how to find brush adjustments?

Question

how to find brush adjustments?

Been using Lightroom for years. I've owned Aperture for a good while but I'm pretty new to using it.

My question is: How do I locate adjustments made with brushes? In Lightroom, there's just one local adjustment tool, and I can click it and see all the little "dots" on the photo indicating where I've brushed on an adjustment. Is there a way to do something similar in Aperture?

Specifically, I made some adjustments to a photo, and I think I'd like to delete one of them, but I can't figure out how to delete just that one. In some other photos, I'd like to see if I made any brush adjustments or not.

Thanks in advance,

Will

Aperture 3, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Jun 20, 2013 9:30 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kirby Krieger

Level 6

12,542 points

Jun 20, 2013 10:30 AM in response to William Porter

Hi Will,

The Adjustments Inspector shows you all of the currently applied adjustments. There may be other Adjustment Bricks showing -- the ones with a checkmark in the box at the upper-left are applied.

You can toggle any adjustment on/off by checking/unchecking this checkbox.

LR users are usually befuddled that there is no "history". What you see is the current state of the Image. All the adjustments you've made are contained in the Adjustment Bricks (whether they are being applied or not). The order in which the adjustments are applied is fixed. (It is because the order is fixed that a history of when _you_ applied each adjustment is meaningless.)

If you have used a Brush to create an adjustment mask, you will have to bring up the Brush HUD to show the mask. Click the Action Menu (a/k/a "the gear") icon and select from any of the selections that show you the adjustment mask.

In addition to toggling the application of an adjustment on/off, you can reset the adjustment to its default state, and you can remove the adjustment from the Image. Click the little curved arrow on the upper-right of the Adjustment Brick to return the settings to their defaults. Select the Brick, and press and release the "{delete}" key to remove the adjustment from the Image.

HTH. Recommend you read the first seven chapters of the User Manual -- they provide a thorough introduction to Aperture's UI.

--Kirby.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,567 points

Jun 20, 2013 10:42 AM in response to William Porter

In Lightroom, there's just one local adjustment tool, and I can click it and see all the little "dots" on the photo indicating where I've brushed on an adjustment. Is there a way to do something similar in Aperture?

To illustrate what Kirby said (I don't want to waste my screenshot 😝): - you can show overlays to outline the pixels where the adjustment has been applied - press the gear icon in the HUD to select an overlay type:

Here is the "Edge Sharpen" Adjustment and the corresponding mask:

Léonie

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Answer 3

Jun 20, 2013 10:44 AM in response to Kirby Krieger

Thank you for the quick reply Kirby, I really appreciate it. Trying to get some photos to a client this afternoon and was wondering about this issue.

Your answer makes sense and I do understand that Aperture ≠ Lightroom and vive la difference. I never made much use of the history feature in Lightroom, so I don't miss it.

Three follow-up questions.

First, it looks like there's just one brush per type of adjustment. For example, in Lightroom, I can use one adjustment brush to increase exposure on the bride's white gown and a second brush to decrease exposure in the groom's black suit. In Aperture, it looks like that sort of specificity isn't supported. Not a big deal: I'm also using the Nik plug-ins with Aperture and I can do that very selective sort of editing in the Nik apps. But I'm just asking if I'm missing something.

Second, with the retouch adjustment "brick": Looks like it counts the adjustments that have been made but doesn't allow me to edit them individually after the fact. In other words, say I've retouched 7 spots, then I decide I don't like what I did with #4, it looks like I can't just select #4 and delete it. I'd have to undo 7, and 6, and 5 and 4, then redo all of them. Am I right or wrong? Again, not a big deal. I love the Repair tool in Aperture!

Thanks,

Will

p.s. What user manual? I have the digital download edition and I see online help but not a "manual" per se. I have Scoppetuolo's book on Aperture 3 (the first edition) and have gone through most of it. But I find most of Aperture very easy to understand so when reading I am afraid I've skimmed over some details that I should have read more attentively....

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Answer 4

Jun 20, 2013 10:51 AM in response to William Porter

Help->Aperture Help is the manual. It's quite extensive.

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Answer 5

Jun 20, 2013 10:59 AM in response to léonie

Danke, Léonie!

My question, however, isn't really about seeing where a particular, single adjustment is applied. It's about how find one adjustment or another.

So in Lightroom, if I select the "local adjustment brush", it's a single tool which has a bunch of adjustment options applied to it, and when it's selected, I can see these little dots for all of the adjustments I've applied so far. I don't know what those adjustments are until I click on each one's dot (which would probably be frustrating to an Aperture user moving to Lightroom!) but I can at least quickly see where I've made local adjustments with the brush tool. For example, I might see a dot on the bride's dress, another dot on the groom's suit jacket, a third dot on the bride's bouquet, and a fourth dot on the groom's eye. From those dots I can usually guess that I lightened the dress, darkened the suit (or perhaps decreased contrast), increased saturation in the bouquet, and lightened the groom's eye wells (or perhaps sharpened them). In Aperture, I think I need to learn how better to interpret those adjustment "bricks".

I'm not trying to get Aperture to be Lightroom, just trying to understand how Aperture works in this regard!

Is there a keyboard shortcut for showing an overlay? That would be really helpful....

Will

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Answer 6

Jun 20, 2013 11:26 AM in response to William Porter

There's no way I know of to see all the brushes on the photo. Aperture brushes are different; they're per-adjustment brick and not all centralized in one area. Also, brushes have ONE adjustment; you can't apply 10 effects to the same brush.

There is no keyboard shortcut to switch between brush overlays, like the 'o' key in Lightroom. I sorely miss that. I would suggest you use Aperture's "send feedback" mechanism to suggest that. The more the merrier :-)

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

194,567 points

Jun 20, 2013 11:59 AM in response to William Porter

Hi Will,

Kirby explained, what is possible:

The Adjustments Inspector shows you all of the currently applied adjustments. There may be other Adjustment Bricks showing -- the ones with a checkmark in the box at the upper-left are applied.

You can toggle any adjustment on/off by checking/unchecking this checkbox.

You see the adjustments listed a bricks in the adjustment panel -and if you toggle them on an off by clicking on the checkmark, you see what they are doing and where they are applied, if you have multiple instances of the same adjustment.

You can create a kind of adjustment history by creating version stacks. If you prefer, Aperture can create new versions automatically, if you apply adjustments and stack the images, so that you only see the last version, but can browse earlier versions as well. You could change the version name to indicate the adjustment you added.

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Answer 8

Jun 20, 2013 12:07 PM in response to léonie

Thank you to Kirby, Léonie and William L. for your generous help. I just joined this forum today and, after spending some time perusing the online help for Aperture, I'll be coming back here to learn.

I've used Lightroom since the beta of version 1 and know it very well. I bought Aperture 3 some time last year when Apple dropped the price to an irresistible $75. My first many attempts to use Aperture ended in frustration because, well, because, although it resembles Lightroom, ultimately they work quite differently and I didn't "get" Aperture. About a month ago, somewhat accidentally, I decided I needed to figure Aperture out. And when I did (well, mostly) I discovered that I really like it. I wish it had even more keyboard shortcuts, but overall, I like it so much that, for the moment, I've decided not to upgrade to Lightroom 5 and instead to start doing my work in Aperture.

I hope Apple is serious about future development of Aperture. These days, we all kind of need regular updates to be reassured that the product hasn't been abandoned. But I can wait a little while longer since, for me, Aperture 3.4 is kind of a new product.

And William, I will take your suggestion to start sending feedback.

Thanks again to all of you for your help!

Will

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Answer 9

Jun 20, 2013 12:37 PM in response to William Lloyd

William Lloyd wrote:

There is no keyboard shortcut to switch between brush overlays, like the 'o' key in Lightroom. I sorely miss that. I would suggest you use Aperture's "send feedback" mechanism to suggest that. The more the merrier :-)

I checked Automator and AppleScript reference -- there is nothing there that (afaict) allows one any access to either the Brush HUD or any of the commands available from the Brush HUD. I also tried to get the commands by recording my actions with Keyboard Maestro -- nothing but the location of the click relative to the program window. Agree with William: "Aperture➞Provide Aperture Feedback".

That said, one of the _brilliant_ aspects of Aperture (imho 🙂 ) is the constant and judicious subordination of possibility under what seems to me to be this rigorous test: does this lead directly to _useful_ feedback? Aperture is almost always and almost everywhere consistently image-centric. It is not about using a computer, or about what you can do -- it does not give you digital wings that allow for intellectual flights of fancy. (A "soft" example: a preponderance amount of the controls in Photoshop are dedicated to making and refining selections, which must be done prior to acting on the selection. Aperture's selection tools are, in comparison, either radically reduced or irresponsibly under-developed. I go with radically -- intelligently, deftly, logically -- reduced to those that work for a photographer developing digital photographs to be seen by human viewers. I _love_ that human/humanist core. It is not a scientific tool -- it is an artistic one. {When I do science, I use Photoshop.}) I do not want to see this pointed purposefulness undercut by features which crowd the user with secondary information.

The hierarchy in this case is that using/disabling an already-made adjustment (via the checkbox on the Brick) is more important, and closer to the user than examining the shape and depths of the adjustment mask. The question the user is supposed to ask is -- again, strictly imho, from years spent working with this software -- "How does the Image look?" (and not, "What's the adjustment mask cover, not cover, look like, etc.). It is conceivable -- and important to realize -- that one could make the most of the adjustment brushes without _ever_ seeing any of the brush masks.

OK. Turning off my own mic now. 😝

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Answer 10

Jun 20, 2013 12:43 PM in response to William Lloyd

William Lloyd wrote:

There's no way I know of to see all the brushes on the photo. Aperture brushes are different; they're per-adjustment brick and not all centralized in one area. Also, brushes have ONE adjustment; you can't apply 10 effects to the same brush.

But -- NB! -- you can have as many individual Adjustment Bricks as you want. The user is limited to one brush per brick, but can use 17, 65, 130 bricks, even all of the same kind of adjustment, on any one Image.

Beginners also should know that the brush mask has a variable depth as well as an area: the brush mask is simply a visual representation of the command: apply this adjustment _at this strength_ to these pixels.

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Answer 11

Jun 20, 2013 12:50 PM in response to William Porter

William Porter wrote:

p.s. What user manual?

I added a link to my earlier response. The User Manual = the Help file. It is available via "Help", but is also on-line at this address. It is easily searched, and should be the first resource you consult. It's quite helpful.

Many Browsers allow to install menulets (or you can use a launcher such as LaunchBar). The syntax to search the on-line User Manual for an asked-for string is:

http://documentation.apple.com/search/#q=*

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Answer 12

Jun 20, 2013 12:57 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Kirby,

Poking around here I had a eureka moment: I found the Aperture User Manual, as well as another PDF guide containing all the keyboard shortcuts. Have downloaded both and will get the manual on to my iPad for easier reading.

URL is here:

http://support.apple.com/manuals/#aperture

Thanks,

Will

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Answer 13

Jun 20, 2013 1:05 PM in response to William Porter

Your questions have been answered (I think) but since I've dusted up the place I thought I should present the answers all together here:

First, it looks like there's just one brush per type of adjustment.

Correct-ish. One brush per brick, but you can have multiple bricks of the same adjustment type.

Second, with the retouch adjustment "brick": Looks like it counts the adjustments that have been made but doesn't allow me to edit them individually after the fact.

Correct. This would be useful, but it would have to come with a hierarchical outline of which retouches retouch previous retouches. Note that you _cannot_ have multiple instances of the Retouch Brick, and you _cannot_ show an overlay for retouches.

p.s. What user manual?

See my response elsewhere in this thread.

Haperturations!

--Kirby.

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Answer 14

Jun 20, 2013 1:06 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Kirby K. writes:

[Aperture] is not a scientific tool -- it is an artistic one. (When I do science, I use Photoshop.) I do not want to see this pointed purposefulness undercut by features which crowd the user with secondary information.

I agree with your praise of Aperture and with the principle that underlies it, although I think the same could be said to a great degree about Lightroom, in fact, with Lightroom's amazing number of keyboard shortcuts, I can do a lot of work on an image without having to look at a lot of tools at all. Lightroom has a "solo" mode for the tool palette or sidebar (whatever you call it) that collapses all tools except for the one you're currently using. Another one of the small number of Lightroom behaviors that I would like to see Aperture adopt. I have to do a lot of extra clicking in Aperture to collapse/minimize those "bricks" when I'm done using 'em.

Still, the thing about a keyboard shortcut for showing or hiding the overlay is that it would serve the very end you praise. I dislike the fact that this is so, but when I'm working with brushes, I do want to take a quick look to see what I brushed. If the adjustment is subtle, I can't always tell on screen if I've been precise enough, and I dislike having the print come out of the printer and see that I slopped the blur brush into the bride's hair. Being able to do something like tap the "o" key (the Lightroom shortcut for this) and toggle the overlay on and off would eliminate the need for me to go to the HUD for that, and, in my opinion, allow me to stay focused on the image rather than the app.

Anyway, I'll be sending Apple a bunch of little suggestions soon!

Thanks again,

Will

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Answer 15

Jun 20, 2013 1:10 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

One brush per brick, but you can have multiple bricks of the same adjustment type.

Oh, excellent. Actually I'd kind of noticed that before: In the "brick" for certain brushes or adjustments there's a command under the gear icon labeled "Add new X adjustment," for example, "Add new definition adjustment." It just hadn't sunk in yet how that addressed the issues I've been wondering about. Thanks for clarifying this!

Will

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