Aperture 3 - Part 1

Life ’11 hit the streets last week and brought with it, significantly upgraded versions of iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband.

I’ll be covering all three applications in the next month or so, but this week, the focus is on iPhoto ’11.

This week’s Extra! Members show is 40 minutes long and takes you through the basics of iPhoto as well as exploring some of the new features. ILife ’11 hit the streets last week and brought with it, significantly upgraded versions of iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband.

I’ll be covering all three applications in the next month or so, but this week, the focus is on iPhoto ’11.

This week’s Extra! Members show is 40 minutes long and takes you through the basics of iPhoto as well as exploring some of the new features.

In detail, the show included sections on:

• New User Interface
• Full Screen View
• The Information Panel?
• Accessing and Updating GPS Location Information
• Editing in iPhoto
• Creating, Editing and Exporting Slideshows
• iPhoto Projects incl. Cards and Photo Books
• MobileMe Integration
• Flickr Integration
• Facebook Integration
• Tagging Facebook Images
• Managing and Applying Keywords
• Sharing Photos via eMail

This week's show really demonstrates how Apple can create amazing hardware platforms that perform beautifully, and enhance the experience by developing software that brings it all together, a real tour de force on how Apple stuff just works!

Firstly, I take a look at the newly released iPad Camera Connection kit and follow through with a look at managing your digital images, along with some iPad applications to edit them.

These are two""dongles"" that connect to the iPad. One for USB devices and one for SD cards. These relatively inexpensive additions to the iPad enable it to capture images, movies and audio clips from a multitude of devices. Using the built in Software, the iPad is a great tool for capturing your media and displaying it on the iPad immediately.

As well as displaying your media, you can manage the images on your Camera or SD card, trim videos and create Multimedia slideshows, all without a Mac. The iPad becomes a media ""aggregator"" allowing you to clear your camera or SD card or more sensibly, becomes a backup of your digital assets when on the road.

The show demonstrates importing media from several devices including an iPhone, a point and shoot camera and a SD based camcorder.

As well as using your iPad to safely import your digital media, the show also takes a look at two applications demonstrating the potential of the iPad as a creative tool and not just a device for media consumption.

PhotoGene: a digital image editor and ReelDirector: A video editor for the iPad.

Once you have your media safely stored on the iPad, the show also demonstrates a digital workflow, moving your images and video from the iPad, to a laptop and then to a desktop using Aperture libraries, along with a recommendation for automatically creating and synchronising pristine, unedited backups of all your digital media during import.

There are also some pointers for iPhoto users.

Finishing off with a section on how to access your imported media via the standard Apple media browser (e.g. in iMovie) along with a quick demonstration of a free third party media browse - the iMedia Browser from Karelia software.

In detail, the show covers:

• iPad Camera Connection Kit
• Importing from Canon Powershot G10
• Importing from iPhone 3GS
• Importing from Kodak Zi8
• Digital Editing on the iPad
• Photogene
• ReelDirector Video Editing
• Organising your Digital Workflow
• Importing into Aperture from iPad
• Syncing Backup Copies
• Importing into iPhoto from iPad
• Karelia iMedia Browser

Aperture 3 is the latest version of Apples flagship photo management application.

Previous versions have been aimed squarely at the professional photographer, but with this new release, Aperture has been repositioned as a tool for both prosumers and professionals.

One of the reasons many people have held off moving to Aperture was the inclusion of Faces and Places in iPhoto '09. Without them, Aperture 2 was not really a compelling upgrade for iPhoto users. All has been fixed now in Aperture 3 with the inclusion of both these features and over 200+ new improvements.

Aperture 3 now gives Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity!

Part 3 of a mini series of Aperture 3 tutorials. Following on from the previous shows, this week I take a look at some of the options available for migrating from iPhoto in addition to taking a closer look at the new Slideshow capabilities of Aperture 3.

In detail the show covers:

• Renaming Your Trial Library
• Options for importing from iPhoto
• Selective import from iPhoto
• Importing Full iPhoto Library
• Run iPhoto & Aperture in parallel? Aperture
• Preview Files
• Managing Libraries
• Slideshows in Aperture 3
• Quick Slideshows
• Complex Slideshows
• Slideshow Settings
• Adding Audio & Video
• Exporting Slideshows

Aperture 3 is the latest version of Apples flagship photo management application.

Previous versions have been aimed squarely at the professional photographer, but with this new release, Aperture has been repositioned as a tool for both prosumers and professionals.

One of the reasons many people have held off moving to Aperture was the inclusion of Faces and Places in iPhoto '09. Without them, Aperture 2 was not really a compelling upgrade for iPhoto users. All has been fixed now in Aperture 3 with the inclusion of both these features and over 200+ new improvements.

Aperture 3 now gives ""Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity""!

Part 2 of a mini series of Aperture 3 tutorials - following on from looking at some of the basics in the last show, this week I take a look at some of the more advanced features of Aperture 3.

In detail, the show covers:

• Adjustments & Adjustment Presets
• Brushing in Adjustments
• Lifting & Stamping Adjustments
• Faces
• Places & GPS
• Manual Location Placement
• Embedded GPS Metadata
• Using a GPS Track Log"

Following on from last weeks show about iPhoto '09, I've been playing some more with Places. There is something fascinating about being able to see the exact place on a map where you took a photo. Surprisingly, it also makes it so much easier to organise and find your photos as well. I was so impressed, I seriously started to consider how I might geotag photos in the future, especially with my forthcoming MacMania9 trip to China, South Korea and Japan in the summer.

Yes, I could manually geotag my photos when I get back but I'll probably be taking lots of photos (hundreds) and I won't really know where exactly I am at any particular time.

No, I thought I'd have to bite the bullet and consider a GPS enabled camera!

But after a flurry of questions and answers via Twitter, it became apparent that there is a much less expensive solution to allow me to accurately geotag my photos. That's to use a GPS Data logger to capture my GPS location and just carry on using my existing camera, combining the GPS data and the images on the mac. Super!

Things got even more interesting when it was pointed out that there is an application for the iPhone 3G that enables it to act as a GPS logger - all for the princely sum of £1.79!

Well I downloaded the app Trails - A geologger for iPhone (geotagging) - App store link - and gave it a whirl and was thrilled with the results. Basically, you use Trails on the iPhone 3G to track your position whilst you're taking photos with a normal digital camera. Email yourself the resultant GPS waypoint file when you're finished and use an application called HoudahGeo* to combine the GPS date with your photos and you're done! Import the photos into iPhot '09 and they appear in your Places section with accurate positioning information.

So this week, I couldn't resist sharing this little gem with you, and went out on a mini ScreenCastsOnline roadrip to take some photos of two famous Liverpool landmarks. In the show I take you through the complete process from start to finish demonstrating Trails, HoudahGeo and iPhoto '09.

There is also a little tip to enable you to switch on scroll wheel and multitouch support in iPhoto '09 plus a quick pointer to some recommendations for dedicated GPS Trackers if you want to do some serious Geotagging.

• There is a special ScreenCastsOnline discount available up until the end of February 2009. Just use the coupon code SCO0186 to get 20% off HoudahGeo.

The terminal command to enable the scroll wheel and multi-touch support in iPhoto is:

defaults write com.apple.iphoto MapScrollWheel -bool YES

iLife '09 is here!

Even though I've only had the package a couple of days, how could I not resist doing a show this week about one of the applications in the newly updated iLife '09 suite. Some significant enhancements across the board but I decided to focus in on the new features of iPhoto '09. Apple have introduced two brand new features into iPhoto '09 and added in some great updates to some old favourites, along with additional integration with two of the worlds most popular social networks (FaceBook and Flickr)

The two major enhancements are Faces and Places.

Faces allows you to finally undertake the task of correctly tagging your photos by identifying the people in them - automatically. Apples stunning implementation of face detection and recognition, allows you to correctly identify all the people in your iPhoto library to search and organise thousands of photos. In the show, I take you through the steps of setting up faces with some hints and tips on how to optimise faces detection and recognition on your photos.

Places brings location information to your photo library. If your lucky enough to have a GPS enabled camera or phone (such as the iPhone), iPhoto '09 will analyse the location information contained within each photo and automatically place your photos on a map for easy viewing or searching. If you already have GPS information in your existing photos, it's all done for you automatically. If you don't have such data, iPhoto '09 also allows you to add in location information manually to your existing photos with integration with Google Maps.

This weeks full members show covers:

• Preparing for iLife '09
• Setting Up Faces
• Optimising Faces Recognition
• Setting Up Places
• Adding Places to Events and Photos
• Using Map and Column Views
• Deleting and Correcting Location Information
• Editing in iPhoto '09
• Red Eye Correction This weeks show is also extended for Extra members and includes an additional section covering:
• Creating Dynamic Slideshows
• Exporting Slideshows
• Setting Up FaceBook Integration
• Syncronising Face Tags between iPhoto and FaceBook
• Setting up Flickr Integration