faces-ui

The addition of “faces” to aperture 3 has been a controversial subject in the professional community. On launch day, forums filled up with posts “Aperture 3 released! 200 new features!!!” Followed up by comments like “meh, I’ll skip it, same old iphoto tricks… not enough to convince me to switch from LR… etc… 2 years and all they did was add places & faces! …etc, didn’t really read the full list, don’t need to… etc… i only use win7 so no aptur 4 me!!!”

Many photographers view faces as primarily a “consumer-oriented” feature, and would much rather have Apple focus their time on improving other areas of the application. (How about making an openCL posterchild out of the background export routine… anyone?) However for some pros – event shooters I’m talking to you - this feature could be a huge addition to your current business.

Disclaimer: If you are an event shooter considering using aperture, and are currently working in my area, you can skip the rest of this entry – you are better off sticking with your current workflow – Trying to switch to aperture would be a waste of your time, and “faces” is really a worthless gimmick as the users on LR forums have made clear. Focus instead on the “quality” side of your post production and don’t worry about workflow – I recommend you just keep using LR’s split toning/cross processing to give that “vintage look” to your pics. Trust me, I know your clients will love it, they always do! …Now get back to that develop module! ;-)

Okay… now for you non-local professionals, here’s a secret. If you are a working event shooter, and you are not using Facebook to post and tag the people in the photos, you are seriously missing out. There is nothing quite as enjoyable as uploading and tagging 100 images from a wedding, then watching the flurry of activity over the next few days as those photos spread like wildfire throughout your clients friends, relatives and friends of friends.


When it comes to bringing in referral business after an event, this is technology at its finest!

Tagging a batch of photos in the facebook UI is an arduous web based process when you’re uploading more than 20 photos. Fortunately, Aperture 3 lets you assign a “facebook id” for each face, so that you can post an album from aperture straight into facebook with “face” tags in tact. It’s kind of fun to flood your client’s inbox with a notification that you just posted 99 photos of them…

Obviously, “facebook” is only one item in a possible list of “cases for faces”. I know a big one for me will be the next time I am in the middle of a book layout and I need to find the perfect photo of John Smith to put into the spread – I’ll be more likely to find it after setting up faces correctly, than I will if I had used some sort of custom keywords for each person in the project…

I’m curious what other’s plan on using it for? If you’ve found a benefit from faces in your workflow, please share in the comments below. Help me add to this list!

Thanks!
- Matthew

Having trouble getting faces to work correctly? Don’t worry, I’ve got a full tutorial with screenshots coming right up… (check back soon).