Linux Alternatives To Apple's Aperture 271
somethingkindawierd writes "An experiment focusing on open source tools for Ubuntu Linux to compete with Aperture on the Mac. The author didn't think he would find a worthwhile open source solution, but to his surprise he found some formidable raw processing tools. A good read for any Linux fan or photographer looking for capable and inexpensive tools"
Linux alternative to aperture: (Score:5, Funny)
It's too bad Adobe got their hands on RawShooter (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's too bad Adobe got their hands on RawShoote (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's too bad Adobe got their hands on RawShoote (Score:4, Funny)
I'll choose Raw The Rapee for 1000. Haw haw.
Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Informative)
F-Spot, The default photo editor that comes with Ubuntu 8.04, was quickly discarded. [FOSS]
Picasa, Really liked the application overall. I crop all my photos to the golden ratio of 1.62:1, so this limitation is unacceptable. [NOT FOSS]
LightZone, very similar to both Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom. Costs $200 and is not open source. No online support forum.
Bibble, very fast and it only costs $130. It does not however have any photo-management capabilities. No tagging, project management, or meta data editing. [NOT FOSS]
Raw Therapee, raw photo processor, free. It does not, however, run on Mac OS X. Does not manage projects. And it does not work with anything but raw photos, so it will not allow for processing jpegs or tiffs
Qtpfsgui, another useful application. HDR tool for Ubuntu Linux, Macintosh, and Windows.
The result:
There isn't an all-in-one package that will do the trick, but by combining Ubuntu's file manager Nautilus for project management, Raw Therapee for raw processing, and the Gimp for non-raw processing, just about everything I do in Aperture can be done on Ubuntu Linux using free and open source solutions.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's part of the shortfall...
Lightroom and Aperture are so good BECAUSE they are integrated.
There is nothing really in Lightroom that you can't do with Photoshop - but the way it's integrated and how it's able to work with / organise large collections of photos makes Lightroom one of the most run Apps on my Mac.
As long as Linux doesn't offer a good competitor to Lightroom / Aperture, I will keep doing my photography stuff on the Mac...
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Yes - sure, but for one thing, Lightroom allows the same (even allowing two different apps to be called from within lightroom -- in my case, these would be Photoshop and DXO (for which, I think, there also isn't a linux alternative).
But the 'trick' is more about not needing most of the programs for most of the time; or being able to batch-use them (like DXO, which I can run once every new import or so to work on all new pictures in one go).
Just as a bit of background - for someone 'occasionally' shooting p
Open, but perhaps not Free (Score:2, Informative)
F-Spot, The default photo editor that comes with Ubuntu 8.04, was quickly discarded. [FOSS]
Maybe change that to [fOSS].
It's open source, for sure, but since F-Spot is built on mono, a port of Microsoft .NET, it probably contains Microsoft intellectual property, the licensing of which may be dependent on which distro (e.g. SUSE) you're running, so 'Free' is debatable.
It could be a patent trap ... or not. That uncertainty is certainly disconcerting.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:4, Informative)
There's also digikam [digikam.org] which does a *lot* of things including management, basic editing and raw processing (although I do that last bit in Bibble). It's Qt but will run fine on a Gnome desktop.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:4, Funny)
Holy crap, how does one spell that? o_0
How did the author come up with this name? Did he smashed the keyboard with an enraged basement cat or what? Or is it "Cthulhu" reversed and triple-ROT13'd?...
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> Qtpfsgui
Holy crap, how does one spell that? o_0
How did the author come up with this name? Did he smashed the keyboard with an enraged basement cat or what? Or is it "Cthulhu" reversed and triple-ROT13'd?...
Not exactly from the project website -
Qtpfsgui at sourceforge [sourceforge.net]
Why this name?
Qt: the program uses Qt4 to show its graphical widgets.pfs: the main backend library and original sourcecode base.
gui: this stands simply for graphical user interface.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Informative)
Raw Therapee, raw photo processor, free. It does not, however, run on Mac OS X. Does not manage projects. And it does not work with anything but raw photos, so it will not allow for processing jpegs or tiffs
Huh? out-of-the-box it can't, but you just click on Preferences > File Browser, uncheck Show only RAW files, and there ya go. Can't understand why "doesn't run on MacOSX" would be a con in an article about *Linux* alternatives to Aperture either, but oh well.
Ohh, and about Lightroom, the older (v2.x) versions used to be free (as in $0) on Linux, plus they ran on non-SSE2 CPUs, so Linux users strapped for cash may want to search the 'net for them instead.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, it's been a joke/cliche/truism for years about OSS packages with crappy names, but... damn. I think we have a winner. 6 consonants in a row and two vowels at the end. No one will over beat that. It looks like someone's cat walked over the keyboard just as the owner was clicking 'create new project' on SourceForge.
I see a few missed apps listed here. (Score:3, Informative)
But I'm a bit surprised to see that no one has mentioned BlueMarine [tidalwave.it].
Granted, I'm just beginning to examine how such applications address me needs (not sure if they do, yet... Adobe Bridge seems to be all I need), but I do like the way that BlueMarine works.
Any thoughts?
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As far as GIMP interface is concerned, let's just say its different than, er, Photoshop. It has been discussed and beaten to death already anyways, and offtopic here.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Funny)
In my opinion, it hasn't been beaten to death enough.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:4, Informative)
The GIMP is disqualified for not being like Aperture at all, but like Photoshop.
Aperture and its Adobe competition, Lightroom, are metadata-based editors with very powerful RAW processing engines. They draw upon the power of metadata for everything from nondestructive editing (pixels are not touched until export) to project organization (through EXIF data and IPTC keywords).
They also both use a streamlined, task oriented interface, instead of the random collection of tools that is GIMP or Photoshop. Some "power user tips" that take a long sequence of steps in GIMP or Photoshop have been intelligently condensed into single sliders in Aperture and Lightroom, for easier use by everyone.
GIMP is still basically a destructive pixel pusher, like Photoshop. I don't think it has any RAW capability unless you tie it to dcraw. Therefore GIMP does not play in this sandbox.
Someone once said that the failure of Open Source office suites was their slavish imitation of Microsoft Office, and that what was really needed was a fresh new approach. The same could be said of why GIMP fails against Photoshop. The fresh new approach is being provided by Adobe and Apple's metadata-based image editors.
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I didn't realize GIMP handled RAW (NEF and suchlike) formats and allowed adjusting of whitepoints, etc. I thought it was purely a raster image editor/tweaker.
This is the whole reason Aperture exists and people don't just use Photoshop (which incidentally does all of that too) for RAW processing.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't realize GIMP handled RAW (NEF and suchlike) formats and allowed adjusting of whitepoints, etc. I thought it was purely a raster image editor/tweaker.
Glad we could set you straight on that. I love the RAW tools in GIMP, they simplify my workflow significantly.
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, GIMP doesn't actually support RAW formats, and for good reason. They are both unnecessarily manifold and proprietary.
That's not "good reason". That's just lacking capability.
Even the most basic cameras generally offer support for uncompressed images (usually in some sort of TIFF encapsulation), and if this is what you need, then use it.
You really don't know what raw files are even used for, do you? Very few cameras these days support TIFF, and that's because TIFF has none of the benefits of raw CCD data files, and is even larger than them.
(Technically, DNG raw files are TIFFs, but those are not in any way widely supported yet.)
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's a Summary! (Score:4, Informative)
Linux needs system-wide color management (Score:5, Interesting)
Color management means an image is shown the same on every screen, and as close as possible on paper. You cannot do serious photo work without integrated color management, but unfortunately even Winsh*t still leads Linux by ten years here. It's time the Linux guys moved their efforts to desktop app integration - the server is done - you hear me, guys ? the server is done, move to improving the desktop !
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the server is done - you hear me, guys ? the server is done, move to improving the desktop !
So far, I have not been impressed with the efforts to "improve" the desktop. With every new iteration of the various popular distributions, it seems like more and more functionality is tied to GNOME and/or KDE with fewer and fewer features available through the command line.
I think it would be better if people kept their hands off the desktop.
Oh, and I can't do serious photo work, because I'm not any good at photogra
Re:Linux needs system-wide color management (Score:4, Interesting)
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A line needs to be drawn somewhere..
Us geeks like the CLI even today because we know that the CLI is much more efficint for the kind of task that we do. It is quicker to do many tasks from the CLI than the click>wait app to launch> Click the Tab> Select The Option> Apply> Close. But we need to remember that the population of average user outruns the population of us geeks.
The developers need to continue designing better GUI apps without compromising on the CLI bundle that we still use.
Re:Linux needs system-wide color management (Score:4, Insightful)
Speak for yourself, and don't try to speak for "us geeks". There are a lot of geeks who use the GUI for almost everything. Yes, I like to have tcsh available on my MacOS Terminal (I know some prefer bash), but the idea that preferring a GUI costs me geek cred (finally!) died over a decade ago.
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Until the GUI tools are comprehensive (they just aren't, on anyplatform) there will always be the need to have CLI tools.
Fortunately, there is really nothing forcing those to go away.
Package managers make it trivial to add things that aren't
installed by default and simpler CLI tools (and even some GUI)
tools don't require any fancy installers. You can just pick up
a binary and use it.
Re:Linux needs system-wide color management (Score:4, Insightful)
You aren't much of a geek, then. Preferring the GUI for CERTAIN TASKS is a good thing. But the GUI is simply not the best interface for everything. There are some things that are much better done with the CLI, which is what I think the GPP was getting at. Don't stop development of the command-line interface and tools simply because we want to appeal to grandmas and other people scared of the command line.
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A line needs to be drawn somewhere..
Us geeks like the CLI even today because we know that the CLI is much more efficint for the kind of task that we do.
Oh please. Get over yourself.
A GUI, when designed well and used appropriately, is zillions of times faster than a CLI for performing certain classes of tasks.
A concrete example? Wi-Fi management. On my Ubuntu 8.04 laptop, I click the little network icon in my upper panel, choose a wireless network, and enter a password if necessary. Then I wait for both green lights to come on, and I'm done!
I know how to do all of that in the CLI (did it for YEARS... since the late 90s), but it's by no means faster to
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I've been trying to control Amarok with DCOP && ssh from another room, but this isn't really a sane solution...
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I LIKE IT that less and less features are tied into the command line.
The problem is that features are becoming tied to the GUI, so the command line is not an option.
It's a lot easier for me to use a computer via GUI then via obscure command line commands.
Well, its a lot easier for me to type commands at a prompt than dig through obscure menus.
I run Ubuntu on two different computers at home, 3D acceleration, COMPIZ, WINE, all work extremely well. And I didn't have to use the command line to set any of them
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the server is done - you hear me, guys ? the server is done, move to improving the desktop !
So far, I have not been impressed with the efforts to "improve" the desktop. With every new iteration of the various popular distributions, it seems like more and more functionality is tied to GNOME and/or KDE with fewer and fewer features available through the command line.
When last I checked commands were not "either-or".
Additionally, That's kinda the point...
I don't want to have to drop to a shell every time I want to do file management because every graphical manager lacks a "sudo" dialogue.
2 other important things on my wishlist besides this and color management, an OSS version of "column view" from finder, and I want gnome to integrate true next style navigation. In an era where vertical real estate is at a premium, slapping a menubar into each window is a huge waste.
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Ummmm... DBus? You can open up a text editor and write a program that scripts your desktop (ie: GUI-based) applications in C++, Python, C, Java, or basically any other language. Then you can run that script from the command line.
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Seeing as how most of that color-management some want so badly is patented by various for-profit companies, and considering that patent lifetime is (currently) 17 years, and finally if Windows is "ten years" more advanced than Linux, then it's as much as 7 more years (Barring a patent lifetime extension being rammed through Congress) before those patents expire and Linux distros can finally start integrating those technologies legally.
For the time being, there are ways to get color management in Linux [wikipedia.org] depen
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This is typical Linux FUD. All the basic stuff has been made generally available by the various people who defined the ICC profile standards. There are no royalties attached. There are some excellent CMS packages under Linux (argyll, lcms) , but system-wide support is missing because of the fragmented nature of the community - read they cannot make up their minds where to put the config files, I'm not joking.
Golden ratio? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Golden ratio? (Score:5, Funny)
I immediately subconsciously discredited the author when he stated that the golden ratio was a requirement.
Apparently, your subconscious also posted this to slashdot.
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Re:Golden ratio? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't understand. Why shouldn't I be able to crop to any arbitrary aspect ratio? Even archaic `xv' does that. Okay, the use of the golden ratio specifically is a bit unusual, but so what??
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What a tool (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped caring when the author said that he crops "all" his photos to the same (non-standard) ratio.
Closed, done. Sorry.
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Oh, I gave him that one - artistic expression and all that. What killed me was the smilies.
Real reviews don't use smilies. Ever.
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It's non-standard because no camera sensor or standard print size uses that ratio.
I don't care if he dislikes any Apple products. In fact, he seems to be quite fond of Apple products, since he uses them.
No halfway decent photographer shoehorns absolutely all of his work into ONE nonstandard aspect ratio. Different compositions require different aspect ratios.
The only reason to use one aspect ratio on all of your compositions is that you're simply not good or talented enough to know any better.
digiKam? (Score:5, Informative)
What, has no-one mentioned digiKam [digikam.org] yet?
What a terrible omission from the review.
Take a look, it's really good.
Re:digiKam? (Score:5, Informative)
Totally agree.
I prefer Digikam to iPhoto for many reasons. The most important to me is that I can keep a folder organization that makes logical sense on disc and have it reflected in digikam.
One thing it gets right that other photo managers get wrong: Selecting photos and moving them to another photo will bring up a small dialog asking if you want to copy or move the files. Stupid and irrelevant for /.'ers, but great for those that forget that holding down the shift or control keys are how this is generally done in other applications (like my dad, who constantly screws up his iPhoto folders by copying when he thinks he is moving, or vice versa).
One slight gripe: It follows the KDE standard of a single click opening a photo instead of selecting it (easily changed by installing kcontrol in ubuntu and changing the mouse property).
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If you like KDE apps, which I don't. There's just something about the interface and menus and what not that I just can't stand. Oh well.
Back on topic, I personally use rawstudio [rawstudio.org] to import from my camera [sonystyle.com] do some basic adjustments and then export to gimp. And mono be damned, F-Spot is a perfect iPhoto replacement. I've played with lightroom and aperture on vista and leopard respectively and find both work well, but just don't justify their pricetag for me.
There are plenty of options, and they should all
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(Yes, I'm responding to the troll...)
If you use any of the standard ways of installing digikam on Ubuntu, you don't have any issues. The package managers will automatically download and install the necessary parts of KDE without changing your desktop from gnome to KDE.
The only way you'll realize that it's a KDE app is that it installs a lot of dependencies and that left-clicking on a photo will open it (KDE default) rather than selecting it (Gnome default), and to change that option you have to install kco
Re:digiKam? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, no.
You point digikam to the root folder of your photos. It will create a single file there consisting of it's database.
No importing of folders necessary. :-)
Maybe you had it confused with f-spot?
Give it a try. You'll really love it and never go back. :-)
Re:digiKam? (Score:5, Informative)
To clarify. If you move a photo in digikam to another folder, it will move that file to the corresponding folder on the disk (just as you would expect it to).
The purpose of the database file is (I believe) just to keep track of thumbnail images it creates.
I'm not sure about RAW file support. According to this web page ( http://www.digikam.org/drupal/node/344 [digikam.org] ), RAW is supported with a standard plugin.
Yeah, but try explaining it to your someone! (Score:2)
I used to have these awesome perl scripts that selected some random FLAC files that hadn't been selected lately, decompressed them and converted them to mp3 on the fly, and copied them to my sandisk player. "It does everything itunes can do!" Then I tried showing it to somebody (a chick) - got all flustered, and f*cked it up. "Just use iTunes" I said in defeat :-)
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How does iTunes do with the non-Apple media player BTW?
Given that iTunes doesn't even like non-Apple mp3 files, I can't imagine it being pretty.
"The one true interface" probably doesn't do the multiple device management either, or the at-will compression.
It sounds like the perl script is not "doing everything itunes can do" but is "doing what itunes can't".
That's usually why people have perl scripts: The "shiny happy people" never thought of it.
These are the tools I use on Ubuntu : (Score:2, Interesting)
I do all my photoprocessing on Ubuntu.
-I use gthumb for organization and importing from the camera (way better than f-spot, which I've never liked)
-I use ufraw with the GIMP plugin to process raw files
-I use GIMP for further processing
-I use Hugin and its associated tools for panoramas
That's all I need, and I sell photos every week, however, I'll be looking into some of the tools mentioned in the article.
Raw Therapee can handle JPEG/TIFF (Score:5, Informative)
Also missing from the comparison: Rawstudio [rawstudio.org] and UFRaw [sourceforge.net].
If you're interested in RAW processing on Linux, there's an excellent blog called Linux Photography [wordpress.com] about this very subject.
Wrong about LightZone (Score:2)
Then what's this [lightcrafts.com]?
Square peg, round hole (Score:5, Informative)
Since the author of the blog post is asking for an Aperture clone for Linux, the answer will pretty much always be "no". If the author were to ask "Can I do my photo processing, from importing RAW files to storing the finished picture and printing?" the answer is yes.
Here's how I do it:
Just save all projects in .xcf or .xcf.bz2 and export finished product to .png.
One last thing, for all the haters who whine about ONLY having 16.8 million colors to work with, even without your help GIMP is integrating GEGL which will bring 16bit integer and 32bit floating point per component.
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> gthumb-import (Which uses gphoto) to talk to the camera and bring in the RAW files.
Not being familiar with this tool, what is the advantage of just rsyncing the files over USB mass storage? Seems to be adding a layer of complexity for no realy gain.
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Not all cameras show up as usb-storage devices. Some speak "PTP" (Photo Transfer Protocol) which gphoto understands.
If you're running a modern GNOME desktop, when you plug in your camera, gthumb-import auto-launches and asks if you want to import, so it's actually easier than opening a terminal and rsyncing (Especially if you don't have a script to handle most of the mundane details for you). Plus it auto-launches gthumb on the newly imported directory (generally named the date-time of the import, so as to
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8BPP is fine for viewing images, or just making a few edits. But having only 256 steps in each channel becomes a liability very quickly if you need to apply a few filters, touch up a bit, do a little dodging, etc. You quickly loose the subtly.
I am very excited that GIMP is integrating with GEGL. Of course I have been waiting 6 years for this (not kidding that is when the effort to go beyond 8BPP started), and it still isn't out yet. So I am not going to hold my breath until it comes out.
But even when it
Cinelerra, the heroinewarrior.com version (Score:2)
Cinelerra does raw .cr2 decompression & all the processing in floating point. Useful for stacking hundreds of astrophotography images. Only for build system masters of course.
Digikam works great for a JPEG workflow (Score:4, Informative)
Lightroom wins (Score:2, Interesting)
I've fought this same battle for a few years. Originally I used Canons software to process RAWs, it was terrible and I needed an alternative.
I tried Pixmatic Raw Shooter when it was free and that worked ok for me, and ran in Wine with minimal issues.
I switched to Picasa when it became available for Linux and supported RAW. It had much better album management, but looking back, the photos it produced looked terrible.
Eventually I switched to Capture One's software. I had to pay money for it, but it worked
He is confused (Score:4, Informative)
This experiment focuses mainly on Aperture and what tools, if any, exist for Ubuntu to replace my Aperture workflow with something cross-platform and open-source that I can use on Mac OS X and Ubuntu.
And then what he looks at,
He stated a criteria ("open-source"), then 4 out of 6 had nothing to do with that criteria. Nice work on consistency there, pal.
Re:Aperature not as good Lightroom (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Aperature not as good Lightroom (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, he also blames the OS for it.
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"you export it overlays them"
Sounds like a logical backup to me.
If the tool can't dump out and reload it's own data without screwing it up, that's just pathetic.
Re:Aperature not as good Lightroom (Score:5, Informative)
Aperture's "library" is just a folder; Use "Show Package contents" from "Get Info" and copy all the originals wherever you want.
Re:Aperature not as good Lightroom (Score:4, Insightful)
we lost a year of work because Aperature's doesn't generate unique filenames for its images across subdirectories and when you export it overlays them...
Why didn't she just restore from the backups you've been helping her keep?
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Why did she get a new computer?
There's a MacOS X version of Lightroom, and it seems to work just fine - I specifically chose it over Aperture after evaluating the trial versions of both last year...
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Why did she get a new computer?
The biggest reason, really, was that there are a lot more plugins available for Photoshop on PC than there are for Mac. When she does digital "art", as opposed to weddings and events, she likes to push the envelope in manipulation as much as she can and there's just more out there for Windows. Plus, of all things, she actually prefers the stupid XP Start bar to the Mac OS/X dock. Incidentally, we both actually like the Gnome bars on Linux best of all, and she'll use my Linu
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I tried plugging her camera into the trusty Linux box last with OpenSuse 10, and it was like flying into total darkness. Now that you've jogged my memory a bit, I'll have to try it now that I'm onto Ubuntu.
You do know that you'd get much higher transfer speeds with a card reader (which incidentally always works on anything) ?
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My wife is a pro-photographer and takes like, 500+ images per job, and, we had the $3000 dual G5 Mac and Aperature and Aperature yakked and we lost a year of work because Aperature's doesn't generate unique filenames for its images across subdirectories and when you export it overlays them...
I agree that's a terrible bug, and Apple should be chided for it.
But you didn't back up the files for an entire year? WTF! That's some weapons-grade FAIL right there.
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But you didn't back up the files for an entire year? WTF! That's some weapons-grade FAIL right there.
She used the firewire drive that had her backup to copy the contents of the folder over, thinking, that, she was, in effect, making a backup. Then we put a copy onto my linux box from the firewire drive. She checked the results of the folder and saw the names were the same, the file counts were same, and a spot check of the images showed that there some there, then, she blew away the Mac drive.
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If it was over-writing files, how could the file-count possibly have been the same as the original?
Or are you saying that Aperture had already over-written the files when it imported in the first place? But then how didn't she notice the missing images during daily use?
I know, it's off-topic, I'm just curious to find out what happened here.
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Huh?
You do know that Lightroom runs on both Windows and Mac, right?
Actually, though, one of my favorite things about Lightroom is that it automatically makes backups of your database.
One of my least favorite things about it is that I've had to use these backups on several occasions, because the 'working' database became corrupted. Aperture apparently isn't much better in this regard.
In any event, shame on you for not making backups! If your livelihood depends on your data, there's absolutely no excuse not
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Oh, that's what it's for!
I'd assumed it wanted to backup absolutely everything to an external disk - which was already happening with Time Machine. So after being annoyed by Lightroom's prompti
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Any reason she didn't just stay with a Mac and switch from Aperture to Lightroom?
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My wife is a pro-photographer and takes like, 500+ images per job, and, we had the $3000 dual G5 Mac and Aperature and Aperature yakked and we lost a year of work because Aperature's doesn't generate unique filenames for its images across subdirectories and when you export it overlays them...
Is this Aperture or the camera ? Most cameras can be set to number their files sequentially or to renumber them from 0 on every new card.
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Lightroom runs on Mac too... (Score:3, Insightful)
And how is disappointment with one program (it's spelled Aperture by the way), translates into not liking the OS and the hardware?
This is just silly. If you are using the Mac, then you don't need aperture nor lightroom, since both try to be image database first and image editing software second.
Mac OS's spotlight does everything Aperture does, and if you create regular backups you are fine.
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Dude... USER ERROR. And BTW you have the choice to rename files that you manage in Aperture as you see fit. You're just using the camera default names.
It's easier to blame the computer for your idiocy, though.
Windows FTW (Score:2)
Too bad there's not an advanced app like Lightroom available for the Mac.
Oh, wait...
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Aperture doesn't generate filenames. It uses the filenames generated by your camera. I'm guessing you have your camera set to restart the numbering for each memory card. I'm not sure exactly what you did to delete your files but don't blame Aperture for your mistake, it will only do what you tell it to and will prompt you if you want to replace a file with another of the same name.
I'm betting that you still don't have a backup. When you lose files next time are you going to blame Lightroom and the PC an
THAT'S RETARDED. (Score:3)
Aperture doesn't generate filenames
No, that's retarded. Whenever any system maintains a repository of any kind, you expect it to place its own names on things. Anything other than that is simply unacceptable. You don't buy a product like that to worry about filenames. ... you buy it do to things right..
Secondly, why are you so moronically assuming that I switched because of Aperture? Aperture might keep me from switching back because the hole in the repository design made me lose my faith in Apple, but
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The RAW image is the one straight from the camera (basically a RAW dump of the CCD output).
Photo Management includes more than just folders (a good example is tagging -- I want to find all images tagged "Outdoors" or tagged "Porn" or tagged both "Outdoor" and "Porn"). Of course, like folders, tags are only as good as you make them.
Layne
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You missed the Big Picture. Aperture is everything. It's Ansel Adams incarnate. It's the second coming. It's cool and whizzy. It takes twenty podcasts, three books and two
Re: (Score:2)
A photo manager is to digital images what iTunes is to media files.
It manages them, including the files on disc.
This is desirable for many because the application takes the photos from the camera, and the user never needs to worry about what's going on on the file system.
It's not so good when you have to use that application to email a file because you don't know the filesystem location of said file. Having to go through export to file wizards is a hassle. Some photo managers will at least have a sensible f
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Screenshots might help - basically it's a file manager with additional sorting, filtering and whatnot designed for organising photos. Here's Lightroom's library view [hylobatidae.org] as an example - I've filtered to show only photos I've given three stars or more, and selected one so you can see all the keywords and other metadata assigned to that photo. All searchable, sortable, filterab
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
"RAW" photos are a lossless capture, which means they are larger files (bad) but with few of the artifacts produced by JPEG compression, and thus your editing options are greatly increased (good).
The exact details of the format depend on the make and even the model of camera you're using; a low-end "point and shoot" camera seldom provides RAW output (see recent Slashdot article on FOSS firmware that adds RAW support to higher-end Canon P&S cameras, however).
A modern digital camera will also add a nice chunk of metadata to each image, giving the details of its exposure. The main difference between a FILL manager and a PHOTO manager is the latter's awareness of, and ability to use, this metadata in a "workflow."
By "workflow" we mean the situation where a professional photographer will routinely generate thousands of images at a wedding, and will want to pick through them to find images worth further refinement, apply a set of transforms (crop, tweak the exposure, sharpen 0.02%, yada yada) to them in large batches, but SELECTIVELY, to produce a finished body of quality work.
Managing those images only with a file manager would be nightmarish; being able to select just the images that were shot with Lens A to apply a certain transform means you can automate the process, go have pizza while the mass of bits gets twiddled, then come back and get creative with the results.
Re: (Score:2)
FILE manager, not FILL manager. Duh.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Aperture Laboratories is a computer-aided enrichment center to test the Aperture Science Hand-held Portal [half-life2.com] device.
More information is available in a video [half-life2.com].