Month: June 2014

It appears as Apple’s Aperture is no more :(

On By Mark DoddIn General Blog PostLeave a comment

I’ve received a few emails about it today and have read several online articles on it, but it seems that my trusty photo editing software of choice is no more after the next release of Mac OS X (Yosemite)

It will be replaced by “Photos” which will come with the new Mac OS X

Will have to wait and see, but as a few have already mentioned, it is a 1.0 product that combines  some of iOS photos, iphoto, and aperture features.

Sadly, I guess, it is time to move over the Adobe’s Lightroom, which I’ve seen a lot of my favorite photographers move to. I had debated for some time wither or not to move as there are some features I like in Lightroom, but up to this point, it wasn’t enough to make me up and change my workflow and comfort level I had with Aperture.

Here are some of the articles I’ve seen on the topic today.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/27/apple-announces-it-will-no-longer-develop-aperture-or-iphoto-os-x-yosemite-photos-app-to-serve-as-replacement

https://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/27/aperture-development-stops/

iPhone Photos and Time Zones

On By Mark DoddIn General Blog Post1 Comment

I recently took a trip where I crossed several times zones and the international date line and here is what I observed how my iPhone 5 recorded dates and times with respect to the different places and time zones.

My trip involved 3 locations with 3 different times zones and one location being across the international date line. I assumed that with time zone support on that my iPhone would record not only the current date, but the time zone of where the photo was taken.  I found out differently after I uploaded them to my computer during my trip. I discovered this due to My Travel Photo Time Stamp Fiasco

I became curious when I noted that all of my iPhone photos had the EDT time zone indicated when I imported them into Aperture.

First, I’ve determined that the iPhone with iOS 7 only records the current date and time and not the time zone information. I confirmed this by using a free Exif application on my iPhone. The picture to the left is an example of a picture I took while in the GMT +12 time zone. Note that it does not show a time zone, but only a DateTime stamp. When I imported this photo into my Aperture library it showed with the date and time zone information of

2014:05:13 14:31:17 EDT

So where did the time zone information come from?

 

 

 

 

 

photo for Time Zone TestI did a little experimenting by using my existing photos and creating a few after setting the time zone on my phone. This is a sample photo that I took at 16:58 EDT where I had changed the time zone to PDT. It recorded the time at 13:58 which was the correct time for the PDT time zone, but again there is no sign of the time zone.  When I imported the photo into my Aperture library, Aperture shows the time as

2014:06:20 13:58:35 EDT

So why does it show as EDT time zone in Aperture even though it recorded it as the correct time for the PDT time zone?

 

 

 

 

Since the iPhone is not recording a time zone with the picture and Aperture displays time zone information on picture, Aperture adds the EDT time zone when a picture is imported. So why did it pick the EDT time zone?  Aperture uses the computer’s time zone information when adding the time zone to the photo and in this case, the time zone of this computer is EDT.

You can test this by importing a photo from your iPhone, then go and change the time zone of your computer and import the same photo again. The photo will show up with two different time zones but the same date and time stamp.

So how do you correct the time zone information in Aperture? Aperture has a batch change option under the meta data menu. Here is the important part. Since it recorded the correct date and time for the photo, (there is an exception to this, see below) you do not want to change the date and time, just the time zone.  You only want to change the time zone to the correct time zone.  In the batch change options, select Adjust Time Zone and then choose the intended time zone for both the Camera’s time zone and the Actual time zone. This will set the time zone to the intended time zone without adjusting the date and time. So in my example, if the time is 2014:06:20 13:58:35 EDT and the correct time zone should be PDT, I would select PDT for the Camera’s time zone and the Actual time zone to give the corrected entry at 2014:06:20 13:58:35 PDT

The exception to the rule is when your camera has airplane mode turned while taking a picture. Since this disables several functions including cellular connections where your phone would have learned its new time zone, you phone keeps the date, time, and time zone it had when you enabled airplane mode .  This occurred to me when I had imported a few photos where I took a few obligatory selfies on the airplane,  a few shots out of the plane’s window, and 2 pictures I took after I landed before I turned off the airplane mode.

In my case I was going from San Francisco (time zone PDT) to New Zealand (GMT+12) and crossing the International Date line. Upon arriving in New Zealand I took a few pictures of the inside of the airport before I remembered to turn off airplane mode. The date and time showed up as 2014:05:12 10:11:38 and when I imported into Aperture it added the time zone of EDT.

In this instance I had to correct with the Batch Change and actually change the time zone from Camera’s time Zone of PDT to Actual Time Zone of GMT+12. I knew I had to choose PDT as that is the time zone of San Francisco, where I had just come from and I knew based upon the date and time that was still using PDT for the time zone. Especially since it said 5/12 as I knew I would lose that day while crossing the International Date line as I arrived in New Zealand on the 13th.

So to summarize.

  • The iPhone does NOT include the time zone in the date and time stamp of any photo taken with your iPhone, but does use the local data and time (unless your phone is in Airplane mode)
  • When importing your photos, Aperture adds your current computer’s time zone to the picture’s date and time stamp
  • Except for pictures taken with Airplane mode on, you would use Batch Change and change the time zone by selecting the time zone for where you took the picture for both the Camera and Actual time zone’s

Plans were a bust

On By Mark DoddIn General Blog Post, New ZealandLeave a comment

Well I had all the intentions in the world of making at least one post a day to this blog while on was on my trip in New Zealand. Well that turned out to be a total bust. Didn’t even get to one post let alone one a day.

The plans fell apart almost immediately after arriving in New Zealand.  I ended up spending the first 2 days spending time with relatives and figured time spent with them was much more important that writing a post here, especially since I have not seen some of them in, ahem, 20+ years.

During the rest of my trip I just didn’t seem to have the time, between driving from place to place, visiting the sights at each place, needing time to sleep, and sometimes, no internet or at least very slow internet.

The other part of my big plan was to have a picture a day posted along with a description of the area I was in or the activities and sites I had seen that day.  This became a bust as well as I was not always able to upload my photos from my memory card to computer everyday and when I did I had the brilliant idea of correcting the timestamps as I imported. This turned out to be a very bad idea. I plan on making another post related to this on what my problem was, how I fixed it after a few weeks, and what I would recommend on how to avoid the whole timestamp mix up in the first place. So keep an eye out for that.

So now that I’m back in home and have fixed my photo timestamp issues to the best of my ability, I plan on creating some of those posts that I had planned to.  Not sure if I’m going to back date them or not just yet.  My thoughts at the moment are that I will as I would like them to fall into the correct timeline for when the post should have been posted, but then again, is it better to just post on the day I actually create the post and mention the date the photo or content refers to?  Have some time to think about that until I actually create the posts, but if anyone out there has some thoughts, feel free to post a comment as I’m interested in knowing your thoughts. So let me know, Backdate or Not.