OS X, where have my photos gone?

On 2007-02-01, Ken Lucke wrote:

[snip]

v1.5 even allows plugins for exports - you can now automatically export
to several stock photo companies, or to Flickr, automatically from
Aperture.

Lots of praise for Aperture. It's not cheap though... but I *do* need
something to keep my images organised... which is what iPhoto does...
only not too well.

I'm going to have to Google for Aperture cons, there have to be some
downsides (I know there have been some negative voices in this
newsgroup). I need to see both sides of the product before I make a
purchase of that size... especially when I already have software that
does the job I want (well, mostly).

Those who've mentioned Aperture have, I think, got me more confused than
I was! It seems to me that, really, I'm paying the price of Aperture
just to keep my photos organised. OK, Aperture does a lot more than
organise photos better than than iPhoto, however, PhotoShop as, AFAICT,
the industry standard when it comes to photo editing software.

For starters, I'm going to wait until I've a camera full of images, then
I'm going to DL the trial version of Aperture and see how I get on.

Thanks to all for the comments.

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.

In article m, Justin
C wrote:

On 2007-02-01, Ken Lucke wrote:

[snip]

v1.5 even allows plugins for exports - you can now automatically export
to several stock photo companies, or to Flickr, automatically from
Aperture.

Lots of praise for Aperture. It's not cheap though... but I *do* need
something to keep my images organised... which is what iPhoto does...
only not too well.

That statement, in itself, should be a clue to your answer... :^)

I'm going to have to Google for Aperture cons, there have to be some
downsides (I know there have been some negative voices in this
newsgroup).

I haven't seen anyone who actually has used it for any reasonable
period of time who has serious negative things to say, but I may have
missed them. You also probably don't see comments from even 10% of the
people who ARE actually using it... I'd love to see everyone here who
IS using it to sound off here about the _good_ things to show the
overbalance of the few very minor detractions I've seen.

Mostly, it's people who don't even have access to it due to OS
differences (after all, it's only available, and only WILL ever be
available [according to Apple], for Mac OS X) who are blowing steam out
of their hats without any true experience, or people who "tried it" for
two days and went back to whatever they were using before - either it
was more than they needed, or they just weren't used to it (and didn't
want to take the time to become used to it), from the comments I have
seen.

I need to see both sides of the product before I make a
purchase of that size...

Nothing wrong with that, it's a wise thing to do.

especially when I already have software that
does the job I want (well, mostly).

You keep qualifying your comments on how iPhoto does the job ("well,
mostly", "only not too well"). That should be a clue that you need
something more powerful - if you have to make excuses for your
software, you need to seriously consider moving on.

Remember that time is value, too. Either monetarily, production wise
[can't take shots while you are fighting the computer], or time away
that could be spent with family, etc. How much otherwise productive
time have you spent fighting (and apparently losing to) iPhoto's
system, including the reason for the thread in the first place - your
missing photos? All that time & frustration is worth something, so
factor _that_ into how much Aperture costs long-term when you are
making your decision.

iPhoto is fine for the casual and amateur photographer. If you are
trying to do anything more than that, Aperture is a major improvement.

Why not ust get the free trial from Apple? 30 days, no charge, then
you can decide from actual experience rather than hearsay from those
who are fanatical on either side? (I admit I could be labeled fanatical
on the Pro side - and it's not often I get worked up over a piece of
/software/ :^) Use it every day for 30 days, even if you have to make
up something to do with it just to be using it, before you make a
decision.

Those who've mentioned Aperture have, I think, got me more confused than
I was! It seems to me that, really, I'm paying the price of Aperture
just to keep my photos organised.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no... :^)

Besides, even if it WERE, I'd still use it - its image management
capabilities are far better than anything else out there, bar none.

OK, Aperture does a lot more than
organise photos better than than iPhoto, however, PhotoShop as, AFAICT,
the industry standard when it comes to photo editing software.

PS _is_ the "industry standard" for image _editing_ - I would never
deny that.

However, Aperture allows image _adjustments_ just fine - better, in
fact, than PS, because your adjustments are non-destructive, so can
aways be removed or altered, whereas with PS, you'd have to save an
interminable number of different files and/or layers to achieve the
same non-destructive adjustments. That's a HUGE saving in disk space
and file management /alone/.

If you do need PS for something, one key-combination sends it there,
and receives the changes right back from PS (in a new file, stacked
right with the old one, so you /still/ haven't changed your original),
without you ever having to do a thing in the way of keeping track of
the files.

If you are not needing to get down and push pixels around, almost all
of what you need to do to a raw image can be done in Aperture,
including a small amount of pixel pushing (cloning, cropping, rotating,
etc - all of which are /still/ non-destructive). I've found I do about
85-90% of my work right in Aperture.


For starters, I'm going to wait until I've a camera full of images, then
I'm going to DL the trial version of Aperture and see how I get on.

Good plan, but don't wait until the camera is full :^)

Get it and play, play, play. Don't expect it to be totally familiar
instantly - it uses several different concepts than most people are
used to, and will be completely different that you are used to with
iPhoto - just take it that the differences are good in the long run.
But on the other hand, it's not a very steep learning curve, either. I
had it up and mastered in a couple of days after install.

One additional suggestion - the free trial doesn't have exceptional
documentation with it (or at least it didn't when I got the free trial
of v1.0, way back when), so try to find yourself a copy of Lynda.com's
training videos on it, or at least something similar.

Thanks to all for the comments.

Justin.

--
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 14:22:49 -0800, Justin C wrote
(in article m):

On 2007-02-01, Ken Lucke wrote:

[snip]

v1.5 even allows plugins for exports - you can now automatically export
to several stock photo companies, or to Flickr, automatically from
Aperture.

Lots of praise for Aperture. It's not cheap though... but I *do* need
something to keep my images organised... which is what iPhoto does...
only not too well.

I'm going to have to Google for Aperture cons, there have to be some
downsides (I know there have been some negative voices in this
newsgroup).

I was one of the most negative voices about Aperture until version 1.5 was
released. There are still some cons, though:

It needs an Intel processor to run anywhere near adequately. The G4
processors are just too slow.

You need at least 2G of memory or some processes can really bog down.

There are a few gotchas when you migrate to a new computer. They are easily
fixed, but you will want to ask a few questions before you do that.

Aperture will quit abruptly if you move around too much in the browser before
the thumbnails are updated. Almost all of the image browsers have this bug,
including Lightroom and iView.

All photo browsers have practical limits to the size of the library they will
manage. Break those limits and they usually crash. Aperture's reaction is to
bog down if you get more than 20,000 photos in the library. At least it
doesn't crash like the rest of them.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

In article m, C J
Campbell wrote:

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 14:22:49 -0800, Justin C wrote
(in article m):

On 2007-02-01, Ken Lucke wrote:

[snip]

v1.5 even allows plugins for exports - you can now automatically export
to several stock photo companies, or to Flickr, automatically from
Aperture.

Lots of praise for Aperture. It's not cheap though... but I *do* need
something to keep my images organised... which is what iPhoto does...
only not too well.

I'm going to have to Google for Aperture cons, there have to be some
downsides (I know there have been some negative voices in this
newsgroup).

I was one of the most negative voices about Aperture until version 1.5 was
released. There are still some cons, though:

It needs an Intel processor to run anywhere near adequately. The G4
processors are just too slow.

Runs just fine on my 2.1ghz G5.

IIRC, it was never _designed_ for use on the G4, you had to have one of
the patches floating around for that - or to run it with less than 1GB
of memory (I had both patches installed when I was using it on a G4
867mhz PPC). If you try to run a program designed for a later computer
on an earlier one, of course it is going to run too slow. Cannt'
really blame the product for that.

You need at least 2G of memory or some processes can really bog down.

I muddle through with 1.5 GB currently, and don't notice a lot of
degredation, but you are right, more memory is going to be better.

There are a few gotchas when you migrate to a new computer. They are easily
fixed, but you will want to ask a few questions before you do that.

Not really - move your library, open Aperture, tell it where the moved
library is, close Aperture, restart it (because it works with only one
library at a time, you have to actually close the app and restart it,
but I didn't switch libraries that often... and why they had to make it
like that I have no idea. One library at a time, I can understand -
but having to close the app and relaunch it to accept the new file is
beyond me). What "gotchas" did you experience?

Aperture will quit abruptly if you move around too much in the browser before
the thumbnails are updated. Almost all of the image browsers have this bug,
including Lightroom and iView.

Now that's something I've never had happen in over a year of almost
daily use. With any other image browser, either - are you sure this
isn't something on your system?

All photo browsers have practical limits to the size of the library they will
manage. Break those limits and they usually crash. Aperture's reaction is to
bog down if you get more than 20,000 photos in the library. At least it
doesn't crash like the rest of them.

Well, if that's a limitation, you can easily overcomoe it by splitting
your library (with the caveat as above as to having to tell it the
change, quit and relaunch the app) - I've never had the problem, but
the most I ever had in the library (before serious paring down occured)
was aound 15K photos.

--
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard

C J Campbell wrote:

All photo browsers have practical limits to the size of the library they will
manage. Break those limits and they usually crash. Aperture's reaction is to
bog down if you get more than 20,000 photos in the library. At least it
doesn't crash like the rest of them.

Yikes; that's not useful!

ThumbsPlus is coping perfectly happily with 50,000 images in my
collection currently; no performance difference from when it had 100 in
anything except a full-database query (which is still decently fast; but
it is slower than when there were many fewer images).

I see people reporting having scanned 30,000 slides in a year; what use
is a program that starts to choke at a TOTAL collection around 20,000?
Sheesh.

In article , David
Dyer-Bennet wrote:

C J Campbell wrote:

All photo browsers have practical limits to the size of the library they
will
manage. Break those limits and they usually crash. Aperture's reaction is
to
bog down if you get more than 20,000 photos in the library. At least it
doesn't crash like the rest of them.

Yikes; that's not useful!

ThumbsPlus is coping perfectly happily with 50,000 images in my
collection currently; no performance difference from when it had 100 in
anything except a full-database query (which is still decently fast; but
it is slower than when there were many fewer images).

I see people reporting having scanned 30,000 slides in a year; what use
is a program that starts to choke at a TOTAL collection around 20,000?
Sheesh.

aperture does NOT choke with 20k total images, nor is there any need to
have multiple libraries to handle large amounts of images.

within aperture, one can make multiple projects in a library, and those
have an upper limit (not sure how many but it is quite large). the
main library itself is limited by available disk space and images can
be on any attached drive. as long as no individual project is huge,
there isn't any major problem.

there can be any number of projects per library, and a project can be
whatever the user wants - a specific photo shoot, a particular subject,
etc. one can also create albums which can contain images from any
project. it is quite flexible in organizing images.

In article , David
Dyer-Bennet wrote:

C J Campbell wrote:

All photo browsers have practical limits to the size of the library they
will
manage. Break those limits and they usually crash. Aperture's reaction is
to
bog down if you get more than 20,000 photos in the library. At least it
doesn't crash like the rest of them.

Yikes; that's not useful!

Don't jump to conclusions - I've never heard of this limitation before,
and I've read every scrap of Aperture documentation I could get my
hands on. Until I saw proof, I'd tend to not place a lot of stock in
it.

You'll notice the "at least it doesn't crash like the rest of them" -
how many others have you heard of that crashed with large numbers of
images? That alone indicates to me that this is not a common occurance
with others, but rather that something on/in the poster's system/app is
hosed.


ThumbsPlus is coping perfectly happily with 50,000 images in my
collection currently; no performance difference from when it had 100 in
anything except a full-database query (which is still decently fast; but
it is slower than when there were many fewer images).

Anything like that is normal - you can't search, sort, or display twice
the information without increasing CPU cycles. Enough of an increase,
and it will be noticable, no matter what program or system.

I see people reporting having scanned 30,000 slides in a year; what use
is a program that starts to choke at a TOTAL collection around 20,000?
Sheesh.

Like I said, don't sweat it - I have a hard time accepting it as a
fact, and will, until I see some sort of a tech note defining it as a
problem.

--
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard

On 2/2/07 1:03 PM, "C J Campbell"
wrote:

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 14:22:49 -0800, Justin C wrote


Lots of praise for Aperture. It's not cheap though... but I *do* need
something to keep my images organised... which is what iPhoto does...
only not too well.


It needs an Intel processor to run anywhere near adequately. The G4
processors are just too slow.

It runs pretty well on my dual processor G5.


You need at least 2G of memory or some processes can really bog down.

The Ram is often more critical than raw CPU speed. If you get into heavy
paging in virtual memory, everything slows down significantly.