SoFoBoMo wrapup: Creating the PDF with Aperture

Using Aperture to create my SoFoBoMo PDF was a natural, it's my photo workflow tool of choice. Hidden among it's asset management and photo editing prowess, it also has powerful book layout tool set.

Just as in iPhoto, you can create photo books using Aperture and get print on demand copies with just a few clicks all without ever leaving the application. Just as with many print on demand books you can only order from several pre-determined sizes. The aspect ratio I chose was non standard so I had to dig deeper.

I decided early on that I was not going to print a book, my project would live on screen in PDF form only. None of the books sizes provided by default in Aperture are the aspect ratio of a Apple Cinema display, so I had to make my own book template. Templates can be created in any size with any number of photos on each page.


I created a custom book template with the aspect ratio of my screen. I then created several page layouts, one, two and three up with a mix of portrait and landscape pages. After creating the layout all I needed to do was place the images in the appropriate places.

You can select an asset view in Aperture that will hide images that have been placed in a layout. This asset view came in quite handy for sequencing. I had many shots that were related, that may have been shot on different days. I was able to scan all of the assets in thumbnail view to drag them into the layout in a logical order, all the while winnowing down the visible set of images.

Generating the PDF was as simple, just print to PDF and viola!

The major bump in the road was the text. I just did not take the time to learn text layout and design in Aperture. Instead, I opened the text pages of the book in Illustrator and added the text selections from there.

The last part of the process was compressing the file. I opened the PDF in Acrobat Pro, and saved it out in compressed form.

All tolled, from the start of book layout to finished PDF it took me about 5 hours, split over 2 days. Aperture made PDF creation simple and painless!

Link to the finished book blog posting

SoFoBoMo wrapup: Processing the files

(Photo: "Cant make up my mind" - from a trip to Austin TX last week)

In my last SoFoBoMo entry I discussed shooting, and a little processing. In this one I'll discuss how I processed the files in a more in-depth manner.

After doing all the shooting, rating, sorting and deleting many shots I ended up with over 100 shots to process. I wanted to process all of the RAW files in Adobe Camera Raw, move into Photoshop and do the black and white conversion there. I quickly figured out that it would simply take too long to finish that way. (Largely because I waited till the last 2 days of the fuzzy month to do the processing, lesson for next year ... set a date certain for end of shooting and schedule at least a week for post)

I ended up using Aperture for most processing and black and white conversion. And, in hindsight, it may have been better to do it that way. I could look at all of the files at once, smaller groups of files, two up etc. It gave me the ability to make judgments as to how well the shots fit together in terms of content, composition and processing.




Consistency was the name of the game. Had I done this processing in ACR and Photoshop, I'm sure I would have had to do a lot more re-edits to get the to look consistent. Using Aperture it changed the process from editing a single image and moving to the next to editing them as a group. Zooming in and out on groups of them and looking at them as thumbnails helped to smooth out the rough edges a lot.

I made the decision to go for a film grain and toned look early in this process. Unfortunatly Aperture does not have a grain (noise) generator, and the toning simply leaves a lot to be desired. With 108 images to process and only a few free hours over the last 2 days of my fuzzy month I had to take the easy way out.

I ended up using Alien Skin Exposure. I selected a TRI-X 400 preset and worked with the grain and tone controls to get a look I enjoyed. I then exported the files from Aperture as TIFF and created a Photoshop action to help apply the plugin to the files and save them as new files.

Then I took these files, and imported them back into Aperture for final sequencing and layout ... yes ... layout.

Next: Creating a PDF book with Aperture.

SoFoBoMo Day 1

I made the decision to do it yesterday, I have my subject picked out:
The Rodin collection at Stanford University

I created a blog to document the process:
dbwalker.blogspot.com

Now I'm looking at how to put together the book. I use Aperture for my workflow needs, Aperture has some crude book layout capability built in. You can position the photos on a page and output to a PDF.

The text layout and editing capabilities leave me a bit cold though, so I may do further editing in Illustrator.

As for a dimensions, I have selected: 16:9 ....

I have no illusions that I wlll actually print this book. So the target viewing platform is my computer, or my TV. Both of these are wide screen so 16:9 will take advantage of the real estate offered by both devices.

For more info go to:
photomusings.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/solo-photo-book-month/