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aperture 3 and m9

gooomz

Member
how do i export my m9 files out of aperture which were 18mb without any image quality loss?

i exported an original 16bit tiff out of aperture but the file was over 100mb!

what is the proper way to export my m9 files out of aperture to get their full detail but without the heft of 100mb?

i want to send these m9 files to online lab for printing.

thanks for the help.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Your Leica M9 produces a raw image file containing information for 5212 x 3472 pixels or 18,096,064 pixels. In the raw file, these are represented by photosite intensities organized in a bayer mosaic pattern, not as red, green and blue channel data, so this is a very compact organization which requires a raw converter to expand and process so that it can be viewed as an image.

Once Aperture processes that data into an RGB TIFF file, at 16-bits per color component, that means these 18,096,064 pixels are represented by 36192128 red bytes, 36192128 green bytes, and 36192128 blue bytes of data for a total of 108,576,384 bytes of color intensity information, uncompressed. Theres your 100+ Mbyte uncompressed TIFF file.

Now, no (or very very few) printers want to deal with 100 Mbyte print files or 16bit TIFF files, nor is such a huge file required to make beautiful prints up to very large sizings. Most printers want a file which is sized to between 240 and 360 pixels per inch at the desired print area dimension, in 8bits per component and sRGB color space profile.

Ignoring the print size pixel dimensions, if you simply went to 8Bit TIFF, uncompressed, you'd cut the data size in half (about 50 Mbytes per file). If you then applied lossless compression to the TIFF (Zip is the best currently), you'd cut the data size by another third or so. Or you could use a maximum quality, minimum compression JPEG format file, you'd cut the size to less than half. And you would not see any degradation in the quality of your image on paper.
 

gooomz

Member
godfrey,

when i import raw files from my m9 into aperture 3 i take aperture edits these images in 16bit? is that right?
--------------

when i exported some images to my desktop i noticed in my "get info" window that the color space was: RGB and the color profile was: sRGB.
is this correct?

not sure what this means since my m9 is shooting raw and it is set at sRGB.

thanks for the help.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
godfrey,

when i import raw files from my m9 into aperture 3 i take aperture edits these images in 16bit? is that right?
--------------

when i exported some images to my desktop i noticed in my "get info" window that the color space was: RGB and the color profile was: sRGB.
is this correct?

not sure what this means since my m9 is shooting raw and it is set at sRGB.

thanks for the help.
- Whatever colorspace you choose in the camera is irrelevant to raw captures. Colorspace is applied at raw conversion time, and is set up in Aperture for exporting purposes. I am almost certain that Aperture uses 16bit and Apple's equivalent of ProPhoto RGB as its working colorspace inside Aperture for the editing process, but I'm not entirely sure.

- In the Finder's "Get Info", image colorspace will be RGB or CMYK, or whatever other fundamental channel organization is listed in the file metadata. The colors profile is the important bit, presuming that your images are going to be RGB channel organized by default in most cases. The Finder interprets raw file metadata per whatever the camera settings were ... Digital cameras normally capture with RGB channel organization and usually tag profiles for sRGB or Adobe RGB, but both are relevant only to the embedded JPEG preview image and are not generally consumed by Aperture or other raw conversion software.

I don't use Aperture for image editing very much so some of its behaviors in editing are somewhat unclear to me. However, I took a 12Mpixel native DNG file from the GXR and imported it into Aperture, made some adjustments, and then exported it to TIFF-16bit so I could see what Aperture did with it. At the defaults, Aperture set the export to output in sRGB (verified by using Photoshop CS4 and the File->File Info command. (You can change the export defaults by using the Aperture preferences panels if you want something different. I don't see an option to save a ZIP-compressed TIFF, however.)
 

gooomz

Member
thanks for the help godfrey.

from my understanding (after calling apple support) by default aperture exports files with the RGB profile and if i send it to the print lab they said either way is exactly the same for prints, sRGB or RGB, so as long as the profile is specified in the file.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
thanks for the help godfrey.

from my understanding (after calling apple support) by default aperture exports files with the RGB profile and if i send it to the print lab they said either way is exactly the same for prints, sRGB or RGB, so as long as the profile is specified in the file.
I don't think you understood what I wrote above. Let me simplify:

- The Color space: RGB in the Get Info panel is the color model. Unless you switch an image's color model to CMYK or LAB, all your images will say "Color space: RGB." I don't know whether Aperture can change the color model.

- The Color profile: sRGB is what you can set, how the image is tagged on export. By default, Aperture outputs files with an sRGB color profile, but that can be changed in the Preferences, Export panel settings. Take a look and you'll see several to many options there, depending on what color profiles you've got installed on your computer system.
 

gooomz

Member
under export preferences in aperture,

should i choose 8 or 16 bit for external editor file format?

also it asks for the external editor color space preference?

by default none is chosen so should i leave it that way or choose sRGB, RGB, or select the My Calibrated Monitor Profile? (that is the profile created when i calibrated my monitor)
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
If you're going to be exporting with the intent of further editing in Photoshop CSxx, you want to export to TIFF or PSD format (which of the two is pretty much irrelevant), 16-bits per color component, and "ProPhoto RGB" color profile.

To match that properly in Photoshop, use the Edit->Color Settings command. Set up the Color Settings in Photoshop by first picking the "North American Prepress 2" settings bundle, then changing the "working colorspace" setting to "ProPhoto RGB".

This is exactly the same pairing of settings that I use in Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 for "round trip" editing. It makes for a perfect match between the two editing environments with no color shifting.

If you are exporting image files to send to a printer, in general you want to export to TIFF, 8bits (or JPEG at maximum quality), and sRGB color profile.

The ONLY proper use for a device-dependent display profile is to characterize your display to the operating system and underlying graphics rendering engine. You set that up in System Preferences, in the Displays panel, Color tab.
 

gooomz

Member
if i am export to use in the Nik Software suite like Silver Effects and Color Effects 3.0 same criteria, TIFF 16bit and "ProPhotoRGB" or can i get away with TIFF 8 bit?

does it make a big difference if i export to Nik software at sRGB?
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
if i am export to use in the Nik Software suite like Silver Effects and Color Effects 3.0 same criteria, TIFF 16bit and "ProPhotoRGB" or can i get away with TIFF 8 bit?

does it make a big difference if i export to Nik software at sRGB?
I've never used either of them so I don't know what formats they're compatible with. Why don't you read the Nik software instructions and see if they say anything about it? Or call their support line and ask them directly?

"Does it make a big difference ..." is a judgement call without a simple yes or no. Presuming the software is compatible with the file format you want to use, I'm sure it might for some work, and probably doesn't for other work.

Have you tried to use these packages with the same image, rendered out of Aperture in various ways? Nothing will inform you better than to do a little hands-on testing like this with an 'experiment and observe' frame of mind.
 

gooomz

Member
thanks godfrey again.

i will give Nik software a call and see what they say. just trying to get a grip on this whole color space thing, once i am confident my workflow is on the right track i can hopefully set it, forget about it, and start taking some more pictures.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
thanks godfrey again.

i will give Nik software a call and see what they say. just trying to get a grip on this whole color space thing, once i am confident my workflow is on the right track i can hopefully set it, forget about it, and start taking some more pictures.
I have an article on just this topic:

http://www.gdgphoto.com/articles/ click on 10 - Color Management can be Simple

It's targeting primarily Lightroom and Photoshop, but the same principles apply to using Aperture and Photoshop.
 
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