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Apple Aperture 3: A Workflow Guide for Digital Photographers
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| Part No: | 0240521781 |
| Manufacturer: | Focal Press |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 3.5 / 5.0 |
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- ISBN13: 9780240521787
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
With over 200 brand new features, Apple's leading photo management and image processing package just got a whole lot bigger! From Faces to Places and Brushes to Presets, Mac experts Ken McMahon and Nik Rawlinson will guide you through everything you could ever need to know about Aperture 3 including how to:
- Find, tag, and protect your images with advanced metadata techniques
- Use Presets, Nondestructive brushes and the powerful new Curves tool to dramatically enhance your photos
- Seamlessly integrate Aperture 3 with other programs for incredible results
Apple Aperture 3 - A Workflow Guide for Digital Photographers shows you how to put this powerful software right at the heart of your digital photography workflow. Inside you will find information on how to import, sort and navigate thousands of Raw files like a pro; how to fully utilize the new rush-based adjustments and quick fix adjustment presets to creatively edit your images; and how to export your images to slideshows, the Web, or even create your own coffee table style photobook. * Clear, step-by-step explanations simplify the features and uses of this extensive application * Real-life examples show you a complete digital photography workflow with Aperture at the core * Fully updated for Aperture 3
| Disorganized and merely decent | 2010-08-31 | 3 / 5 |
| The cover of this book promises that it's a "workflow guide for digital photographers", but that's not really what it is. The book is a general introduction to Aperture for people who haven't used it before. There is a short chapter on workflow, but it's not very helpful or interesting.
The lack of organization in this book is odd. The first chapter delves into RAW, which is really besides the point. That might be a good appendix, but if you're trying to learn Aperture workflow or even just Aperture, this isn't the material you want to read at the beginning of the book. Furthermore, since the unintended audience is people who already know quite a bit about the basics of digital photography so the book does not explain those concepts, the connection between the camera settings, the captured information, and the final display of the image. If you don't understand that already, the book probably isn't going to help you that much. You might want to check David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual instead.
The rest of the information in the book is generally good even if it has nothing to do with workflow. Since Aperture is one of Apple's professional-level tools, it uses the keyboard for much of its work. Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 3 comes with a nice cheat sheet with the keyboard shortcuts. This book could use one of those, but it doesn't even have an appendix for it.
Instead of this book, check out the Inside Aperture video podcasts on iTunes. Those demonstration videos go through much of the same material but are much more useful because you can see the real time effects as the host uses the image adjustment tools. |
| A mess of a book | 2010-08-25 | 2 / 5 |
| | Limited index. Poor organization. Not especially good for the beginner, but seems sketchy for the professional. And workflow? It only makes up a small part of the book. This is really a mess and doesn't do the subject justice. If you work at it, you can get useful information from this book, but it's probably easier to start elsewhere instead. Sorry! |
| Some Useful Information for the Highly Motivated | 2010-08-23 | 3 / 5 |
| Apple Aperture 3: A Workflow Guide for Digital Photographers is strange on many levels.
First, let's start with the subtitle of the book: "A Workflow Guide for Digital Photographers". Is this what the book delivers?
Programs like Aperture (Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, among others) are all about the workflow. They exist to help you manage your digital photo library. While these programs may offer editing tools (BTW: Both Lightroom and Aperture are fantastic editors - most photographers will only need to use a more advanced program, like Photoshop, for particularly difficult images, or ones they want to get very artistic with) their main job is to make it easy for you to import your photographs, apply metadata and tags, and sort and arrange them as you'd like. A major part of their value is the degree to which they make it easier for you to compare your images and streamline the process of separating the duds from the standouts.
So, seeing as how Aperture is primarily a workflow tool, and this book is subtitled "A Workflow Guide for Digital Photographers," it'd be reasonable to assume the book focuses on...wait for it...using Aperture to enhance your workflow. Well, not so much. There is just one chapter devoted to the topic, and it run for only 37 of the book's 318 pages of content. So, right away, you have to wonder "what were they thinking?"
The rest of the book covers pretty much what you'd expect, assuming you'd expect a fairly in-depth, but poorly-organized resource. There's a lot of technical information that is of almost no interest to any end user. The first 72 pages cover details about the nature of RAW files and how Aperture works in a manner that could appeal only to insomniacs in search of a cure. Hence, discussion like this on page nine: "As we've seen, Camera (sic; why is camera capitalized?) sensors produce only luminance information, which is initially recorded by greyscale values. By making use of a colored grid, or color filter array, placed over the sensor, the correct color value for each image pixel can be determined by a process called demosaicing." That description goes on for a few more paragraphs, none of which you need to know.
Much of the information you will want to learn is buried in similarly dense paragraphs. It's a shame. It's much harder to find out how to get something done than it should be. Where was the editor in all of this?
Aperture's a lot of fun to use and appeals to creative types. By contrast, this book is pretty dreary, visually unexciting, and written in the driest possible manner. If you're the kind of person who wants to sit and read every page of this kind of thing, you'll find some useful information here. However, if you're looking for a book to inspire and excite you, while making it easy to find the fix you're in search of, this isn't for you. I'm giving the book three stars, but just barely. You'd have to be a very motivated reader to get much out this.
One more aside: I'm usually fond of the publisher of this book, Focal Press. They publish some beautiful and useful guides. But someone was asleep at the wheel on this one. For a book about photography, it's as plain as could be. Worse, the writing is often so tangled that it makes me wonder if the book was translated from another language. The only time its entertaining is when it's bad enough to elicit a chuckle, as in this gem: "To sort your images simply do what you would in the physical world: grab hold of them and drag them around using the mouse." While I was entertained by the idea of old school photographers using wiggling rodents to move prints around on their light tables, someone really should have caught this, along with a lot of other bad prose. |
| Don't expect much help here. | 2010-08-20 | 2 / 5 |
| | Not well organized, not well written, and definitely not for the Aperture beginner. Limited index hampers use as a reference tool. Reading through is a chore. Try something else. |
| Can help you decide if you really need Aperture | 2010-08-20 | 5 / 5 |
| Before discussing this book, which is a description of Apple's Aperture 3 software, let's talk about who would want to use Aperture in the first place. There are three popular programs on the Mac for digital photographers; iPhoto, Aperture and of course, Photoshop. Photoshop is the king of applications for altering an individual photograph, and neither of the other two come anywhere close to the range of effects one can get or the artistic possibilities of Photoshop along with its many third party plugins. But it is also expensive, and there is a long learning curve to use it to full advantage - years really. Not everyone needs full Photoshop capability, or has the time to learn it properly. On the other end of the scale, iPhoto is the program which comes free with every Mac, for mom-and-pop photographers. It organizes photos, downloads them from the camera or card, and can apply basic corrections of color or brightness. (I didn't mention Photoshop Elements because I don't care for it.)
Aperture could be described as iPhoto on steroids. It does not try to compete with Photoshop for the full range of artistic effects on individual photos, but it is more powerful than iPhoto for organization. It is fundamentally designed to handle large numbers of files, especially Raw files, with high speed. For commercial photographers, such as wedding photographers, or scientific photographers, or advanced amateurs who may have shot dozens of frames of the same scene and need to sort them, Aperture allows rapid comparison and selection - which comes under the heading of `workflow.' Apple originally priced Aperture as a professional product - $500 - but over time has moderated the price to the $160 range. Still, Aperture is not for everyone; you need to be dealing with many photos at a time, and to be ready to process Raw files for the superior control that offers. Many amateur photogs will do just fine with iPhoto alone, or iPhoto plus Photoshop. Only if you've outgrown iPhoto as a workflow tool, may Aperture be for you.
This book is a good way to find out if you really want to jump into Aperture, which has its own learning curve, and numerous courses, certifications, and books aimed at teaching its use. The big investment you will make is not the 160 bucks - but your time which will be required to become proficient. The very fact that "professional certification" exists for a software product like Aperture should give pause to the amateur.
That's where this book by McMahon and Rawlinson may help. It's a nice easy explanation of Aperture 3 for the nonpro photographer. The authors are experienced graphics and Mac professionals. The book is well written and produced, and is especially strong in explaining the basics for beginners - for example, the why and wherefore of Raw images - with clarity and detail. Easy to read and follow. Also discusses some of the third party plug-ins for Aperture, such as Image Trends products. So I would recommend it especially for someone considering whether Aperture is for them. Apple does offer a free 160 page manual for Aperture 3 downloadable from their website, but this book is a better way to get an overview. Once you do decide to take the plunge, whether Aperture or Photoshop or some other complex application, having a few third-party books around is well worth the price. |
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