Cross-processing in Aperture

[atari1356]

UPDATE: if anybody using Aperture 3 happens to read this, I've made the cross processing preset available for download here:
http://pixpeep.com/misc/cross_process.zip

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I wrote an article that documents my attempt at cross-processing in Aperture - which I did by trying to match the look of a photo cross-processed in Photoshop.

I got pretty close to what you can do in Photoshop, and give the exact steps (so you can create your own preset to do the same thing).

However, it's not perfect... I do notice a little bit of harshness in the dark red areas, due to my adjustment of the black point in the red channel. Using curves in Photoshop seems to give greater control over the contrast in those areas.

I'd be interested in seeing if anybody can improve on it. I think it works pretty well, although I can understand now why some have complained about the lack of curves in Aperture.

 

[yeroen]

Cool, thanks for the tutorial. I'm eager to give this a go. I've always done cross-processing in photoshop, since I've found their curves tool much more intuitive than Aperture's levels. But it's good to know than I can achieve the same effects w/o creating huge PSD files.

 

[ChrisA]

I can understand now why some have complained about the lack of curves in Aperture.

You DO have curves in Aperture. I'm not at my Mac now but from memory if you turn on the quarter point in the levels control you can control both the input and output points. (You cam move the little tick marks at the top of the display as well is the marks at the botton.) The Apple "levels" can do the same job as the Adobe "curves". Well almost the same because the Apple levels gives only five control points while with Adobe curevs you can add as many as you like. But really who adds more than five?

 

[atari1356]

You DO have curves in Aperture. I'm not at my Mac now but from memory if you turn on the quarter point in the levels control you can control both the input and output points. (You cam move the little tick marks at the top of the display as well is the marks at the botton.) The Apple "levels" can do the same job as the Adobe "curves". Well almost the same because the Apple levels gives only five control points while with Adobe curevs you can add as many as you like. But really who adds more than five?

If you read the article you'll see that I did turn on the quarter points and made adjustments to those. You can control the marks at the top of the display (the input points?) only on the middle three controls in Aperture. So it's not quite the same as what can be done with curves.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not at all trying to bash Aperture. For my uses I think Levels will work fine.