Aperture Redundancy??

KED

I've only been using Aperture for about five months and it is my first exposure to post processing in general, so please forgive what may be a stupid question. As one example of what appears to me to be redundant (but in reality is probably a subtle difference), the Levels control (in luminance mode) allows for highlight and shadow adjustment when the quarter tone levels control is enabled. At the same time, you have the task-specific Highlights & Shadows controls. I've tried manipulating each of them back to back, and while I seem to get better results with the dedicated H&S controls, I'd be hard-pressed to explain why. Also in luminance levels, you can control brightness with the middle top slider -- OR, you can control brightness via the slider in the Exposure panel. Very confusing, and of course the documentation is as clear as mud.

A similar situation would seem to exist with the levels adjustments in colors mode, vs the dedicated color adjustment controls.

I know that I can get a very satisfactory result no matter what, but I really would prefer to be the intellectual master of my software (eventually), so any thoughts would be appreciated.

CatOne

H&S lets you do adjust things that are *beyond* the standard histogram. So it would be the equivalent of moving the right side of the levels off the right side of the chart, to attempt to bring some detail back in the highlights. Or you could attempt to bring some "blacks" out of a purely black area.

So essentially, it is the exact opposite of what levels can do. Levels can only *increase* overall contrast, while H&S actually decrease it in the extremes.

So they're not redundant :-)

KED

CatOne wrote:

H&S lets you do adjust things that are *beyond* the standard histogram. So it would be the equivalent of moving the right side of the levels off the right side of the chart, to attempt to bring some detail back in the highlights. Or you could attempt to bring some "blacks" out of a purely black area.

So essentially, it is the exact opposite of what levels can do. Levels can only *increase* overall contrast, while H&S actually decrease it in the extremes.

So they're not redundant :-)

So if not redundant, you would use both . . . so if you will forgive a follow up question, from a workflow standpoint would you adjust H&S first then Levels?

jfriend

KED wrote:

So if not redundant, you would use both . . . so if you will forgive a follow up question, from a workflow standpoint would you adjust H&S first then Levels?

In all photo editing programs (Aperture, Lightroom, Elements, CS3), it is generally a good idea to start with the largest, most general global adjustments and then work down to more specific adjustments that affect smaller parts of the image. In this specific case, you'd start with levels adjustments. While those adjustments can and do affect shadows and highlights, they are much more global than just that. You should get the general whitepoint (right side of levels) and general blackpoint (left side of levels) and the overall brightness of the mid-tones (middle of levels) to the best spot they can be. If you then still need to tweak shadows or highlights, then go to the specific adjustments for those. Since those adjustments are more targeted at only certain tonal areas, you can tweak them without messing up the larger adjustments. If you did it the other way around, you'd find that a levels adjustment would be messing up your highlight and shadow adjustments.

In summary, do big adjustments first and use the tools that target specific smaller areas last. I don't use Aperture, but in my workflow, I do things in this general order. You don't have to be strict about it, but you don't want to spend time on small, targetted adjustments when larger things aren't right yet. Here's my general order:

• Get white balance in the right general neighborhood (if it's way off, a large adjustment to white balance will affect a lot of other controls)
• Get overall brightness in the right general neighborhood (if the image is way to bright or way too dark, you can't see it well enough to do any of the other adjustments)
• Set white point
• Set black point
• Tweak mid-tone brightness
• Adjust crop if needed
• Fine tune white balance if needed
• Tweak overall contrast if needed
• Make any adjustments to shadows or highlights
• Make any adjustments for specific colors (reds that are too bright for a printer, for example)
• Tweak vignetting, chromatic abberation, lens distortion or other secondary adjustments if needed
• Sharpen

KED

jfriend wrote:

In all photo editing programs (Aperture, Lightroom, Elements, CS3), it is generally a good idea to start with the largest, most general global adjustments and then work down to more specific adjustments that affect smaller parts of the image. In this specific case, you'd start with levels adjustments. While those adjustments can and do affect shadows and highlights, they are much more global than just that. You should get the general whitepoint (right side of levels) and general blackpoint (left side of levels) and the overall brightness of the mid-tones (middle of levels) to the best spot they can be. If you then still need to tweak shadows or highlights, then go to the specific adjustments for those. Since those adjustments are more targeted at only certain tonal areas, you can tweak them without messing up the larger adjustments. If you did it the other way around, you'd find that a levels adjustment would be messing up your highlight and shadow adjustments.

In summary, do big adjustments first and use the tools that target specific smaller areas last. I don't use Aperture, but in my workflow, I do things in this general order. You don't have to be strict about it, but you don't want to spend time on small, targetted adjustments when larger things aren't right yet. Here's my general order:

• Get white balance in the right general neighborhood (if it's way off, a large adjustment to white balance will affect a lot of other controls)
• Get overall brightness in the right general neighborhood (if the image is way to bright or way too dark, you can't see it well enough to do any of the other adjustments)
• Set white point
• Set black point
• Tweak mid-tone brightness
• Adjust crop if needed
• Fine tune white balance if needed
• Tweak overall contrast if needed
• Make any adjustments to shadows or highlights
• Make any adjustments for specific colors (reds that are too bright for a printer, for example)
• Tweak vignetting, chromatic abberation, lens distortion or other secondary adjustments if needed
• Sharpen

Thanks for a really helpful roadmap!