Working with an External Editor


While Aperture provides good tools for adjusting tone, contrast, and color, it is not intended to be a full-fledged image-editing application.

While its toolset will probably be all that you need for the bulk of your images, there will be times when it doesn't have the tool required to fix a particular problem. For these instances, Aperture is designed to work seamlessly with an external editing program such as Adobe Photoshop.

Aperture provides a built-in "round-trip" facility for importing and exporting images to another editing program. This capability allows you to open Photoshop from within Aperture, and integrate it easily into your Aperture workflow.

Choosing an External Editor

To use Aperture's round-trip feature, you must first configure it to use your editor of choice.

1.

Press F to exit Full Screen mode and then choose Aperture > Preferences.

In the Output preferences, notice a field called External Image Editor. By default, it is set to None Selected.

2.

Click the Choose button beneath the External Image Editor field.

3.

In the dialog that appears, navigate to the application that you would like Aperture to use when you want to edit an image in an external editor.

For our exercises, we'll be using Adobe Photoshop CS2, so choose it if you have it installed on your system. Click the Select button and close the dialog.

4.

In the Preferences window, set the External Editor File Format pop-up menu to the format you'd like to use for exchanging files.

We selected PSD since we'll be using Photoshop as our external editor. We could also have selected TIFF, but we know that PSD will support all of the Photoshop features that we might choose to use.

5.

Next to the External Editor File Format pop-up menu is a small field labeled DPI (dots per inch). Set this to 300. This will specify that the image should be exported with a resolution setting of 300 pixels per inch.

6.

Close the Preferences window.

Switching Between Aperture and an External Editor

As you know, Aperture keeps all of its images in its internal Library. If you want to edit one of those images somewhere else, you can use the specified external editor, and then Aperture's round-trip capability automatically reimports the image for you.

1.

Switch to Standard layout and select the image Round Trip in the Browser.

This image has already been cropped and had some exposure adjustments applied to it. Now what it needs is to have some of the debris on the stage cleaned up and the rope in the background removed. The Spot & Patch tool is not enough for either of those tasks, so we're going to take the image into Photoshop.

2.

Choose Images > Open With External Editor, or press Command-Shift-O.

If it's not already running, Aperture will open the application that you defined in the Preferences window.

Next, your image file will automatically be opened in that program. As you can see, Aperture took care of rendering a version with our crop and edits applied. We're now ready to start editing.

3.

Click the Aperture icon in the Dock to switch back to Aperture, and then look in the Browser.

When you choose Open With External Editor, Aperture automatically creates a duplicate version of the current selection. Just as it does when you select Images > Duplicate Version, Aperture automatically stacks this new version with your original version. It is this new version that is sent to your external editor.

Notice that, because you configured the metadata overlay to show image names with extensions, it's very easy to keep track of which versions have been edited in Photoshop: they have a .psd extension.

4.

Switch back to Photoshop and, using the Rubber Stamp tool, remove the debris and tape spikes from the stage.

5.

Next, use the Clone tool to erase the rope in the background. The rope casts a slight reflection onto the stage, so you'll need to take that out also.

6.

When you've finished editing, press Command-S to save the document, and then close it.

7.

Switch back to Aperture. The new version that appears in your project should now show all of the edits that you just made.

8.

Select the new version and press Command-Shift-O to open it in Photoshop again. Then, switch back to Aperture. Note that this time, Aperture did not create another new version. Instead, it opened the file you were just working on.

The goal of Aperture is to provide a single application that tends to all of your postproduction workflow needs. Because Aperture handles all of the file management, version control, and archiving, taking an image out to another program for additional work is very simple and works seamlessly with your Aperture workflow.




Apple Pro Training Series(c) Aperture
Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture
ISBN: 0321422767
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 185

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