Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

Chapter 38 ■ Two Featured Products 443
overlapping images so that you can see each one whole. You can even select a portion
of the Light Table and print it.
The Loupe Tool
In the Kodachrome era, just wearing a personal loupe in readiness for examining slides
on a light table was enough to make novice photographers feel like David Bailey, which
may be why Apple made such a feature of its virtual counterpart in Aperture. However,
its first implementation was criticized because the magnified area displayed only a very
unloupe-like circular offset. Further development made it more versatile, with a new,
centered option that seems more intuitive than the original offset. Magnification from
50 to 1600 percent is selectable both from the Loupe pop-up menu and the mouse’s
scroll wheel. You can even separate the Loupe from the cursor, park it to one side, and
examine in magnified detail the effect of adjustments as you make them. The tilde key
toggles the Loupe on and off.
Exploring the Interface
Apple’s reputation has been built on superb user interfaces in all the company’s products,
from the very first Mac to the iPhone. It was a cause of concern, therefore, that
most people preferred the uncluttered interface of Adobe Lightroom to that of the early
versions of Aperture. This changed with Aperture 2.0. This version makes much better
use of available screen space, leaving more room to display the images. You can switch
between three different modes: previews only (Browser); photo displayed in detail
(Viewer); or both together (Browser and Viewer), with the previews running in a horizontal
filmstrip version of the browser. A double-click on one of the previews brings
up the large version; double-click again to return to the dual mode. One of the most
useful shortcuts is V, which is used to cycle between the three browsing modes.
On the left of the screen, the three tabs of the Inspector/HUD allow you to switch
between Projects, Metadata, and Adjustments panels. Apple grandly calls this “one-key
Inspector pane switching”—and you can simply press W to cycle through them, or
Shift-I to change the position of the Inspector to the other side of the Aperture window.
There is also an option to float the entire panel while you work in full-screen mode
with a massive image, plus access to the toolbar at the top and the filmstrip-style browser
at the bottom, both of which hide. You can also resize all three of the interface windows.
The Projects Panel
The Projects panel gives access to the entire Library where the latest version offers an
All Projects view. Each project in the Library is represented by a single Key Photo
thumbnail. When you skim the pointer across this poster image, it cycles through all
the images in that project. Double-click on an image to open it in the main interface,
or Control-click it to make it the Key Photo in the All Projects view. You can also browse
your iPhoto images inside Aperture, importing single pictures or whole events.