I recently bought "Camera to Print" and found it immensely educational.
I have been using Aperture since before Lightroom shipped, sometimes I feel like this was a mistake, but in any case I feel
like I should stick with Aperture.
I am curious how others have adapted the workflow in these videos to Aperture. (I have a 5D and print on a Canon i9900)
Basically what I have come up with:
1. Continue to organize/select/develop/archive the raw files in Aperture
2. Reduce all the sharpening in the "RAW Fine Tuning in Aperture"
3. <Question here - how exactly do you "optimally process" an ETTR RAW file in Aperture
4. Export to a 16-bit TIFF in the ProPhotoRGB space, open in Photoshop
5. USM 20%, 50 radius, 0 threshold "Punch"
6. Capture sharpen, Print sharpen, soft proof, adjust, etc.. as per the videos in Photoshop.
My questions mostly pertain to how the adjustments in Aperture match up versus Lightroom/ACR.
For example, with Aperture 2.0 there is the "definition" slider. Is this the same thing as the "Clarity" slider in Lightroom? (Increases midrange contrast without effecting shadows/highlights) If so that would allow me to eliminate the USM20%/50r/0 step right?
Also what is the best way to darken an image that has been shot with ETTR? In the video, the black level is used rather then the exposure slider. Aperture also has both of these sliders. I am working with the black level slider to remap the shows for now, and the recovery & possibly highlights sliders, even though there are many different ways to adjust this. (Exposure, Black Level, Brightness, Highlights/Shadows, etc..)
Has anyone seen definitive answers from Apple and/or experimented with what adjustments in Aperture generate the cleanest results from an ETTR raw file?
I have found the quality of documentation in Aperture 2.0 appears to have dropped from where it was with 1.x. I notice they are now putting videos on the web site, but they are very simple/high level without any real depth.
Prior to watching the videos I had been doing 99% of my processing/printing in Aperture directly and exporting directly from Aperture.. but I've come to believe (especially with regards to output sharpening) that Aperture is leaving a lot on the table.