Thinking Different

When Apple released the original Macintosh in 1984, the company touted it as "the computer for the rest of us." Unlike the other operating systems of the time, the Mac OS didn't make users remember arcane commands to use it. Nor did users have to remember to do particular things at particular timesinstall device drivers, configure obtuse hardware settings; the Mac simply did all those things.

Many experienced computer users didn't understand this philosophy of human-computer interaction. Because users were letting the computer do things for them, they had less control over what and how things got done. The irony, of course, is that the computer was ostensibly intended to be a labor-saving device. Nevertheless, most computer users felt that giving up control to their operating system was disempowering.

Fast-forward roughly 20 years to Apple's release of Mac OS X. In addition to its numerous technical advantages over the original Macintosh operating system, Mac OS X differed from its predecessors in that it imposed a predefined file structure on the Macintosh Finder. With Mac OS X, you could no longer stick your files just anywhere.

Many experienced Mac users bristled at the idea that they were supposed to stay away from the root directory of their hard drive. The didn't like the notion that they were supposed to keep their files confined to their "home" directory, and that even there Apple was pushing the idea that they should divide their files into "documents," "pictures," "music," "movies," and "applications." After all, they were the crowd who "thinks different" (or even "differently").

Several years out, these people don't really complain anymore. After a few months of using the new system, they realized that giving up some control and letting the computer take care of some work was actually empowering.

To fully embrace Aperture's functionality, you will have to take a similar step.

Your Image Editing Appliance

The software tool that is most important to most Mac-based photographers today is not Adobe Photoshop. Nor is it iView Media Pro or Extensis Portfolio or Corel Painter. It's the Finder. Most photographers perform their image management and workflow organization using the Finder. They group their images into folders and then group their folders on their hard drive. When it comes time to organize and sort images, they either pour their images into an image cataloging program or use an image browsing program to look at the contents of a particular folder. When they've found the image they want to edit, they launch it from the Finder into their image editing program, where they edit it and resave it.

Finally, when they've performed their editing and printing chores and are ready to back up or archive their images, they copy their images to another drive or burn them to a CD or DVD.

Obviously, this practice works, as there's no shortage of digital photos in the world. But the Finder is a general-purpose document management tool and application launcher. Ask yourself: Do you sort and organize your tax records using the same techniques that you use to organize printed photos? Or music CDs? Or books? Probably not. Making direct parallels between the analog and digital world is sometimes a shaky rhetorical ploy, but from this example it seems safe to argue that you usually use specialized tools to manage and execute different types of projects in different media.

Aperture is a specialized tool for digital photography. It turns your Macintosh into a digital photography appliance. For the most part, it replaces the Finder for the duration of your photo sorting and editing work. It also replaces most of your existing image editor, as well as any image cataloging software you might be using and any backup tools. In other words: it will replace most of your current digital photography workflow tools.

This is the factor that most users have a difficult time with when making the switch to Aperture. They try to treat Aperture like any other image editing program. They think that they can still manage their images and workflow using the Finder and then take those images into Aperture when they need any of the functions that Aperture provides. But because of the way that Aperture is designed, taking this approach will only make your workflow more complicated.

To return, then, to the pretentious promise of our chapter title: the philosophical lesson you must learn to use Aperture is the lesson of giving up control. To get the most out of Aperture, you must let it manage your documents; you must let it take care of your individual files. You must stop thinking of the Finder as a useful photography tool and instead see that Aperture provides the tools you need to take your images from input, through editing, to output.

Commit right now to learning how a completely Aperture-based photography workflow functions. Don't try to out-think it; don't try to augment it with other programs. Try to see that your current document management habits don't apply here, and that you need to learn some Aperture-specific ones. Later, if you decide that Aperture is not for you because you like to do things differently or need more control, then there's no harm done.