Yes Apple, I am sorry. I love you but… I’ve switched from Aperture to Adobe Lightroom.  I really wanted to stay with Aperture, but there were a few things that I couldn’t ignore.

1. Aperture was a bit sluggish on my MBP… specially the responsiveness of the crop and rotate tool.
2. Aperture did not have a vignetting tool. Too many trips to Photoshop
3. I’ve been using DXO optics pro, and they provide a Lightroom plugin for easy roundtripping
4. Presets. I really like the developing preset feature in Lightroom, especially being able to share them.
5. Prefer Adobe Camera Raw for image processing. Really love the clarity feature. Lightroom uses Adobe Camera Raw engine.
6. Lightroom print module has been giving me better results with color profiles with my Epson R1800 (which has been a small nightmare to get a decent print)
7. More efficient roundtripping to Photoshop

Here is an example of some Lightroom processing  Read more

I have been working in Photoshop since version 2.5. I must admit… it took me some time to get my head around layer masks. I came across an amazing video tutorial by Alex Lindsey. He presents and in-depth overview of alpha channels, layer masks and “pulling a key” from a custom mask derived from color channels and tweaking of levels.

Am I the only one who get’s exited about this stuff? If you are too… register at the Pixel Corps and check out the sample tutorials… it’s free.

The Pixel Corp is awesome…. more to come after I join!

Post-Production? Purgatory? A chance to re-do things 153 times… each time making one thing incrementally better. That has been my life for that past two months. Adobe After Effects has been my home away from home and what a complicated place it has been to live. That said… I got my key commands down, I don’t be ticklin’ or nuthin’… the problem is… I start using my AE shortcuts in Flash… and then I start using them when I’m trying to fall asleep, and then I dream… and I’m dreaming of the timeline… then I’m contemplating transfer modes. I work, I wait. I work, I wait and wait and wait. Rendering really eats away at a month. So you start to set up an overnight render queue… only to find out that one very crucial layer (the subject) was neglected to be turned on… and the audio was somehow not enabled in the render settings. It was the night before.

It may sound like I’m complaining. I’m not. I’m bragging… I have the coolest job in the world.