Apple introduces Aperture - Page 9

This has nothing to do with balls.

You haven't been reading posts by myself and others as to why it "might" not be possible for Adobe to adopt CI for PS. It has nothing to do with modular code. It has everything to do with portable documents.

Every piece of softeware "borrows" something from something else.

Aperture has done that as well.

It's not something to be ashamed of.

You can't just take a PC card and put in your Mac. First, it would have to work on the PCI X bus. Which is possible, but unlikely.

Second, even if it did, the firmware on the card won't allow it to because of endian issues among others. Lastly, the Mac drivers wouldn't see the card.

Some cards can be "flashed", but I don't know about that one. Flashing wouldn't let it work on a bus it isn't designed for.

Fireworks is good. But it never made it bigtime because despite is usefullness, it's still just a subset of PS.

Also, it's what you know. Most guys are trained and experienced on PS and Illustrator. The plug-ins for both PS and Illus also give them many more functions.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Fireworks code.

We've already had the disscussion about how every filter is not a layer. We're beyond that.

Yes, Fun House is fun.

Does Aperture allow you to erase backgrounds - or will I still need photoshop for that? Don't get me wrong I like Photoshop - it's just nowhere near as intuitive as Illustrator.

I'm not sure what you mean by "erase backgrounds".

Sorry I mean when you wish to delete the area surrounding an object - like a green screen for example.

I don't remember them showing that in the class, and I didn't think to ask the guys I was talking to when I was using the Quad.

I'm sure that they didn't have us work with all of the features. This was at a show, and they try to get as many bodies in front of the machines as possible.

But it doesn't seem as though this program is big on the kind of work where sophisticated masking techniques are going to be needed. At least not at this time.

I was doubting whether it would be included.

I was contemplating something very interesting.

Some of us remember Quickdraw GX. I mentioned this earlier.

GX was a great 3D standard which failed because It was an Apple only innovation.

At the time, Apple had no real software that could take advantage of it, and other companies, except for small Apple only ones, weren't interested in an Apple only standard.

Apple's new Core technologies are like that with one difference.

Apple now has significant programs that can, or do, take advantage of them. As long as those programs are popular enough for Apple to continue development, they will be around.

The really interesting thing here though is that now MS is going to have pretty much the same, or more, in Vista.

In talking about PS using CI, we are talking about something almost impossible, as it stands. Unless, as I mused earlier, Adobe could somehow figure out a way to get it's own filters to use it.

With Vista having pretty much the same thing, and if Adobe could incorporate those, and if they are close enough to Apple's, we might see some interesting things happening.

Who knows. If Apple really wants Aperture to become an industry standard, it MUST work on PC's. With Vista offering the same, or more, functionality in that area, this might be possible.

It's a question as to whether Apple would want that though. It would depend on whether they believe that Aperture is drawing users to buy its computers. If not, they might offer it. If so, they might not.

I'm pretty sure that Apple wants Apeture to draw customers to Mac OS.

I'm sure they do as well. I'm thinking about this because of several things brought up here.

One is that Aperture might be positioned as a PS "Killer".

The second is the hope that Adobe might use CI.

This addresses both of those questions.

I'm not saying what I think Apple will do. I questioned that as well in the post.

But Apple is also making a big push into the highly profitable world of software.

Filemaker is not a Mac only program. iTunes isn't either. Neither is Appleworks. And Quicktime is certainly not.

Possibly this is why Apple seems unconcerned about the steep hardware needs this program has.

Remember that Apple is a major Windows developer. They are playing with the Vista Alpha's and betas just as any other large Windows developer is.

Just the way MS plays with Apples OS Alpha's and betas.

Both MS and Apple want Adobe dead.

It will be too expensive for Adobe to use MS imaging technologies on Vista and Core Image on OS X. Adobe will be at a competitive disadvantage to both MS and Apple, since MS and Apple can leverage their built-in technologies much faster than Adobe can create its own.

Adobe's the last major 3rd party developer. Well, OK, maybe Intuit.

Within 5 years you will own either an Intel box with Windows and (almost) all Microsoft software, or you will own an Intel box with OS X and (almost) all Apple software, or you will own an Intel box with Linux and (almost) all open source software.

They'll be no one else left except small developers.

I think that's rather extreme. It's been said before.

15 years ago WordPerfect, Lotus, and Borland seemed invincible, too.

In any case, it just seems that's where things are heading at the current moment. It could change. Adobe might come out with OS CS and beat MS & Apple at their own game.

Well, let's just hope that none of it ever happens.

Looking at the hardware requirements also.

I would imagine those steep hardware requirement's only really pertain to RAw images. As I'm reading other people's reports of Aperture, it seems there is no software cap on the number of Raw images that can be stored in Aperture. Your hard drive is the cap.

You do need those headware requirements for hundreds or thousands of RAW images.

But you don't need such heavy hardware for thousands of JPEG's.

It has nothing to do with how many images are being stored on your HD. It has to do with operations on the images you have open, and on the screen.

The images used at the Photo Expo were small. No more than about 20MB each.

My average image size is over 50MB in 24 bit. Many images are in 48 bit - 4 times the file size.

Several times a month I would get file sizes over 300MB, 24 bit. working with just one of those would slow the program down. Remember that CI is not instant. It just seems that way with certain image sizes. PS is also instant with most adjustments on smaller file sizes.

What file size would the GPU and associated memory choke on?

Those are RAW files though, right?

Yes indeed. But was that was their opened size

It's unlikely that file type or file size have anything to do with speed in Aperture (other than maybe initially opening/converting it and having Aperture cache it in memory).

Aperture probably opens the file (whether it's raw or JPEG or PSD or whatever) and creates a bitmap in memory of the image. If that's the case, then the only thing that affects speed from that point on is (1) the pixel dimensions of the file and (2) the number of fixes/transitions you've applied in Aperture.

Since Aperture only works with flattened or single-layer PSD images, then whether your file is 300 MB or 20 MB is irrelevant. If both images are, say, 4000 pixels by 6000 pixels, then Aperture will treat each one just as fast as the other.

That's the whole point. An image file IS a bitmap. Even a RAW image is a bitmap. A 4,000 x 6,000 24 bit bitmap is 72MB's in size. A 20MB file is a much smaller image than is a 300MB one. Even if the 300MB image is 48 bits.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean therefore.

No, not necessarily. That's my point. In Photoshop, adding 5 layers might make your 20 MB file a 100 MB file if each layer is a background duplicated and modified. And yet Aperture would handle that 100 MB file just as fast as the original 20 MB file, because they're both the same number of pixels.

File sizes are irrelevant. It's the number of pixels and the number of modifications in Aperture that matter.

By the same token, a 1 MB JPEG file will probably be processed at the same speed as a 10 MB PSD file if they're both the same number of pixels. A JPEG is compressed only when written to disk; applications like Aperture and Photoshop don't work with the images in memory as compressed images.

I think this thread belongs to Melgross. When you hit 51% posts, you can claim the thread.

I doubt that. You are going to be using these "Previews" to do colour correction work, it is going to be the equivilant of having the file open.

I'm not sure what you're saying. What are you disagreeing with?

There are other considerations too though. a 4000x6000 8bit image is considerable smaller in size than a 24bit image of the same size, so the load time a processing involved in the 8bit image is going to be a lot less than on the 24bit image. As far as I know JPEG is 16bit, while RAW files can have up to 48 ?

Whoa, Dude! You're confusing some things here.

An 8 bit file is actually the same thing as a 24 bit file, and a 16 bit file is the same thing as a 48 bit file. Just different nomenclature.

Whether Aperture treats an 8 bit and 16 bit file differently is unknown at this point. Who knows--it might convert all files to 16 bit interally while it's processing them. So that might make a difference, it might not.

The point I was trying to make was that a huge photoshop file might be huge only because of multiple layers. In that case, Aperture will work on it at the exact same speed as any other file of the same bit depth and pixel dimensions, regardless of file size. So don't let people with huge, multilayered Photoshop files fool you into thinking Aperture will be much slower with these files; it won't.

You're making a mistake here. This has nothing to do with layers at this point in time. We're just talking about the size of the file. I already said what that means.

A 1MB JPG file has to be opened before it can be worked on. Depending upon the compression, that file can be anywhere between 4.5MB to 20MB, or even more, if the image quality doesn't matter very much. Even Aperture can't work with a compressed file. It has to decompress it first. so far so good. I hope we at least agree there.

A RAW file isn't really compressed, it just lacks any information as to what it should be. That saves room, so RAW files are smaller than TIFFS or PSD's. But they can still be enormous if the image is large.

The Canon 1D Mark 11 N has a 8.3Mpixel image. The RAW file is 7.9 MB.

The Canon 1Ds Mark 11 has a 16.7 Mpixel image. The RAW file is 14.6 MB.

The Phase One P 45 (med format) has a 39Mpixel image. The RAW file is 32.9MP if it is outputting a 24 bit file. If it is outputting the prefered 48 bit file then the RAW file size is almost 66MB.

If the program has to run a TIFF or PSD, then these files can be multiplied by 3.4 to get to TIFF size or about 3.1 to get to a PSD.

These are the pure image files. No layers, no corrections. No duplications.

If we didn't have so many disagreements back and forth, then I wouldn't have had the need to reply.

I'm from the film/ video world.

The standard image resolutions.

Standard Definiton 640 X 480

High Definiton 1920 X 1080

Uncompressed Data:

2K (2,048 X 1,556)

4K (4,096 X 3,112)

The bit depth of each image determines the number of steps (discreet levels) that create an image contrast and latitude from black to white. There is a sample rate for each color (RGB) all three combined create white light.

8 bit = 256 (16 million colors)

10 bit = 1,024 (1 billion colors)

16 bit = 65,536 (280 trillion colors)

Once we are dealing with uncompressed data we are able to record each seprate color. The highest at this point is 16 bit which combined is 48 bit (280 trillion colors) plus an alpha channel becomes 64 bit.

As we move from SD to HD to uncompressed data. Or 8 bit - 10 bit - 16 bit.
The data processing and storage increase exponentially. For example the data load increases by four times between 2K and 4K.

Also the color space of each format and each bit rate are entirely different and require chroma look up tables that decipher the different color containers between them.

There are significant hardware differences between SD and HD, and an entirely different world for 2K or 4K.

I would think digital photography would work in much the same fashion. There should be significantly different hardware requirements between processing and storing a JPEG file and a RAW file.

I disagree that the file size doesn't help determine the speed of Aperture. I just find it hard to believe it won't perform better if you are using 3 mb jpg's from a point and shoot rather than 300 mb tifs from a digital back (converted). Even if Aperture is creating / caching it's own previews.

There you go changing your story again.

What happened to your 300 MB files that you get several times a month? They have no layers?

Doesn't an 8bit file have 8bits to define each color pixel, while a 24bit file has 24bits ? That's what I though anyways, so if the file is 24bit it is much larger (3x) (filesize) than the same image converted to 8bit (filesize). I didn't mean resolution when I said size, but the number of bytes used to store file on disk (or in ram)

I agree here. My reasoning being:

its MUCH faster to read a 3MB JPEG from disk into memory and then convert that 3MB into some form of bitmap in ram, making it 30MB than it is to read in 30MB from disk and store it in RAM. It does depend on how taxing the JPEG-Bitmap conversion is, but I seriously doubt its very taxing for JPEGs shot by most digital cameras, including dSLRs.

Depending on how Aperture works, having it work on JPEGs should make it faster than having it work on RAW's, as shifting large chunks of information from disk to memory would be one of the biggest bottlenecks IMO.

You're confusing *storage* size and *memory* size.

A JPEG is only small when it's on a disk. When in it's in memory it is full size--uncompressed. Yes, totally uncompressed. Image editors can't work on compressed images in memory.

Think about a program like Stuff-It or WinZip--you have to open the file (i.e., decompress it) before you can change it (add or remove files).

The only difference between a JPEG and a raw file is (usually) the bit depth (8 vs. 16). So a 2000 pixel x 3000 pixel JPEG is half the size (in memory) as an identical raw file, *regardless* of the file size on disk (even if the JPEG is 1 MB and the raw file is 10 MB).

As I said earlier, there will be a difference in load time (the JPEG has to be decompressed as it's read in, but the raw file has to be de-mosaicized and such as it's read in), but not a lot of difference afterwards (scrolling, applying settings, etc.).

Yeah, it's confusing at first!

"8 bits" is 8 bits per channel. Since there are 3 channels (R, G, B), an 8-bit-per-channel file is actually 24 bits per pixel.

Likewise, a 16-bit-per-channel file has a total of 48 bits per pixels.

I didn't change my "story" as you you so graciously put it. I was just showing some RAW file sizes of cameras that are used by pro's in response to statements about file sizes of RAW and JPEG'd photos.

Those large files came from companies who put advertising on the side of buildings here in NYC. One of my clients was Bombay Sapphire. Their billboards are sometimes 100 feet high, applied to buildings, with openings for windows.

Yes, those files were just the original image.

I had one photographer who uses a view camera with a scanning digital back. His files are 8,000 x 12000 x 48 bits. You can figure it out.

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with you. My original quote was:

So then you agree with me that it's not the file size, but the number of pixels and bit depth? Good, I'm glad we agree on something.

Because the only thing that would make a file bigger--other than pixels or bit depth--is layers. So, to repeat, a huge, 200 MB multilayered Photoshop file from a 3000 pixel x 5000 pixel image will take no longer to process after loading (saturation, contrast, etc.) in Aperture than will a 1 MB JPEG file of the same dimensions and bit depth.

Again, it's not file size that matters.