In order to invert colors in Mac OS X press Ctrl+Option(Alt)+Cmd+8 and your colors are inverted. To return to the normal color scheme, press the same keys again.

Article Picture: I went to the China Town when visiting Antwerp in 2010. This red Chinese lamp really stood out of the background and the environment.

I gave a try to Lightroom 3 a week ago and I edited the latest photo shoot with it. I have to admit that I’m very happy with Lightroom 3 – it’s fast, intuitive and it didn’t take me as long as I thought it would to learn it. Therefore, I advice to anyone having problems with Apple Aperture 3 to at least try Adobe Lightroom 3 (there is a 30-day free fully functional trial version) – you might be as positively surprised as I was.

Again, the answer is quite simple (at least at first): The inclusion of video-making in Aperture 3 is because of the changing trends in the photography world and among photographers! Aperture’s developers have noticed (which actually it’s hard to miss) that more and more photographers start including video-making into their portfolios and services. I won’t elaborate too much here on the reasons for that and the specifications of this changing trend because next article will be specifically devoted to the changing trends in photography. However, I will mention just 2 reasons for the moment:

1) Market Saturation - the photography market has started to be more and more saturated with “wanna be” photographers thanks to the falling prices of semi-professional and professional equipment as well as to its growing availability. I think I should clarify what or rather whom I mean by “wanna be” photographers before people start jumping on me: I don’t mean young photographers who know what they do (although they still learn the art of photography) and know how to behave like a professional photographer towards clients. If you still wonder what I mean by a “wanna be” photographer, watch this video of Judge Joe Brown – Cheap Wedding Photographer.

2) Video becomes a standard in DSLRs – yes, if you’re a photographer and you’ve bought a DSLR in the last couple of years, there is a pretty good chance that your camera records decent videos. There is no need to buy an extra video camera. So why not getting new customers for video-making (and earn extra money), while you can keep using existing gear which you’ve been using for taking (or rather making) pictures?

Few real-life examples of photographers who have started or plan to include movie-making into their services:
- probably the most obvious is Chase Jarvis. I have no idea when he has started making movies… but he does and does it often with DSLRs;
- Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com – to me, he is a photography veteran (of course in a very positive sense). He’s been a long time photography-only Nikon shooter (at least to my knowledge) and only recently he decided to get few Canon DSLR bodies and add-ons to make movies;
- Eric Roy – a photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota (US). I spoke with Eric just last week and he confessed to me that he is going to start making movies very soon as well and include movie-making in his portfolio and as a part of his services.

Article Picture: “We’re Waiting For You” – I think this title suits best this picture above. I took it at the Cemetery de Molenbeek in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium (see google map). EXIF Info: Nikon D90, Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec., f/3.5, Aperture Priority, ISO:200, No Flash

I spent few hours yesterday testing Aperture 3.0.2 and I have to say I was positively surprised. This update makes Aperture 3 finally usable or as Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com wrote: “Aperture 3.0.2 “ FINALLY Finally Ready For Prime Time”. It’s true (and many photographers confirm that) that Apple’s first public major releases (like Aperture 3.0) are in fact full of glitches and bugs. Therefore, they should be seen by the end users as ‘unofficial’ public betas and not final products. Only after few updates (just like in case of Aperture 3), these products become usable. I myself didn’t use Aperture 3 and I waited for the first update of 3.0.1 but even then, the product was not operational, unusable and buggy. I’m a little surprised and even disappointed that Apple acts the way it does with its products towards the customers. Maybe they will learn the lesson, especially after such a sound criticism about buggy Aperture 3. Sometimes it’s good to learn from competitors Apple!

Having said that, I will probably stay with Aperture 3 (well, actually Aperture 3.0.2) as it seems to work fine (more or less at least). I’ve tested about 75%-80% of the features and performance of its 3.0.2 update and it works much MUCH better than the previous version.

Article Picture: Some of you might be familiar with it: it’s the Atomium in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium (see map) or at least a part of it.

Apple introduced many new features (like brushes with special effects, brush in/out adjustments, and many more) in Aperture 3 and I have to say that many plugins which I use with Aperture 2 are unnecessary and even useless. One of the most important feature for portraits for me is skin smoothing, a new feature in Aperture 3. There are many more feature in Aperture 3 and going over would take too much time. The bottom line is: it seems that I don’t need now to have any additional plugins in Aperture 3 except for BorderFX Aperture Plugin , which I mainly use to apply a watermark when exporting post-processed pictures. Unfortunately, BorderFX is still only available in 32-bit mode (at least when this post was written) and the 64-bit beta version of BorderFX has too many bugs to use it.

I will write why I won’t make Aperture 3 my main post-processing software in next blog post, so stay tuned.

[fancy_box]Post Picture: The picture attached to this article was taken in Woluwe Park-Tenis Chalet in Brussels, Belgium. I used Nikon Sb-900 Speedlight coming from a side and triggered using Cactus v4 Flash Trigger. EXIF Information: Shutter Speed: 1/125, F/5.6, ISO: 200, Manual Mode [/fancy_box]