into the original raw file. There is a caveat, Lr will write into DNG files, like the M8 files, but so far, Spotlight cannot see into the M8 DNG’s. So I don’t know if the caption info is visible or not, we will have to wait for Apple to update it’s raw support.
I agree, some caption data would be effective even if it is only available to the DAM, but the ability to “find” a photo presumes questions like “I am looking for a photo of..” which I have always had a hard time with. I would challenge you to write a caption for the photo at the head of this post. Other than location, is that caption useful? Usually I find I work on a series for a while, and then eventually I move on. What survives is a small group of pictures. The rest becomes chaff. So I guess I am not interested in becoming a librarian?
Well, I’m not a stock user aswell, because I think my pictures are too important for me to be used without my control. I want to know what happens to/with them
LR is able to write the metadata into RAWs (if the format supports it, otherwise it will write sidecar files). I prevent using applications who lock my pictures in. This is a reason why I don’t use Aperture. Apple has the guidline that they never alter the RAWs (to prevent damage), because of that metadata can only be applied on export. Maybe there are thirdparty tools to write metadata into the files.
There is, it is called LightboxXMP and it will let you write a sidecar and export it alongside an image.
Not sure if you are aware of this, but there is a “hack” available that adds M8 support to Aperture.
Here’s how:
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Originally Posted by Eoin on Leica User forum:
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If you want to use Apple Aperture to process M8 DNG’s you’ll need to do the following…..
1. I downloaded the free Adobe DNG Converter app (ADC) from Adobe’s website. Using The settings to use for the converter (available in the ADC’s preferences) were:
JPEG Preview->None
Compression(Lossless) checked
Image Conversion Method->Preserve Raw Image
Original Raw File->Embed Original Raw File->unchecked
You’ll also need to point to the source M8 DNG folder and where you want to output the Adobe DNG’s to
2. If you try to import an Adobe converted M8 dng file into Aperture. It imports, but says that it is an unsupported image format. You’ll need to do the following…
3. I started up my plist-editing application. I used PlistEdit Pro. You can download it as a free trial
4. In the finder, I navigated to
System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/ Versions/A/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Raw.plist and copied (not moved) that file to the Desktop in case I made a mistake. I then opened the original file in its original location in PlistEdit Pro. You may have to unlock this file to allow you to save it depending on your security setup. To unlock right click and select get info, go to ownership and permissions and change from read only to read and write.
5. After opening in PlistEdit Pro I found the entry for the Nikon-D200 in the upper panel, highlighted it and clicked on duplicate. A new entry is created called Nikon-D200 2. If you click on the name and edit it to read Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera, the name must be entered exactly as I have typed it here. It’s probably easiest to cut and paste it
7. I saved the edited Raw.plist file in its original location, closed all my apps, started up Aperture, and imported the Adobe converted DNGs without a hitch.
What you will find is aperture is able to display and edit the Adobe converted DNG file like any other raw file. The only thing you may notice is the colour saturation will need to be increased slightly if you happen to like the what I consider over saturated C1 profile.
I find the conversions to be excellent and what’s more I’m enjoying being back within the Aperture workflow.
I have hacked my Aperture to do this, my concern was mainly what happens when Raw support finally arrives, one of two things, there are two entries for M8 in the raw dictionary, and both appear, or there is only one, and any adjustments I have made to 4000+ images and counting suddenly become the wrong adjustments. So I left it alone for now. Thanks for the post.