Managing Large Film Scans in Aperture

Organizing 500 odd original film scans along with their different versions representing various stages of Photoshop dust spotting, resizing, and sharpening had become a bit of a mess. We needed professional help. Lightroom cannot handle scans at the size we require so we investigated Aperture after giving iView a passing look. We tentatively installed the software as we just scraped past Aperture's minimum system requirements. Happily enough, everything installed well, and we began importing our scans from every directory where there was likely to be a picture hanging out. This took about 30 minutes. Ten minutes later we had deleted all the duplicate files, made easy by Aperture's viewer, leaving us with only our master scans.

After a while we decided that we didn't want our scans on our main hard drive, or in Aperture's managed library. No problem: we exported out all of our scans to an external drive, and Aperture keeps track of them as 'referenced masters'. The problem here, however, is that Aperture does not make backup copies of referenced masters, leaving this task up to the user. Well we have heard all manner of catastrophe that can result from this arrangement, with users accidentally deleting referenced images. Our solution is to set up an incremental backup system. That is, we back up the main image drive onto another external drive at intervals using a backup utility. As this is an incremental backup, there is no need to copy over the whole drive. We use 'Silverkeeper', but many users prefer 'SuperDuper' for Mac OS X.

Aperture's default settings allows it to make previews of images stored in its library. However, these previews are only used to create slideshows or to view images that are offline. Offline images are those stored in external drives or on CDs that are not currently available to Aperture to access. Many users switch off previews to save space. We have decided to leave this feature on as it allows us to view our images if we are away from our external image drive, or we just are too lazy to turn it on.

We are very happy with some of the image adjustments we can make from within Aperture, but correcting colour casts that are by-products of the scanning process can only be handled in Photoshop. When we wish to use Photoshop, Aperture creates a new master TIFF or PSD file that opens in Photoshop. The modified file is kept in Aperture, and displayed next to the original image as a 'stack', so you can keep track of various edits. We were worried that Aperture would not be able to handle files larger than 250MB, which is described as a software limitation on Aperture's 'tech' forum. We have found that converting 250MB and larger TIFF scans to PSD files in Aperture causes it to unexpectedly quit. Smaller files work. If we allow Aperture to export TIFF files instead of PSD files to Photoshop, there are no problems. So far, the largest file we have had Aperture convert for Photoshop use is 1.2GB. Not bad! When we save the edited file in Photoshop, Aperture records this and displays the edited file next to the original. Thus, we can keep track of originals, as well as edits.

The ability to catalogue, and add metadata to our scans is also a boon. We have renamed all our files following a particular naming scheme: Scans-Year-Camera type-ID number. We can now locate pictures based on the camera used, or by format, or by date. Keywording images allows us to add other information like locations, film type, lenses used etc. We can therefore find images using multiple search criteria, or create 'smart albums' that automatically fill with images that match certain search criteria. For example, if we create a search for 'seascapes', a 'smart album' will fill with all the images we have in our library that have sea scenes. One can create keyword presets to apply to multiple images at once to reduce the typing involved. Aperture remembers all the keywords used previously so typing a letter from the word brings up the keyword, or the keyword can be selected from a list.

We have been wary of Aperture after hearing complaints about its inability to run quickly on lower-end systems. Our computer finds itself decidedly on the low-end of the spectrum as an 1.5GHz 17" PowerBook G4 equipped with its maximum complement of 2GB of RAM. Needless to say, adjustments made to images often brings up the 'spinning beach-ball of death'. However, on average, the delay between an adjustment and its concordant result on a full screen image takes about 1 second for a 300MB image. This value goes up for intensive image adjustments like noise reduction, for example. This doesn't bother us as we use 'Neat Image' for noise reduction tasks anyway. The bottom line, though, is that adjustments rarely happen in real-time like they do in Lightroom. Then again, Lightroom can't handle a high resolution 35mm scan, much less an 8x10" film scan so that point is moot. To say the least, we are pleasantly surprised by Aperture's responsiveness and stability on our ageing system.

Database management of our images has become an issue of principal concern to us. As Trinidad's natural spaces are irrevocably altered, Trinidad Dreamscape photographs are fast morphing from mere pretty pictures to historical records of natural spaces that now no longer exist. Although the archival stability of our film-based pictures is assured for 100+ years, digital archiving and database management adds a welcome redundancy to the preservation of our images.

- July 2007

Update 2008

Well well, sad to say that we have dumped Aperture in favour of Lightroom 2 Beta. Apparently, Apple thought it fit to break Aperture's ability to handle large film scans in its version 2.0 form whereas Lightroom now supports file sizes of up to 30,000 pixels on a long dimension, up from 10,000 pixels in version 1. Actually, we find the new Lightroom 2.0 Beta a joy to use.

We tested about 6 RAW converters for our digital camera, including Aperture 2.0 and Lightroom 2.0 beta. There are always trade-offs, as we found 'RAW Developer' to render pictures with the highest detail, but had sub-par performance with high ISO noise. Aperture had the best high ISO noise performance, and Lightroom delivers punchy pictures at the expense of clipping highlight detail. 'SilkyPix' is highly rated, but didn't do so well with our camera. Aperture 2.0 seems to have the best all-round RAW converter for our camera, but we'll make do with Lightroom, which is nicer to use anyway.

While we're griping about Apple's Aperture, we might as well gripe about Apple's hardware too. Our venerable PowerBook G4 is four years old, and upgrade time seems to be approaching necessitating the inevitable look at Apple's new laptop platforms. When comparing Apple's latest and greatest MacBook Pro to that of other manufacturers' top-flight laptops, Apple's flagship laptop comes up wanting. Wanting badly. Although we have been using Apple products for a decade, it has always been a mote of contention for us that Apple locks users into its hardware platforms: we would really like OS X to run on somebody else's laptop. Naturally, Apple makes this impossible without doing some serious hacking (Very Bad), which is beyond our ability anyway. Switching hardware platforms gives us a choice of Linux (hate it, all versions), Windows XP (hate it more), or Windows Vista which, surprise surprise, wasn't all that bad when we tried it out. But then Vista is no OS X Leopard, the hands-down World's Best Operating System. Of course, Leopard isn't perfect: its got a buggy Apple webkit in Safari which won't load websites like The New England Journal of Medicine (without switching off JavaScript, and pissing us off mightily), or that it uses a lame out-of-date-excuse-for-a-Java-extension which renders our online bank transactions inoperable. Moreover, Apple's recent "update" of Java didn't even include an update for PowerPC users which, in essence, sends a not-so-veiled message to loyal Apple PowerPC users to upgrade to Intel - Apple Intel, that is. Recently, PayPal criticized Safari for not implementing visible anti-phishing technology that comes standard in IE, Mozilla et. al. through the use of an address bar colour change. Nor is that the end of the story; heck, if it wasn't for third-party 'CoverSutra' we'd likely strangle iTunes too. On another note we have noticed a certain smugness imbuing Apple of late, a phenotype shared by users of its products, and that it is now considered elitist and hip to own Apple, rather than just downright weird as in the 'old days'. Well, we have a message for Apple: our new computer will have a glowing logo, but it won't be that of a quarter-eaten fruit.

- May 2008