Q: Aperture - picture lines

Which version of Aperture are you using?  What do the boxes look like? Could you post a screenshot?

Do the boxes look like these red rectangles?  Then disable "Show Focus Points ⌥F" from the View menu.

Are the blocks only visible in the thumbnails, or also visible, when you enlarge the image in the viewer?

I have never seen this effect.

Aperture has been extremely sluggish

how much free storage do you have on your system drive? 

• Aperture will be sluggish, if you you are running out of storage (less than at least 10 GB free storage on the drive).
• Aperture can be sluggish, if you imported a large amount of new images that need processing in the background. then just let it run over night.
• If one of the image files or videos has become corrupted, and Aperture cannot process it, aperture may become stuck on processing it.  Open the Activity viewer (from Aperture's window menu> Show Activity) to see what Aperture is processing.
• Is Aperture more responsive, if you hold down the Shift key while launching Aperture? That would indicate a corrupted item in your library.
• If the aperture Library needs repairing, Aperture could be slow:  see this manual page:   http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/index.html#chapter=27%26se ction=10%26tasks=true

Which adjustments do you have applied? The Curves adjustment is currently giving big trouble in combination with other adjustments.

This particular block effect looks like a combination of Curves and Devignette.

I think this block effect may be due to me using a third party noise reduction software called Nik, could this be it? and could I just delete Nik from my iMac and that would be the end of it?

Does the effect go away, if you select  one of the problematic images and use "Photos > Revert to original"?

Does it only happen, if you use the Nik plug-ins?

If the Nik software has been causing it, revert the edits.  Uninstalling NIK will not help.

morgold wrote:

 

yes! that's done it! Thanks Leonie!

 

 

btw what is the most effective way of getting rid of noise from images in Aperture please

You're welcome.

In most cases the built-in noise reduction adjustment in Aperture suffices for me.

If you did not yet add that adjustment to your default set, click "Add Adjustment" in the Adjustments panel and add it. Then use the Gear icon to add it to the default set.  I ike this tool, because you can brush in the noise reduction locally and do not have to apply it to the full image. I prefer the bull-in adjustments, because they do not create a new master image and can be reverted to the original in a lossless way.  Any plug-in will create a large intermediate TIFF or PSD file and waste storage.

For your RAW images you may want to use the RAW Fine Tuning brick first.

For very bad cases I am using the Noiseless CK plug-in.  It is quick and easy and has many presets. You can see the results sidebar side while adjusting the sliders.