Yeah, I know I missed day 4 but I took a break from the old new iMac as my cos and I took some time to shoot the breeze over some delicious veal and a couple beers. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled program but first a word from our sponsor.
I'm not going to lie, I have no idea how to use Photoshop and I don't really have any desire to learn it right now. I'm not huge into post processing but I do believe a little goes a long way.
Back when I was a primitive and used a PC, the only photo editing programs I used were MS Paint and Nikon Capture NX to do curves and color adjustments. They're quick and they do the trick.
Now that I own an Apple, the door somehow opened to a bunch of Apple software that I couldn't previously use on a PC. Since I bought my Mac because the idea is that it would be pretty good with media, I've decided to check out some of the most popular media editing apps. Luckily most companies give 30 day trials. First photo editing.
OS X by default comes with iPhoto which is actually pretty cool, but like Emeril, they kick it up a notch and make you pay for it with Aperture. I don't know which one came first but Adobe has a similar product called Lightroom. They both pretty much do the same thing which is help you organize your photos and do some basic editing through one application interface.
Aperture 3.0
Right off the bat, Aperture seems to run a lot faster than Lightroom. It previews faster and makes adjustments instantaneously as your move sliders back and forth. Plus it's really slick.
Lightroom 2.6
Lightroom on the other hand runs pretty sluggish, I'm not sure why or if it's just me. While they offer a lot of the same functionality, the interfaces are a bit difference but I actually find Aperture slightly more intuitive.
Aperture gets the win on this one just because of the performance difference. If I'm going to be using this thing to view and edit all my photos I don't want the software equivalent of a squeeze honey bottle of honey when I can have that ribbed stick thing in a honey jar. Awesome analogy.
One of the other things I planned to do was make more videos. So I'm in the market for some video editing software as well. OS X comes with iPhoto but
Jon and I are pretty newb when it comes to Macs, and from the ski trip we have roughly 72 gigs of helmet cam footage that we haven't started editing yet. Premiere isn't anything new to me but I've heard a lot of good things about Final Cut from my so called friends. Here's what they look like.
Final Cut Express
The text in the option menus and also the buttons are small...real small. I had a hard time reading them on my screen. I'm sure you can enlarge them but that's how it looks by default - I'm a huge fan of things working right out the box. Also, videos didn't playback properly in the editor until I changed some applications settings to not get a nice blue screen that says Unrendered instead of actual video playback. Great.
Premiere Pro
Nothing new here, they're pretty much work exactly the same as Windows and I'm a little biased when it comes to these two because I've used Premiere. I'm not too sure if FCP offers better filters and effects but I guess that's good reason to have a second look. It did seem to playback video smoother than Final Cut but once again
On a side note neither of these programs could open and edit MP4 formatted videos, which is what the GoPro HD cam takes. What up with that? I need to find the updates or plugins or else we're screwed.
Didn't have too much time today so nothing too exiting, just some application choices. Now that the weekend is upon us I'll have way more time to play.
On another side note, today was my last day at my job - it was a real tear jerker and I'm going to miss those guys. I move into my new cubicle on Monday so no rest for the wicked(ly awesome) apparently. I also have a lot of clothes to iron...
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