O'Reilly HomeDigital Media Store

Using the New Adjustment Tools in Aperture 2.0, Part One
Pages: 1, 2

The Moire and Radius sliders work in conjunction with one another. Labeling the slider “Moire" is actually a bit misleading in my opinion, since it is designed to help with traditional chroma noise caused by digital sensors as well as moire patterns that sometimes appear in images with certain types of linear patterns. The Moire slider controls the amount of correction, and the Radius slider controls how wide an area will be affected.

The White Balance Tools are essentially the same as in earlier versions although the brick has been moved up in the Adjustment HUD.

Using the Exposure Brick

Adjusting the tonal values is at the foundation of the workflow. Begin by adjusting the Exposure slider so that the bulk of the pixels are properly exposed, while keeping an eye on the histogram to check for clipping of the highlights and/or shadows. If you are using the 2.0 raw decoding, you will have the option to use the new Recovery and Black Point sliders. Use the Recovery slider to restore highlight detail that may be clipped. It works best with raw files although it can be of some help with other file formats. Obviously if an image is too far overexposed, the Recovery slider isn't going to save it. But if the information was captured on the camera sensor, this slider should enable you to reveal the highlight detail. It's similar to the Highlight Recovery slider in that you can darken the highlights with both. However you cannot restore highlights that are clipped using the Highlight slider - you must use the Recovery slider.

The Black Point slider determines the black point for the image. If you have an image that doesn't use the full tonal range, and there's space on the left side of the histogram, move the slider to the right. This will increase the depth of the dark tones and add contrast to the image. If the image is contrasty and there's some clipping in the shadows - that is to say data is pushed up against the left side of the histogram -- then move this slider to the left. That will slightly lighten the dark tones. You can use the Shadow Recovery slider to further reveal detail in the darkest tones.

The Brightness slider hasn't changed. Adjusting it moves the bulk of the pixels to the right or the left on the histogram while not affecting the black or white points.

Aperture 2 has added a clipping overlay to use with the Exposure, Recovery, and Highlight sliders. Hold down the Command (apple) key while adjusting these sliders, and an overlay appears indicating any clipping. The overlay changes in real time as you tweak the slider. By default the clipping overlay is in color to reflect which channel(s) are clipped. You can change this to a monochrome overlay in Preferences and it will still indicate clipping when a single channel is clipped.

Next week Ellen picks up with the Enhance brick and continues down through the rest of the adjustments. See you then!

Ellen Anon is a freelance photographer and writer who specializes in expressive photography. She is an Apple V.I.P. Pro Photographer and is an Apple Certified Trainer for Aperture. Ellen's websites are www.sunbearphoto.com and www.ellenanon.com.

---

Return to Inside Aperture