Lately, I always get an error message when I try to sync my iPhone in iTunes. The message simply says “The iPhone cannot by synced. The required file cannot be found.”

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t say exactly what file is missing. While playing with the sync options in iTunes I found out, that the problem is related to Apple Aperture 3 in my case. If you’re using iPhoto instead of Apple Aperture, you may find a solution in this Apple support note. If you’re getting this error message in iTunes and you’re syncing your Aperture 3 library (or parts of it) to your iPhone, I may have a solution for you. Read more »

Apple finally introduced support for the RW2 format from the Panasonic LX-3 and the Leica D-Lux 4 compact digital cameras in the Digital Raw Camera Compatibility 3.0 update. You may have been wondering why it has taken so long to add support for these models. The reason is that the LX-3 and the D-Lux 4 use a lens with high (up to 2.9%) lens distortion at short focal lengths. Apparently, this is the price that has to paid in order to have a 24mm (equivalent) wide angle zoom lens in a compact camera. The built-in raw conversion engine in the camera corrects for this distortion and also applies other corrections for de-vignetting, chromatic aberration and sharpness when the photo is saved as a JPEG. To compensate for the distortion, the photo has to be cropped quite a bit. See here for more details. Technically, the shortest focal length is more like 21mm (equivalent). While Adobe Lightroom users were enjoying RW2 raw photos from the LX-3 and D-Lux 4 for quite some time, Apple’s digital camera raw engine didn’t have support for lens distortion correction until version 3, which was released at the 9th of this month. It supports both, Aperture 3 and iPhoto ’09. Unfortunately, you’re SOL if you’re still using Aperture 2. Read more »

Ever since the release of Aperture, Apple only half-heartedly supported metadata in exported photo’s. I don’t know why but Apple decided not to export extremely useful metadata information like lens model and many others as well. Unfortunately, this is still the case with Aperture 3 :( Lens type is still not included in any exported JPEGs or when directly uploading a photo to flickr. When I tried to upload a photo to flickr using the new flickr button in Aperture 3, even location data from “Places” wasn’t included. Commenter Connor had the solution: I needed to check that checkbox in Aperture’s preferences web tab (see screenshot below). Read more »

The new Geotagging features in Aperture 3 are pretty cool – and very simple to use too. Just like in iPhoto, Apple doesn’t use the term Geotagging but calls it “Places” instead. There’s support for the popular NMEA format which I’m able to export from my Holux M-241 GPS logger using BT747. Aperture Places is also able to read the latitude/longitude data embedded in a photo’s metadata and displays the location on map. Places is able to show the track log if you want to see the route as well. It’s so nice to finally have Geotagging support within Aperture. This simplifies the Geotagging workflow when using a GPS logger a lot. It’s even easier if you use an on-camera GPS unit.  Read more »

Yesterday, Apple released a new version of it’s photo management and raw conversion software Aperture. The issues addressed include:

• Nikon images imported using a direct camera-to-computer connection now display thumbnails correctly in the Import window.
• Fixed an issue that could cause duplicate image versions to be created after rebuilding a library.
• Fixed a library issue that prevented operation of the Relocate or Consolidate commands in some circumstances.

The fixed import-thumbnails issue is great news for Nikon D700 users. Finally, we’re able to see what photos we’re about to import from our camera. I also checked if they fixed an annoying EXIF metadata export issue when exporting a photo – and to my big surprise, they did!

EXIF data

As you can see in the screenshot above, EXIF Viewer displays the latitude/longitude metadata information in an exported Aperture photo when using Aperture 2.1.3. The master image was a raw camera file which I exported as a JPEG. Unfortunately, lens information is still missing in the exported photos :(

While playing around with the new geotagging Places feature in iPhoto ’09 I was pretty stunned by the fact that Aperture 2.1.2 doesn’t export the full EXIF header info when exporting photos from an Aperture project. I already found out that Aperture doesn’t include all EXIF fields for its preview pictures but I expected it to write all EXIF fields when doing a full-size JPEG-export and the Include Metadata option is selected in the export options. Read more »

Even though I’m preferring Apple Aperture over iPhoto to post-process my RAW format photos, the new “Faces” feature in iPhoto ’09 (part of iLife ’09) sounded interesting enough to me to give iPhoto another try. To get some photos in iPhoto without having to duplicate them, I set it up to reference Aperture preview JPEGs in iPhoto’s preferences instead of copying them to the iPhoto library. The preset for Aperture preview JPEGs is 1/2 size of the original photo. Now I’m able to reference Aperture projects by dragging them to iPhoto using the Show Aperture Library menu in iPhoto’s File menu.  Read more »

We just returned from a two week holiday in Scotland. I hauled my complete photo gear (which added almost 10kg to my backpack…aww) with me because I planned to spend quite some time photographing. It turned out that the scottish weather can be rather challenging to the passionate photographer but that’s another story. Of course I took my Holux M-241 GPS logger with me because I wanted to geotag all our photos. I also decided to take my small 13″ notebook with me, just in case the GPS logging device runs out of storage. As it turned out at the end this wouldn’t have been necessary. More on that later on.

Read more »

Here’s a review of geotagging tools available as of today (July ’08). I tested all of them personally and tried to come up with a pro & con list on each of them. If you know a geotagging Mac application that’s not included on this list, please drop a comment. Read more »

I already wrote a few articles about how to use my preferred GPS logging device, the Holux M-241, on the Mac. In this article I’m focusing on the linking process between the GPS data and the photos. This process is called a geotagging workflow. Most of the time I’m taking pictures in RAW mode so the workflow is optimized for this type of images. I’m using a Nikon D80 but the workflow should work with almost any other (Nikon) digital camera like the Nikon D200 or Nikon D300 too. Read more »

The latest version of Kekus LensFix CI features a beta Aperture 2.1 plug-in. It works pretty well as you can see in my animated GIF below (please click to enlarge). Read more »