kremalicious

I got quite a few mails in the last days from Aperture users asking for the best way to add your copyright information or any other so called watermark to your images in an Aperture 2 workflow. Especially new users to Aperture find it quite confusing why there isn’t something like a text brick in the Adjustments panel. So Aperture itself lacks the ability of quickly adding some lines of text to your images but nevertheless it has a watermarking feature.

In this article I will lay out every way I’ve found to add watermarks to your images in an Aperture 2 workflow and will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. The goal of this article is to give you a brief overview about the various ways you can add watermarks to your images so you can easily choose the best one for different needs. In short these are the possibilities:

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When on the road I always take a little mobile hard drive with me where all my referenced Aperture Masters from the past years and my mobile Aperture Vault (backing up the un-referenced Masters from the current year) reside. But being little and mobile also means the external hard drive can easily be lost or stolen exposing all my pictures to the thief. To avoid that you can use encryption so in the case of a lost or theft the data is not accessible by the thief. This can easily be done with sparse bundle disk images so you won’t have to encrypt the whole hard drive with additional software.

So in this quick tutorial I will show you how to create an encrypted Aperture Vault by using Sparse Bundle Disk Images and by utilizing tools built into Mac OS X. All this can be done in two simple steps. Read the rest of this entry »

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Earlier this month PictureCode finally released their noise reduction software Noise Ninja as an Aperture plug-in for Aperture 2.1 and above.

The results are just as amazing as they are with the Photoshop plug-in. But the Aperture plug-in uses a streamlined interface which differs from the photoshop version. But the functionality is the same.

You can download a trial version of Noise Ninja for Aperture (images are watermarked with a grid pattern when you save them) and give it a try. The Noise Ninja plug-in for Aperture is available as a part of the Pro Bundle (US$ 79.95) which includes the Photoshop and the Aperture plug-in. If you have an existing Pro Bundle license you can upgrade it for US$ 20 to include the Aperture plug-in license.

Interested in more Aperture plug-ins? Just have a look at my article First overview: Aperture 2.1 adjustment plugins have arrived to get an overview about what’s available at the moment or browse my blog by the Aperture plug-in tag. Additionally you can have a look at the brand new Apple website for all the Aperture plug-ins and ressources.

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Beside a new version of Color Efex Pro for Capture NX, Nik announced a brand new plug-in for Photoshop and Aperture. Silver Efex Pro is a tool to create black & white images with the power and simplicity of the U-Point technology. You can easily fine tune portions of your black & white images. It’s also capable of emulating film grain and 18 different types of film while also providing 20 one-click preset styles. But Silver Efex Pro is also capable of color toning the image.

You can get a 15-day trial from Nik’s website. It can be purchased through Nik’s online store for US$199.95.

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Last week two new image editing plug-ins were announced for Aperture 2.1: The PTLens plug-in for correcting barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective and the Jade plug-in for automatic correction of color, levels and exposure.

The PTLens plug-in from ePaperPress was available as a Photoshop plug-in in the past and is well known for its lens pincushion, barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective correction abilities based on a lens model database similiar to Kekus’ LensFix CI plug-in.

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Apple has updated its latest operating system to version 10.5.4. As alway Apple recommends the update to all Mac OS X Leopard users. According to Apple this update adds support for more RAW formats to the whole system meaning you can use these new RAW formats in all Mac OS X applications based on Core Image (iPhoto, Aperture, Preview etc.). But at the moment it’s unclear which new RAW formats were added. Apple hasn’t updated the general RAW format compatibility list yet. According to Apple’s general RAW format compatibility list the Mac OS X 10.5.4 update incorporates the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility update 2.1 released in May. The cameras fully supported by this update and now also by the 10.5.4 update are: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/Kiss Digital x2/450D, Epson R-D1, Leaf AFi 7, Leaf AFi 6, Leaf AFi 5, Pentax K200D, Pentax K20D. Just the Epson R-D1s seem to be new to the list of supported cameras in OS X 10.5.4.

This update also addresses the issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server which could lead to data loss in previous versions of Leopard. Performance issues when using the Final Cut Studio applications with AirPort networks were addressed too.

The other changes include fixes for X11, L2TP VPN, AirPort, iCal, Safari, Spaces and Exposé. For a complete list of changes you can have a look at the corresponding Apple support article.

The update is available via Software Update for all Leopard users. Alternatively you can grab the update package from the Apple website (88MB) or the whole Combo update (561MB). The Leopard Server update is available too as standalane package (133MB) or as Combo update (677MB).

If you’re on Tiger and don’t want to update to Leopard you can grab the Security Update 2008-004 for Intel (128MB) or PowerPC (80MB) to just take advantage of the security related fixes.

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The All-in-one Aperture adjustment plugin bundle from Human Software is now called Edit for Aperture or just Edit. The new version 1.2 can now apply multiple layers of curves correction at once and the interface gets a new split image view. Also “different compatibility issues for PowerPC users” were fixed according to the release notes.

The ApertureEdit plug-in is a bundle of 12 different modules for denoising, lens fixing, framing, light effects and many more. All effects can be applied to one image at a time or to a whole set of images at once and according to Human Software Edit offers more than 4000 professional effects. Just head over to the product page to see all effects and features this plugin bundle is capable of.

The whole bundle is priced at US$ 299.95 and it’s available from Human Software’s Online Shop. Or you can buy just one single plug-in too which will cost you US$ 69.95 for each. There’s a trial version available too and if you don’t want to mail Human Software for the trial version you can download it from MacUpdate.

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Have you ever looked for a way to quickly add text to your images without photoshopping a watermark image first?

There’s a simple editing plug-in available for this task called Borders & Titles and as the name says you can add simple borders and text to your images within Aperture 2.1. It’s a sample plug-in provided by Apple and it’s fully functional. You can download it from Apple’s Developer Connection website without registration:

Aperture Edit Plugin - Borders & Titles

The downlaod package includes the source code too so you can adjust the plug-in if you’re able to code Cocoa. After downloading put the BordersAndTitles.ApertureEdit plug-in into /Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins and access the plug-in from Aperture.

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I have updated my Camera Obscura Icons with four more icons for your Aperture Library, your iPhoto Library, your Aperture Vault and for Aperture Projects.

The download package now includes 7 icons as an iContainer and for Mac (icns, Folder), Linux (PNG) and Windows (ico) and you can grab it from the Goodies page.

And if you’re interested, you can read my blog entry about the story behind this special Camera Obscura contained in these icons.

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These two desktop icons show the Camera Obscura as it was used by Nicéphore Niépce in an Aperture and iPhoto style and are intended as an homage to him. Nicéphore Niépce made it first possible to preserve an image taken with a camera obscura in 1826 or 1827 by using a special mixture of bitumen on a pewter plate, naming it Heliography. This first preserved photograph “View from the Window at Le Gras” is the one you can see in the iPhoto icon contained in this package. The third icon is the folder icon I have created for this icon package.

Either just download the icons or read the exciting story about the First Photograph.

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In addition to my Niépce’s Camera Obscura icons for Aperture and iPhoto I have made some Wallpapers containing both icons. All Wallpapers using a custom designed background which imitates the look of a metal plate like it was used in Niépce’s experiments although it wasn’t golden To make it more Mac style I have added a stenciled dots pattern (which is a commonly used reference to the front design of the MacPro). Here are the details:

• Aperture and iPhoto styled Camera Obscura as it was used by Nicéphore Niépce.
• Including one desktop version with the Aperture styled Camera Obscura and one with the iPhoto styled. Both come in 1920×1200 for widescreen displays and 1600×1200 for normal displays
• Including 2 different crops for the iPhone (480×320).

Just grab them from the Goodies page and have fun.

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I have added my first wallpaper to the Goodies section on this website. It’s a shot of blooming chives which was altered with Aperture 2.1 and Photoshop CS3.

You can get the wallpaper by browsing my Goodies section and clicking on the download link for the wallpaper. The download package also includes a custom folder icon (512px as .icns, .png, .ico) with the Chives wallpaper on it.

Beside that, this image is available for print on deviantArt in various sizes.

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Beside the Mac OS X 10.5.3 update Apple has posted another update which adds RAW decoding support for seven more cameras.

The seven cameras now fully supported in Mac OS X are: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/Kiss Digital x2/450D, Epson R-D1, Leaf AFi 7, Leaf AFi 6, Leaf AFi 5, Pentax K200D, Pentax K20D. The RAW decoding on MAC OS X works across the whole system, so you can use these cameras and their RAW images now with Aperture and iPhoto too.

You can get the update via Software Update or you can download the standalone installer (2.4MB) from Apple’s website.

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Today Apple released an update to it’s newest operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard which updates it to 10.5.3. As always Apple recommends all users to update to the newest version.

Among the photography and Aperture related fixes are an improved compatibility between Time Machine and Aperture 2 and the availability of additional RAW image formats for several cameras.

You can fire up Software Update to update to 10.5.3. The update is 420 MB in size and a restart is required. Alternatively you can download the combo update (536MB) from Apple’s download page which includes all fixes and improvements since the first version 10.5.

You can read about all fixes and improvements in this Apple Support article.

Update: According to another Apple Support article Mac OS X 10.5.3 adds RAW decoding support for the following cameras: Hasselblad CFV-16, Hasselblad H3D-31, Hasselblad H3D-31II, Leaf Aptus 54S, Leaf Aptus 65S, Nikon D60, Olympus E-3, Pentax *ist DL2, Pentax *ist DS2, Pentax K100D Super, Sony DSLR-A200, Sony DSLR-A350

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Today Human Software released an exciting image editing plug-in for Apple’s Aperture. It’s called ApertureEdit and according to Human Software it offers more than 4000 professional effects which you can achieve right within Aperture.

The ApertureEdit plug-in is a bundle of 11 different modules for denoising, lens fixing, framing, light effects and many more. All effects can be applied to one image at a time or to a whole set of images at once. Just head over to the product page to see all effects and features this plugin bundle is capable of.

The whole bundle will cost you US$ 299.95 and it’s available now from Human Software’s Online Shop. But you can buy just one single plug-in too which will cost you US$ 69.95 for each. There’s a trial version available too and if you don’t want to mail Human Software for the trial version you can download it from MacUpdate.

If you’re interested in all the other Aperture 2.1 image editing plug-ins, feel free to have a look at my article First overview: Aperture 2.1 adjustment plugins have arrived.

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Today Image Trends Inc. announced the final availability of the anti-distortion plugin Fisheye-Hemi as an editing plugin for Aperture 2.1. The plugin will remap your hemispheric images taken with a fisheye lens. So if you take pictures with a fisheye lens this plugin is a must have for you.

From the press release:

Photographers can now easily preserve a normal view of people by not distorting their faces and bodies, as the plug-in straightens vertical lines. Fisheye-Hemi Plug-In uses almost all of the pixel data in that view with no loss of image resolution while displaying the intended composition and framing better than other un-warping programs. 

If you’re interested in how the plugin works there’s a cool in-depth explanation from the guys at Image Trends on their website.

The Fisheye-Hemi plugin is the first plugin from Image Trends coming for Apple’s Aperture. Image Trends’ president and CEO Dan Sullivan says that the other plugins PearlyWhite and ShineOff are expected to be released within the next 60 days while some mysterious “other products” will follow them too. The plugin costs US$ 29.95 and if you want the plugin for Aperture and Photoshop you get a 50% discount. There’s also a free trial version of the plugin available.

• Plugin website
• First overview: Aperture 2.1 adjustment plugins have arrived

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With the release of Aperture 2.1 Apple introduced a plugin architecture for adding third party image adjustment and export plugins. Now the first third party image adjustment plugins for Aperture 2.1 have arrived. And they can definitely make you stop roundtripping your pictures to Photoshop and back. For now a total of 14 plugins from 9 companys were announced which are waiting to help you with your Aperture 2 workflow.
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There are already some lists like this available on the web and they are always very subjective so I thought I should add my subjective list too. While Aperture was released I was coding this website and had not much time for writing about it. So although a bit late here is my absolutely biased list of my favorite 15 new features included in Apple’s Aperture since version 2.0. It’s in a nice countdown order ending with the best new feature (to me) at the bottom. Just click on the little screenshots to smoothly zoom to the full version of them.
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Today Nik Software announced the availability of it’s U-point-technology based editing plugin for Apple’s Aperture 2.1 called Viveza.

With Viveza photographers are able to select areas from their images and adjust them separately from the rest of the picture by defining so called Color Control Points.

A 15 day trial is available from the website of the plugin. The whole plugin will cost you US$ 249.

Nik Software Viveza Website

Now it should be just a matter of days or weeks before the other recently announced plugins will be available too.

Finally here’s a first test of the plugin from photographer Jim Crotty:
Testing Viveza and Your Opinion

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Since version 1.0 Aperture is able to render images on export with a graphic overlay on top of them called watermark. This feature of Apple’s Aperture can give you a chance to make stealing your web-published pictures a bit harder.

So let’s see how we can make Aperture automatically render watermarks on our images during export. In this article we will make a watermark with a transparent background and add some text on top of it. The steps for this magic involves 4 simple steps:

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