I have figured out a work around for this problem. I use Nikon NX sometimes to process my raw file. In Aperture right click on photo and pick show in finder. Right click on image in finder and choose Photoshop or Nikon NX. Process photo and open PSD or tif in Photoshop. Go back to Aperture click on photo click on External Editor (I have this short cut icon in my tool bar). Take the layer from the Photoshop processed image and put is on top of the Aperture file, go to layers and flatten image, finally save file. It is a great experiment to process it in both Aperture and Photoshop and see witch you prefer.
This also works with making a panoramic image. I first in Aperture “stack” my images for the panoramic. After I make my panoramic in Adobe Bridge Photoshop tools. Go back to Aperture click on first photo click on External Editor. with the Aperture file in Photoshop change the image size to match the Panoramic image drag the layer over and flatten image, Save and done.

Aperture will not display correctly an image with a saved selection or with a alpha channel layer, that is not being used in a mask. If you have a selection saved or channel layer it will show part of the file in black. The first example I have saved a selection / channel of the sky so that before I print the sky I do not want to sharpen the sky. I might want to do some noise reduction of the sky. This photo was taken before I had a D3 camera and it was somewhat dark and the boat was moving like crazy so I had to pump up the ISO to take the photo.

The example is the Alpha channel that Aperture can’t handle.#1 option is to delete the channel and save the file and your done.
#2 option if you want to save the selection is to click on the channel. In the menu go up to -Selection- click on -save selection-

The go to your layers pallet create a curves layer – click OK button because we are not making any changes we only want to save the selection. Next make sure your color is pure black, then click on the mask, In the menu go to – Edit – Fill – After that is done delete the channel.

It should look like this -

Now your done just save the file and aperture will update the file, if it does not show up right away go to full screen view by hitting the F key, to go back hit the F key again.

This may sound like too much work, but is is better than recreating a selection.

Thanks for leaving a comment! I picked Aperture over Lightroom mostly because the color looked more true. After using Aperture for a longer amount of time I decided that Aperture did have lots of control over how you can adjust the look of your photo. Because the color is better it is less to mess with, and less work for me. Aperture is also better at handling a large amount of photos when it came to speed. Witch is important now that I have a D3 I seem to be able to take hundreds of photos in just one morning. It used to take me a few days to finish one roll of slide film with my manual film camera(the good old days?). After traveling with Lightroom and then Aperture you really notice the speed it takes to get your photos uploaded and reviewed.

I can start working on my photos right away while they are down loading, this does not work so well in Lightroom. I have to say that I am mostly using Aperture for the organization and key wording. I think Lightroom key wording has major problems and is not easy to use. Aperture is very easy to use to organize your keywords. My biggest problem is that my bridge staring system disappeared into thin air one day so I am starting over with organizing my photos.

I have to confess I am using Nikon NX software to process 95% of my photos. It works the best if you can processing one photo at a time. I haven’t updated to Nikon NX2 yet but I will soon. I have figured out a work around to have Aperture or Lightroom work with Nikon NX to process RAW files(I will put this in a future blog post soon.) The more I use Nikon NX the more I like it. I have my custom setting and shooting memory bank presets in my camera so mostly just have to open the photo and I am done. (Perhaps this could be a future blog too.)

The Aperture supporting Photographers contact information is still not there. I was told they will only fix this if they get enough people complaining. So please everyone out there send them a note to fix this.

I liked Aperture much better after I set my preferences to how I wanted to view things.

Today I just updated my D3 firmware and now I can adjust my focus point brightness witch is a nice feature. There are also some other small fixes and the highlights play back display is easier to find in the menu. It now has vignette control for certain lenses and I turned on that on.

Nikon NX I also updated with the 1.3.3 I am not sure of the details of the changes yet I am just getting to learn the software now. I am very impressed so far and wish I could use it to process my raw files while using Aperture or Lightroom.

After comparing some photos that were processed with Aperture and Lightroom I thought the Aperture RAW photos looked better than the Lightroom when just opening the photos with out tweaking anything. The colors looked the way I remembered them and the photos where much better looking. The only thing with the Lightroom photos it was easier to delete more photos because they where just not as pretty and I need to get more aggressive about deleting more photos.
I also prefer the curves control in Lightroom.

I am not the most geeky person I am surprising myself to be writing about this. I am hoping by writing it down and putting it out there that it will help me choose. I have many years of photos I need to key word and organize and my photos are scattered on too many drives. I am sure allot of photographers have this problem. I was tying to use bridge for this and it was doing a very poor job of it. Crashing all the time and half the time you just didn’t know what Bridge was doing. Bridge was beyond slow for me. The final straw is when updated to CS3 I lot most of my ***** staring system and losing hundreds of hours of work.
So the main choices seem to be Lightroom or Aperture any other suggestions? I was also going to try Portfolio but I have been waiting for them to send me a password for more that one week. You can not e-mail for help with out a password and when I called for customer service and technical help they say they can not answer at this time. So do you with Adobe if they can create a bad software like bridge do I dare use Lightroom. Aperture took months to support new cameras like Nikon D3. Witch made it impossible to use there software.

I am grateful that they each let you try out there software to see witch you like. My husband is using Lightroom mostly because Aperture was not supporting the D3 and he needed something NOW! On thought that if we wanted to teach he could be the Lightroom guy an I could be the Aperture gal but I just want something that works the best.

Down to nic-picking each one-
1. I wish I could use the software with my Nikon NX because I prefer this raw converter over all others. But sometimes with a mostly blue photo I would prefer Lightroom or Aperture. I would like to have the choice but Aperture will only send out a tiff and not a raw file. Adobe wants only you to use their software so you can only export out to Photoshop. I can with each use “show in finder” and then I can right click and open the file in Nikon NX but it is no longer being organized so what is the point.
2. Aperture does not support the Meta data Contact Page like – who is the photographer and how can they be contacted. I found this out when submitting photos to the BBC photo contest. So how should you go around this this seems like it would make the photographer look very unprofessional and maybe lose sales. Even tho I was trying out Aperture I had to create my keywording in photoshop so that I would have my contact info in. And even if the file had the contact info in if you were exporting out of Aperture you would have no contact info because Aperature does not support this.
3. Aperture will let you make dupe key words like antarctica and Antarctica I had have of my with caps and half without for the same word. Lightroom doesn’t let you do this.
4. Aperture had randomly made dupe photos and put them is a different folder.
5. Lightroom some times makes mistakes about bringing in photos it already has in the library this happen to my husband ( http://www.davehartleyphotography.com/ )after he changed his laptop time. When traveling we change the clocks on our cameras and laptops so we know when the real time of the photo is.
6. With Aperture if you hit control z on too many times it takes you to a completely different photo and you no longer have the photo you are working on in you monitor. But I had a similar problem with lightroom while tagging photos, or changing search filters.
7. Aperture is faster that Lightroom in every way.
8. Aperture does not let you create your own cropping aspect ratio, Lightroom does, being a fan of the panoramic this is a bummer.

List of what is better about Aperture – key wording is easier, Loupe is great, versions or stacks works better, and everything is faster.

list of what is better about Lightroom – better panels for raw converting, targeted adjustment tool, better straightening tool, Lens correction vignette correction works better