One thing marking a person who has been using computers for quite a number of years is how he or she thinks. Those of us who have, have gone through quite a bit and that includes using very cryptic codes to get things done. There were lots of things to memorize to copy files, move files, etc., so much so that when people eventually moved to graphical user interfaces like what we now have with Windows, the Mac and Linux, it’s sometimes (often?) hard to imagine that what was once quite hard is now easy.
There’s an amusing if not sometimes irritating caveat to this: When you can’t figure out how to do something, you’re probably thinking too much. Try to see what’s the most natural and probably easiest thing to do to get something done and that’s probably how to do it.
Honestly, that’s the mindset that worked for me when I started using Macs (though I still use Windows machines up to now). As an old and now departed Algebra teacher once explained: If there’s an easier way, find it. (Now, was it Edison who said that?)
That’s one of the things that Apple is known for and this is apparent in Aperture 3. Take one really nifty feature: Faces.
Okay, to be fair, the feature is also available in iPhoto but since Aperture is the big brother and pro-level application, it’s such a big deal that an easy-to-use feature makes searching a bit more accessible to everybody. It works quite simply: You identify faces shown to you in whatever project you’re working on and, though a bit tedious at first, this will eventually yield some dividends. For example, as I was going through a project, naming the people in the photos, soon, the program was able to identify and suggest a name for the people in the photos. Granted, it started by giving a really bad suggestion – suggesting that my daughter could be this guy in glasses – but it was such a relief and a feeling of achievement that when a Find command and a search for a particular face was issued, the photos with that person’s face were shown. Since this is an entirely different way of doing things, let’s see just how it can be of continued use.
Not only that though, if you click on a person’s face in the corkboard of sorts (even looks like a corkboard), Aperture will suggest possible photos where that person may be. Then, it’s up to you to determine whether this choice was correct or not.
One of the so-called 200+ new features is the ability to tag a photo using a color code. Apple OSX has had this ability for quite some time and many people have been using it to mark their folders. So why is it in Aperture only now? Better late than never, I guess and at least you can edit the color assigned to something even after the fact. It’s a bit of a mystery though that one supposedly ease of use feature only made its way into on the third version of the program.
Making full use of the screen
The now almost unheard of word processor, Wordperfect, used to be the most popular word processor in the planet and one reason for this was it used a very clean screen (no menus) and it had a page preview featuring at most two pages at a time. That may seem like such a forgettable feature now but then, it was quite new since people were still using Wordstar and its very messy screen with all the codes shown on it.
It’s distracting really to have all sorts of menu items surrounding your photos and that’s why programs like Photoshop have incorporated a viewing mode allowing a user to do away with everything that’s not the photo. This is quite useful and Aperture now has it as well.
We mentioned last week that photographers are actually used to putting their slides (positives instead of negatives) on a light table to look more closely at them. Aperture simulates this experience with the full screen view. Everything is black except the photos when you’re looking at your library. You can rearrange photos and do your usual library stuff when in this mode but things are so much cleaner so you can focus on the photos and not the menus.
Similarly, full screen mode is also there when you want to edit specific individual photos. Nice to have a clean black screen.
Honestly? I’m not such a big fan of the gray look on the default editing screen and finding out that there is this other way of doing things is such a great thing.
What’s more is that you can easily toggle what editing stuff you have on the full screen mode. You can have the usual straighten control, red eye, cropping, etc. You can even have the whole shebang that you normally have on the default editing screen – library, metadata, and adjustments but with a nice black finish. Much more elegant, I think.
Typical Apple though to add some visual spice to the mix: When you press the Shift key when you’re moving sliders in this mode, the rest of the adjustment palette (or HUD) disappears leaving just the one slider you’re using. Again, this does a pretty good job of letting you concentrate on the adjustment you’re doing.
Just a little observation: When you shift back to the usual screen and the library, metadata and adjustment heads up display (HUD) was left on, it can stay on though you have the same set of controls on the default screen.
What’s funny (amusing?) is this: If you lock the HUD on the full screen mode, it will fade out when you go to the default screen. If you don’t lock it, that’s when it stays there when you exit. How’s that?
Oh, there’s this nifty toggle switch (hey, it really looks like a regular switch) that allows you to keep some of the controls always available or if you want them to just slide out of the sides when you hover your mouse pointer. It’s always nice to be in control.