800e and Aperture 3.x

[Mark Muse]

Anyone using these together? I am wondering about the default raw conversion settings for this camera and how they might be improved. I regularly customize these for my cameras, but it is all by experiment since there seems to be no solid information on how these controls work and how they interact with the normal image editing controls.

[CatOne]

In general, there shouldn't be much need to tweak the settings in the RAW fine tuning brick much with Aperture.  The effects there are subtle, and because each tweak requires the image to be re-demosaiced they are VERY expensive from a CPU perspective.  i.e. you may note they are definitely NOT real time adjustments and are quite S-L-O-W.

I'd say unless you have real issues with RFT on the 800e that you should just use the main adjustments, and leave RFT alone.

[Mark Muse]

Thank you for the reply. I can handle the CPU hit. What I have done in the past is once satisfied, designate them as the camera default. Do you know where I can find specific conceptual info for these controls? I am particularly interested in the sharpen, edge sharpen, and moirre / radius. Thanks.

[CatOne]

I think the Apple documentation has a little info on them (do help->Aperture help from within Aperture).  Also the Aperture 3 book by Dion Sciopputelo has some details, but they're pretty sparse.

My advice is really to just play with them a bit (make duplicates so you can go back and forth) and see if you can improve on the defaults.

[Mark Muse]

I upgraded my OS to 10.7.4 and completed the Aperture updates. The defaults for the 800e are really good! This was not the case when I got my 5D2, and I was able to significantly improve over Aperture's default settings for that camera. I'll use the defaults for the 800 for a while before I make any changes, and if I do they will be minor.

It would be useful, though, to have some concrete info about the concepts behind that brick, about each slider in it, and how they interact with one another and the editing tools. It is hard to imagine that would disclose any secret sauce!

[KirbyKrieger]

It would be useful, though, to have some concrete info about the concepts behind that brick, about each slider in it, and how they interact with one another and the editing tools. It is hard to imagine that would disclose any secret sauce!

It would be extremely useful.  Apple has shown no inclination to let users know what algorithms are being used to make any Aperture adjustments.  I don't see that changing.

I regularly lower Boost (a contrast setting) and also lower Hue Boost (a hue contrast setting dependent, afaik, on the Boost setting) -- but I'm ever in search of naturalism, and find easy theatricality degrades my pictures.

I suspect -- I won't take the time to test this out -- that with Aperture 3.3.1, all of the default RAW conversion settings have been "pimped" a bit.  This is misleading -- RAW should be a somewhat neutral, somewhat flat starting point -- but I suspect the engineers are under orders to make converted RAW files look like Disneyfied JPGs, because Disneyfied JPGs sell cameras and software ("Wow!  Lookit that straight-out-o-camera image!")  In the future we may end up with "RAW RAW" and "Cooked RAW".

[Mark Muse]

I regularly lower Boost (a contrast setting) and also lower Hue Boost (a hue contrast setting dependent, afaik, on the Boost setting) -- but I'm ever in search of naturalism, and find easy theatricality degrades my pictures.

I cut boost regularly... almost always. Since I export to Ps to finish the work I need a little extra headroom for working there.

By the way, do you know if there is a way to make and apply contone luminance masks to bricks in Aperture?

[KirbyKrieger]

I cut boost regularly... almost always. Since I export to Ps to finish the work I need a little extra headroom for working there.

Good to know.  Thanks.

By the way, do you know if there is a way to make and apply contone luminance masks to bricks in Aperture?

Not sure what you are aiming for.  Almost every Brick can have a mask created by using a Brush.  The mask is, afaik, simply a per-pixel amount that determines the degree to which the Brick's controls affect each pixel.  The amounts vary from 0 to 1, and are understood to be percentages.  No mask is a luminance mask, although many Bricks affect luminance values.

I use the Brush's Strength slider to lay down swaths at different percentages (densities?), and regularly use the Feather Brush to smooth the edges of the Brush mask.  Note -- I'm sure you know this -- that there are five ways of viewing the Brush mask (click the Brush HUD Action Menu {the gear icon} to select one).

[Mark Muse]

I am familiar with the brush-in or brush-out capability of Aperture. A luminance mask is an 8bit grayscale version of the image at hand. These can be manipulated in various ways, positive, negative, or combinations to isolate and attenuate the application of an edit based on luminance.

I would find it useful to invert a highlight mask and apply it to a sharpening brick to attenuate sharpness in the highlights. Another example is a gentle application of an inverted HL combined with an inverted SH used on a sharpening brick would yield more mid tone sharpening than either HL or SH sharpening. In Ps this is a good way to control the application of any adjustment layer. It would be great to have the same ability in Aperture when doing raw conversion.