Apple Aperture for LF?

[Rory_5244]

Hey everybody. I don't know if anyone here is like me, but I have a few hundred film scans floating around 3 hard drives, and I can never find where they are, or determine if they have all been backed up without some serious digging. I was playing around with the Aperture and Lightroom demos recently to see which would be better for my soon-to-begin digital workflow, and I wondered how they would manage my film scans. I tried Lightroom, and it balked at a 500MB 8x10 scan. Goodbye Lightroom. Aperture, however, happily gobbled all my scans. I quickly spotted duplicates, and erased them. I then exported the Aperture LF scan folder to 2 separate locations. The scans are now catalogued in Aperture, their whereabouts known, and any changes I make is noted in Aperture.

The fun thing, though, is that Aperture treats these huge scans just like any other digital camera file. For example, I can pull up a scan in full-screen mode and adjust it using Aperture's tools. I can also export the file into Photoshop and adjust it there. When I save it, Aperture places the adjusted file next to the original as a 'stack'. I can then have multiple versions of the file that I can compare, all the while, of course, the original file remains intact. Yeah, all right, I sound like an Apple commercial. But anyway, I just thought you would like to know.

[Gordon Moat]

You might want to look into Extensis Portfolio, just as a great organizing software. I think with Aperture, it is a little like the launch of Final Cut Pro. Eventually they will get it tuned in, and working nicely; I think this version is not yet at a good point, though some people seem to like it.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Ben Chase]

You might want to look into Extensis Portfolio, just as a great organizing software. I think with Aperture, it is a little like the launch of Final Cut Pro. Eventually they will get it tuned in, and working nicely; I think this version is not yet at a good point, though some people seem to like it.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

I tried using portfolio with version 7, and it would not handle my large image sizes (300+MB)

Not sure what the limit is for the current version.

[Gordon Moat]

I know in Portfolio 7 there was an issue mostly with long file names on Windows XP, but I never saw any published information for any file size limit. As far as I know on older Windows systems there might be a limitation at 2 GB file sizes. It would be a great question to put to Extensis and ask. Version 8.0 is supposed to be able to catalogue many video formats, which can often run near 13GB per hour (huge files). Version 8.5 will be out soon.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio

[Hugh Sakols]

I have finally settled on Microsoft Expressions (Iview Media Pro). Despite now being a microsoft product, the design team is still the same. Iview does not have any file size limitations that I'm aware of and allows one to organize and build editable web portfolios. Iview can be purchased now through phase one for $99. If I upgrade to a new duo core I would consider aperture but not for $300.oo OTOH, it might be just the thing for your raw files from a digital slr.

I'm glad to hear that aperture works with large files. Lightroom has been a disappointment for the film user.