Very Poor Image Quality In Viewer, JPEG Artifacts

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Very Poor Image Quality In Viewer, JPEG Artifacts

I upgraded to Aperture 3 some time ago, and purchased a new Mac Pro specifically for this application. I am an amature/ sometime professional photographer and I have been using Aperture since Version 1. This weekend I finally had some time to sit down with Aperture 3 for some serious work with my scanned film images. These are large TIF masters scanned in with my Nikon CoolScan 9000. Some are medium format black & white Tri-X Pan images, others are 35mm, also black & white Tri-X Pan. Everything scanned in on the Nikon is at the maximum resolution for the master, on the theory that I can always bump it down later if that's necessary.

I am noticing vastly lower image quality in the viewer then with Aperture 2. Specifically, I am seeing massive JPEG artifacts in the viewer image then I have ever seen before. The images also render darker in the viewer then before. These artifacts do not appear when I export my images (say as JPEGS for posting to a web page), or when I print them. The quality of the exported and print images seem just fine and the exported JPEGS are completely free of the artifacts I am seeing in the viewer.

I have tried rebuilding the previews several times, experimenting with different quality settings. I have experimented with different proof profile settings. My printer is an Epson Stylus Photo R1800 and I have tried various paper settings for it as well as other proof profile settings such as the Adobe and Apple RGB settings and the generic grey profiles. Every time I change a setting I have forced a rebuild of the previews to no detectable effect. Nothing I do seems to have any effect whatsoever on the image quality in the viewer which remains relentlessly the same as it always was.

This poor viewer image quality is making it very difficult to work in Aperture 3. I suspect there is a setting somewhere like an easter egg in this new Aperture I haven't found yet but it is becoming very frustraiting and I could use a pointer because, again, nothing I have tried has changed the image quality in the viewer in any way I can detect and the photos look perfectly awful there...darker and loaded with JPEG artifacts. Things export and print just fine, but I need to see what I am going to get in the viewer or I can't do my work.

Mac Pro (Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Mar 3, 2012 6:32 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 3, 2012 6:55 AM in response to BruceGarrett

Did you scan them as grayscale or RGB? Aperture won't work well with grayscale images.

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Answer 2

Mar 3, 2012 7:07 AM in response to BruceGarrett

The Viewer auto-sizes the Image(s) to fit. Do the artifacts remain when you zoom to 100%?

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Answer 3

BruceGarrett Author

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Mar 3, 2012 7:24 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

They were scanned in as greyscale. And as I said, they export and print just fine so at least some parts of Aperture don't seem to be having problems with them.

Is not working with greyscale image files a known and understood problem? Can you point me to some discussion of that? Because it is pretty jaw dropping if true and it's something I never noticed with Aperture 2 or 1. (My big problem there was mostly the issues about large size TIFs. That seems to be resolved now). Not everything I do is Tri-X Pan but a lot of it is and lots of photographers, even those who have gone all digital, like to work in black & white.

I could try converting the masters in Photoshop to RGB and re-importing them as an experiment, but that's not really a solution for everything I already have in Aperture.

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Answer 4

Mar 3, 2012 7:31 AM in response to BruceGarrett

SeeAperture: Unexpected results when working with grayscale or other non-RGB images

You can work in B&W and still be in the RGB color space.

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Answer 5

BruceGarrett Author

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Mar 3, 2012 7:32 AM in response to Kirby Krieger

Do the artifacts remain when you zoom to 100%?

Thank you. Yes they do. But that was worth a try. I've been trying various preview sizes to see if any of those are better, but so far nothing changes the quality of the image. It's almost as if some refresh that should happen does not for some reason. The only thing that changes the image in the viewer is if I apply some adjustment. I see adjustments happen right away. But the JPEG artifacts remain.

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Answer 6

BruceGarrett Author

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Mar 3, 2012 7:39 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

SeeAperture: Unexpected results when working with grayscale or other non-RGB images

So I go look...

Aperture is designed to work with images from digital cameras which use an RGB color space...

Oh. This is a digital camera only product then?

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Answer 7

Mar 3, 2012 7:48 AM in response to BruceGarrett

Are you seriously asking me to answer what is clearly a question only Apple could answer?

You have a problem, I tried to point you to a possible cause, use the information as you wish.

regards

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Answer 8

Mar 3, 2012 8:36 AM in response to BruceGarrett

I thought Aperture uses Previews to speed things up. Aperture will load the Preview first, since it's should be smaller, it should be quicker to load, then it reads and loads the Master, with the Version info applied.

From the user manual:

I interpret this as ... Eventually you should be looking at the Master with the Version changes applied. I'm assuming at this point, you aren't looking at the Preview. Since you don't need Previews to view and edit your images.

So, why would it matter what size the Preview is, at least inside Aperture. I understand that the Preview size will matter when other apps need to access your Library, outside of Aperture.

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Answer 9

Mar 3, 2012 8:38 AM in response to BruceGarrett

I read that as a color space issue, not an image source issue. I thought Apple was saying that images should be in the RBG color space. Not grayscale, or I would assume CMYK.

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Answer 10

BruceGarrett Author

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Mar 3, 2012 10:38 AM in response to Frank Caggiano

"Are you seriously asking me to answer..."

Not any more. But thank you very much for the help you've generously provided!

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Answer 11

BruceGarrett Author

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Mar 3, 2012 11:27 AM in response to 1 Open Loop

I interpret this as ... Eventually you should be looking at the Master with the Version changes applied. I'm assuming at this point, you aren't looking at the Preview. Since you don't need Previews to view and edit your images.

Yeah...that's sort of what I gleaned from that text. I was experimenting with the preview settings because I couldn't see any other way to fix the problem. What I'm hearing now is that the problem has no fix. If you scan in black & white film negatives (or anything else that's monochrome I suppose) with the color space set as gray scale you are asking for trouble. The sense I get from the text Gomez Addams referred me to is the behavior in that case is unpredictable, and furthermore film photographers aren't the customer base Apple is trying to cultivate with this product.

Aperture is designed to work with images from digital cameras which use an RGB color space...

Okay...fine. I have several digital cameras I occasionally use for professional work and I am here to tell you Aperture is an absolute blessing for that work. I do shoots every now and then for a local community newspaper and I would not want to live without this product. I remember back when I was a teenager in the 70s being up all night in the darkroom to get an assignment I'd had to cover right before deadline, and then go to my day job the next morning without any sleep. This is much better. And even with the personal art photography it is good to be able to just scan things in and make adjustments in the computer. You can do so much more. I would not want to go back.

But I reckon I need to find something I can rely on for my film work, or at least my black & white film work because as I read this Apple is not supporting film photography with this product and black & white film photography in particular and some of us still use film. No...scanning in my Tri-X negatives in the CoolScan as color produces weird results and anyway Photoshop and GIMP for goodness sakes seem to handle grayscale files just fine. Plus, I've already got thousands of those negatives scanned, I am not rescanning all that in RGB just to satisfy Aperture. The color slide film scans don't seem to be a problem, but that's now. I think I'm being told not to count on That always being the case either.

Aperture is designed to work with images from digital cameras...

Okay...fine...film is old technology after all, Nikon isn't even making their film scanners anymore...check the prices on the few still new-in-the-box ones left out there. My CoolScan 9000 is selling for twice on the second-hand market what I paid for it new and new it wasn't cheap. And yet it's not economically viable for Nikon to continue making them. Film is dying. But I still like working with film and film cameras and I reckon I'll keep doing that until I can't get any more of it and my stash of Tri-X Pan bulk rolls runs out.

Thank you all very much for your help. I think I see what I need to do now.

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