Aperture 3 - Apple has been listening!

[msbc]

There is a support doc at Apple about import from XMP sidecars - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2930

Mark

[johnbeardy]

Thanks for posting that, Mark. But what a typically brain dead statement from Apple! Who cares if ratings and labels aren't part of XMP 1.0? One supposes they're finally reading sidecars so people can get metadata into the program, metadata created in third party applications. They should simply be holding their prissy noses and reading the fxxxing data.

John

[msbc]

John,

I have to disagree with that. That's why we have specificatiosn - so everybody can agree on what to do. Don't blame Apple because other programs don't follow a published spec!

Mark

[johnbeardy]

Apple have to take the blame for failing to recognise that non-standard metadata is out there and needs to be read. Instead of accepting reality, they'd rather hide behind a spec.

John

[Photo_op]

They should simply be holding their prissy noses and reading the fxxxing data.

John

John-is your internet connection at home down again. Were you forced to post from the pub when you refer to that type of particular data?

--Dave

[johnbeardy]

No, though it was a week ago. Unfortunately my Mac laptop battery has been dying - that's OK, it's over its service life - so the pub with wifi was off limits!

In any case, I hold to that statement - the pub would have made my honesty even more brutal! It's a bit like me refusing to read a post because someone  can't spell or clearly can't use apostrophes properly. The fact is, in the real world, just like folk don't know their "it's" from their "its", ratings and labels are stored in a non-standard way. Fair enough for Apple to write those fields in the standard manner, but it's lame for them not to read them and the try to cover their nakedness with a spec. I'd bet it's actually an excuse they've found after the event - had they looked into the problem beforehand, they'd have read this data.

As it happens, this week I had the crappiest service ever at a half empty Apple store. Usually the service is reliably good, but I don't accept it should take 15 minutes to pay for a battery! All the staff with mobile credit card readers were talking to customers about their broken iPhones or whatever, while those without readers were all free and looking for something to do. Even the girl at the check out was taking apart someone's iPhone rather than processing payments and getting us non-believers out of the door as fast as possible. When I commented that service is ten times faster in their central London store in the middle of a busy Saturday, did I get a decent apology? Did I hell! The guy answered "Probably". And to cap it all, I wasted 15 minutes when I got home looking round their web site for where to send a complaint! So cut them slack, let them hide behind a spec? Sorry, they choose to read third party XMP data so they should accept its limitations and read it accordingly.

John

[Photo_op]

John-for me I hate to love Apple. After a lifetime with the evil empire, several years ago (pre Intel) I moved to Macs, around the time I took a greater interest in photography. Coincidently, I got hooked on the Lightroom beta, pre version 1. Since my conversion, I've never had ONE system crash. Never another blue screen of death. The hardware is super. The operating system is superer  . With the beauty of MobileMe and the utilities that sync with ease, I don't need Office any more. As long as they play nice with Adobe and Epson, I'll suffer the slings of their secrecy. Also, I just have to remember to Not upgrade until 10.X.3!

As for Aperture, since Apple continues to require their iPhoto ingest structure, they have made it easy for me to stay with LR, whatever v3 brings!

Cheers! (time to hoist one)

Dave

[peterkrogh]

Dave,
Hmm. Apple says that it does not read the ratings because they don't conform to the spec. 
Then why do they write this data out to sidecars?
They should either support the field or not.
And given the prominence that ratings have in the UI, I don't think it's reasonable to offer the current support.

Labels are a different story. There are several different label standards in use (adobe XMP, iView/EM uses the urgency field, I think PhotoMechanic has another). Apple is choosing to make labels consistent with finder labels. That's defensible.

No one has gotten labels right, yet, in my opinion. I think Adobe is probably closest by defining the label value as a text term.  But they don't close the circle by adding the necessary functionality that labels really require. That's a separate discussion, however.
Peter

[IKON]

So where to now Peter?  Is the ability to read ratings a simple thing for Apple to add (and what's the likelihood they will) or are we going to be waiting for Aperture 4?

It seems such a dumb thing to leave out - without that, I can't access all the editing/rating work I've done in other programs when I look at the images in Aperture.  I can't, therefore I won't.  Which is a real pity because I prefer the Aperture interface to LR.  This one detail is making me hesitate flipping my whole workflow over to Aperture.

A plug-in anyone??? While you're at, a plug-in to convert raw files to DNG within Aperture either after import or during.

[johnbeardy]

Well, you'll have to wait and hope they'll fix it. Until they suddenly do so, they'll keep pointing to the spec and denying there's a problem.

You can always add the rating to keywords as Aperture will read them.

John

[peterkrogh]

Aaron,
I don't think Apple will wait until A4 to fix this bug. (And the fact that it's written out to a sidecar means there's a bug somewhere - either they support interchange of ratings , or they don't - fix the read or fix the write.).  But that's just a guess.

As John points out, you could use keywords to transfer all ratings (add Keyword 1star to all 1 star images, etc).
Peter

[peterkrogh]

Aaron,
I don't think Apple will wait until A4 to fix this bug. (And the fact that it's written out to a sidecar means there's a bug somewhere - either they support interchange of ratings , or they don't - fix the read or fix the write.).  But that's just a guess.

As John points out, you could use keywords to transfer all ratings (add Keyword 1star to all 1 star images, etc).
Peter

[johnbeardy]

Some thoughts from David Riecks http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/aperture3.html

John

[IKON]

Well, Apple has just released an update that seems to fix the problems mentioned here, 3.0.2 (Might be reading into it but the number of the update is almost an acknowledgement that these fixes really should have been in the A3 to start with).  I'm not sure why this hasn't been given more publicity on different sites - it hasn't been mentioned on Rob Galbraith.

I imported a folder of DNG images that had been captioned, keyworded and RATED in Lightroom.  The ratings are now all there to be viewed and used in Aperture, which makes a huge difference to how I regard Aperture.  I love the UI of Aperture and they're now getting some of the backroom basics in place.  Better late than never.

I haven't tested it out the other way, ie. applying ratings in Aperture and trying to read them in LR or another program.   

[johnbeardy]

Now what were we all saying about standards? Glad they've fixed that problem, but as I said earlier.....

John