The Methodology

This book is an introduction to Aperture. It aims to get you up to speed with Aperture quickly by giving you a good overview of the application and a basic level of familiarity with its key features.

The lessons emphasize hands-on training. Each exercise is designed to help you learn the application in a real-world context, starting with the basic interface and moving on to more advanced techniques.

It will be helpful for you to start at the beginning and progress through each lesson in order, since each lesson builds on information learned in previous ones. The book assumes a basic level of familiarity with the Mac OS X operating system.

Course Structure

The book is made up of eight step-by-step, project-based lessons, the equivalent of about eight hours of training. All of the sample images used in the lessons are included with the Aperture software.

Lessons 14: Photo Management

The first four lessons focus on image management. Designed specifically for professional digital photographers, Aperture is an enormously powerful tool for handling some of the most time-consuming and tedious tasks of professional photography. In this section, you'll learn to sort, compare, and rate images; apply keywords and metadata easily; display images in compelling ways for clients; organize images into categories for different intended uses; and archive images in a way that's easy, secure, and intuitive.

Lessons 56: Image Processing

Lessons 5 and 6 start out with the basics of image editing in Aperture and move on to cover some of Aperture's more advanced image processing features, such as the Spot & Patch, Lift, and Stamp tools. You'll learn to make basic adjustmentsthose for exposure, levels, white balance, cropping, straightening, highlights and shadows, red-eye, and noiseas well as more complex adjustments, such specialized color effects and flawless blemish retouching and blends.

Lessons 78: Print and Web Publishing

Lessons 7 and 8 focus on proofing and publishing: the culmination of the Aperture workflow. You'll start by taking a comprehensive look at exporting image files from Aperture for use in other applications and for print and Web output. Then you'll create a web gallery for client review and a web journal for online image display. From there, you'll explore some of Aperture's print output options by making a contact sheet and a printed book. Finally, you'll take a brief look at color-managed workflows within Aperture.

System Requirements

Before beginning to use Apple Pro Training Series: Getting Started with Aperture, you should have a working knowledge of your computer and its operating system. Make sure that you know how to use the mouse and standard menus and commands and also how to open, save, and close files. If you need to review these techniques, see the printed or online documentation included with your system.

Minimum system requirements for Aperture are:

• Power Mac G5 with a 1.8 GHz or faster processor; 15- or 17-inch

  PowerBook G4 with a 1.25 GHz or faster processor; or 17- or 20-inch

  iMac G5 with a 1.8 GHz or faster PowerPC G5 processor

• Mac OS X version 10.4.3 or later

• 1 GB of RAM (2 GB recommended)

• One of the following graphics cards: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE, 6600, 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL, 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500; ATI Radeon X600 Pro, X600 XT, X800 XT Mac Edition, X850 XT, 9800 XT, 9800 Pro, 9700 Pro, 9600, 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600.

• 5 GB of available disk space for application, templates, and tutorial.