Aperture 3 export to jpg/Tiff; loses some color if sharpen or edge applied

[mtbdudex]

I've run across a strange quirk of Aperture 3 that took me a while to get my arms around, here goes.

Issue:
When I do PP in Aperture, if I apply "Sharpen" or "Edge Sharpen" I noticed at times the colors on the exported version does NOT match what I saw on screen.

What I did:
I was applying PP on some star trail shots taken 2 nights ago, and the blues/yellows got "dulled"/ "muted" way more than onscreen in Aperture showed.

a) Is this a known Apple Aperture 3 bug?
b) others notice this as well?

Here is screen shot of Apple Aperture 3 showing on LH side image with PP, on RH side PP + both "Sharpen" and "Edge Sharpen" applied.
Please notice the colors in the star trails are basically same.
(trust me if you can't see it below, 1600 pict image here http://lh4.ggpht.com/_FqTNmgNQHz8/T...ose colors upon sharpeningExportTo Picasa.jpg)

Here is pict with PP applied but no "Sharpen" or "Edge Sharpen" applied, it's the LH pict in the one above:

Now here was output of applying both "Sharpen" and "Edge Sharpen". This is the RH one, but ......
On screen in Aperture the added crispness of the star trails I liked, however...
Most of the color in the star trails gone!
Now, this is NOT just Aperture to Picasa upload issue, nor a full>downsizeing issue, nor a jpg/tiff format issue. I exported to desktop many variations and same issue! Colors lost. Where did they go?

This show with just "sharpen" applied, clearly you can see color in star trails got lost.

This shows with just "edge sharpen" applied, more of the original color is removed than with just the "sharpen":

Again, anyone else notice this with their Aperture 3 images/PP?
I don't recall a post on this, yet again I may have missed it.

What to do next?
File an Aperture report bug? File a post in the official Apple forum? (will that do any good?)

With star trails easy to see because the trail is basically same color, with our non-astro photography pictures maybe not easy to see but also happening??

 

[mtbdudex]

I tried confirming in Aperture at 100%, prior the image was shrunk 33% to fit my screen.
Clearly at 100% I can see in Aperture the star trails colors do degrade when applied edge sharpen, just sharpen adds crispness but barely affects color - if at all.

100% No sharpen PP:

100% Just sharpen PP, colors still present, I like the added crispness of the star trails:

100% sharpen and edge sharpen PP, colors very much affected.
Playing with the edge sharpen controls (intensity, edges, falloff) showed varying degrees of color degradation, I consider any not acceptable so won't use edge sharpen PP for star trails.

Should edge sharpen be doing this?
I don't know, hard to say.
But at least now I'm WYSIWYG (been so many years since I've typed that), seeing Aperture is same as export.
Teaches me to always confirm at 100% any PP.

 

[thomasrboyd]

My first thought about this is that you being too aggressive with sharpening. All kinds of strange things will happen to color and exposure if you over sharpen in any photo app. In my opinion, this photo doesn't really benefit from aggressive sharpening.

The other question I would ask is if you are shooting in Adobe RGB and exporting in sRGB. This could mute the colors. If this is the case, try exporting in Adobe RGB. Also, try having it show "soft proof" and see if the difference is visible.