First RAW photo shoot - Aperture Trial Questions

[dork420]

Hey all

This forum as been a tremendous help to me.
I finally got my hands on an XSI and took a bunch of picture in RAW of my garden. This picks came out fantastic but have a couple questions about Aperture and RAW format in general.

1- When I imported the RAW into Aperture they looked horrible but with some white balance and exposure adjustments they came out great... I think. Is this what's supposed to happen? I really need to edit ...lift and stamp general edits to get RAW images to look ok? Even pics I shot in the B&W setting on the XSI uploaded as color into aperture. I'm so confused. Also I am having trouble trusting my eye as to the proper adjustment. I want my pics to be true to form rather than manipulated in the computer. But maybe this is just the reality of shooting digital RAW. Just like how film picks come out differently depending on which lab you go to...

2- Aperture Trial is a complete system hog. I have an iMac CD 2 gigs RAM and I'm getting some major slow down. It also crashed once. In addition my whole system has been running a bit oddly/slowly and unpredictably since I uploaded. Does anyone have insight on this? I've even run some basic system clean-up and optimization with Onyx.

My next step is to re-import these images into iPhoto and make adjustments there to see if they come out better or worse compared to Aperture. I may be forced to use it regardless if Aperture keeps messing with my system.


Thanks

 

[uptherighttree]

when you say they looked horrible...how do you mean? Colours way off or what? Was your white balance set correctly on the camera?

show us a before and after shot and we can try to help you a bit more maybe.

I run aperture on my MBP 2.4 with 2gig and it runs pretty well for me. has the odd lag moment when rendering previews but nothing major. it may run slower when importing and rending thumbnails so i usually just leave the MBP alone for a few minutes.

 

[Doylem]

I'm no tech expert, but I do shoot RAW and use Aperture for 99% of adjustments.

Your RAW files will need a little tweaking to restore some of the colour & drama you saw in a scene. If the unadjusted RAW files look "horrible", then you may want to look at getting your original exposures spot-on. Shooting RAW gives you a certain latitude, but you'll need less tweaking if you get it right in the camera... and your edited pics will look better and more natural.

These adjustments are like the adjustments you'd make in-camera if you were shooting Jpeg. So with Jpeg you'd try to sort out the white balance before shooting, whereas with RAW you can easily do it afterwards. And, because you're shooting RAW, the files you import will be colour. You can then do your b/w conversion. It's a learning curve, I guess...

 

[dork420]

when you say they looked horrible...how do you mean? Colours way off or what? Was your white balance set correctly on the camera?

show us a before and after shot and we can try to help you a bit more maybe.

I run aperture on my MBP 2.4 with 2gig and it runs pretty well for me. has the odd lag moment when rendering previews but nothing major. it may run slower when importing and rending thumbnails so i usually just leave the MBP alone for a few minutes.

Well I didn't mess with white balance and had it set on Auto when shooting. I only shot in P mode and Aperture Priority for my close up veggie shots. I also was messing around with the ISO a bit.
When I say horrible , I mean didn't look like I expected, didn't look right at all.
I am at my office so I can't upload pics yet, but for example my shot of a broccoli head came out blueish then when I edited it , it came out fantastic. Just a little white balance and exposure.
It was almost night and day comparing the original RAW to my edits.
When I shoot JPEG and with film , I think I'm doing a pretty good job setting up my shot in the camera.

I'm also still running Tiger. Is it the the RAW conversion software?

And with Aperture , I think you're right, I need to walk away when I'm uploading pics. I was trying to preview shots while uploading just like the guy did on one of the tutorials. He was probably running a MacPro with "10 gigs"

 

[uptherighttree]

but for example my shot of a broccoli head came out blueish then when I edited it , it came out fantastic. Just a little white balance and exposure.

I'm also still running Tiger. Is it the the RAW conversion software?

And with Aperture , I think you're right, I need to walk away when I'm uploading pics. I was trying to preview shots while uploading just like the guy did on one of the tutorials. He was probably running a MacPro with "10 gigs"

What's your light source for the broccoli shot?

Aperture is the editing software so it won't make a difference that it's tiger i think.

If you continue doing your veggie shots then how about using a grey card to setup the correct while balance first?

 

[GoCubsGo]

First, your iMac CD is probably barely going to run Aperture. Other factors to consider should be the remaining amount of space on the hard drive.

You don't need a Mac Pro with 10 gigs of ram. I ran it on a PowerBook 1.67 with 2 gigs but I did have to leave it alone while it imported and created previews. It was a good time to do chores, work, take a shower, raise two kids...you know all that stuff.

Your shots looked bad, as you said, most likely because you didn't get the exposure right. Even out of camera RAW will need just a tad bit of tweaking from time to time. Because you shot RAW you can adjust as necessary in post production. Without seeing a sample of what you mean we can't exactly give you any other answers that don't sound like one size fits all responses.

Understand that your eye will always see something other than the camera will see if you're not properly exposing your shots.

Once you can upload pictures I think it'd be safe to anticipate more responses.

 

[dork420]

Once you can upload pictures I think it'd be safe to anticipate more responses.

I will upload some broccoli pics after work.

 

[Edge100]

First, your iMac CD is probably barely going to run Aperture.

I can confirm that Aperture 2 runs very well on my iMac CD w/ 2GB of RAM; not as quick as Lightroom on the same machine, and not as fast as either Aperture or LR on a C2D Macbook, but certainly very nicely. No problem there, FWIW.

 

[Doylem]

I will upload some broccoli pics after work.

You may live to be 100 and never get to write that sentence again...

 

[dork420]

Broccoli pics

here they are

 

[uptherighttree]

that's surely a white balance issue. grey carding before your shoot would help i'm sure

 

[dork420]

that's surely a white balance issue. grey carding before your shoot would help i'm sure

So basically the XSI auto white balance stinks? While I'm sure it's not perfect , I'm surprised it would be this far off

 

[Digital Skunk]

What color space are you using? Can the Rebel be set to different color spaces, if so, try setting it to sRGB and not Adobe RGB.

Also, did you try taking some JPEGs with the camera to see if the results are the same?

As for the computer issue, it may be a Tiger problem. Apple kind of left users running Tiger in the dust with a lot of things dealing with RAW and Aperture. Also, check your HDD space as others have said, and clean out 3rd party apps that usually hog the system even though small.

 

[dork420]

Well it's set at sRGB however when I went to check I noticed the white balance was set to Tungsten... I think I may have found the problem. I'm heading out to take more broccoli picks. If this ws the problem then I feel like a complete jackass!

That said I think I see the value in Aperture now...

Even so I think I got some interesting results with the tungsten setting
here are some beets greens that don't look like beet greens.. I like it though