M8 & Apple Aperture resource info

[Eoin]

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I've decided to post this info in a new thread so as it will be easy to find and refer to later.

 

Like many I've waited for Apple to provide native support for the M8 DNG and finally in the OSX 10.4.10 update core image support service was updated to allow the base OS recognise M8 DNG's natively.

 

But in the time it took Apple to support the M8, Leica also modified the exif info hard coded into each DNG. The most important change was in the Colour Matrix 1 & Colour Matrix 2 tables. These tables are used by some raw converters to lookup the colour values to faithfully reproduce what the cameras internal processes deliver. The exceptions to this rule are Capture 1 and Apples Aperture, Both have internal profiles and do not read the info held in these tables.

 

It's interesting to note that the current Apple supplied profile in the raw.plist file is using the Colour Matrix 1 & 2 Values from the M8 Firmware 1.06 to 1.09. These Matrix were changed by Leica from Firmware 1.091 and have remained constant since and up to the latest release 1.107.

 

With this in mind I am of the opinion that the colours I get from the official apple profile are wrong. I have coded my own sets of profiles, some I like, others I'm not so happy with. But in the interest of others who have communicated with me I've decided to post them here and you can try them for your self.

 

If you don't like them and prefer the Original Hacked Nikon D-200 well so be it, I still happen to like it also. it just requires a little more steps in the workflow but they are about the best neutral colours I have been able to reproduce. But I do think you should at least try the others, some may not be to your taste, others you may like, but most of all I'd like to hear your comments good or bad.

 

 

OK so here we go again for those who are not up to speed on hacking the raw.plist file

 

You'll need to down load and install a plist editor. I happen to like PListEditPro and to make things a little easier for yourself you can download a trial version here Fat Cat Software - PlistEdit Pro

 

Install the application before we start to look for the raw.plist.

 

Now we need to navigate to the raw.plist and because it's a system file you'll need to have admin rights for your username to unlock it and allow edits. In the first screen shot you can see it's located in System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources

 

This is the system folder off the main disk and not the system folder under your username.

 

It's a GOOD IDEA to make a copy of this file, I suggest you copy and paste it to your desktop. If you don't and something goes wrong I don't want you shouting at me

 

OK you've hopefully saved a copy let's unlock the file. You'll need to right click it and click get info on the menu like in screen shot 2

 

You'll be presented a panel like the one shown in screen shot 3 and you'll need to click on the little triangle beside Details under Ownership & Permissions. You'll see the owner is set to System and access is set to read only. We need to change the owner to your username and access to read and write. You may have to click the little lock to allow you to change these settings and enter the system password. Once done I suggest you change the Open with to PlistEdit Pro so as every time you click the file it will open in the editor. After you've made the changes close the info menu and double click the raw.plist file to open it up in PlistEdit Pro.

 

The first thing you will notice is your raw.plist does not have all the entries I have for the M8 as in screen shot 4. I don't know if you have edited this file before and been using the hacked profile but I'd suggest you delete all entries for Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera. The editor has two windows an upper and lower, we'll paste entries in the lower window and delete from the upper window.

 

Find Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera in the upper window and click the delete icon on the top menu bar. This has removed the current profile you've been using in Aperture. You needn't worry, we'll be adding back the profiles shortly.

Now we move to the bottom window, if you scroll through the entries you may notice each of the various camera profiles starts with <key>Camera Name</key> and ends with a </dict>. In the next post of this thread you'll find a text file This contains all the profiles I've been playing with. We're going to cut & paste the text from their into the raw.plist. You need to select from the very first <key> to the very last </dict> at the end of the text file. Find a </dict> in the lower window of PlistEdit Pro and click beside </dict> press enter to create a new line and press the tab twice to bring your cursor in just like in screen shot 5. Then paste the text and save the raw.plist file.

 

Ok what we've done here is create a master string for the camera, if you look in the upper window of PlistEdit Pro you'll see an entry for Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera, you'll notice it's class is set to string and it's value is Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera P Low Sat. What this is doing is pointing the core image support to read the profile Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera P Low Sat every time it sees an M8 file. If you wish to use another profile all you need to do is edit this value to the name of the profile you wish to use. All I do is double click to highlight the profile name in the property list column and copy it then double click to highlight the value I wish to change and paste it. The save the raw.plist and fire up Aperture and away you go with the new profile.

 

Some things to remember,

1. Aperture needs to be restarted every time you change a profile. Aperture reads the raw.plist file only on start up.

 

2. When you import images into aperture, the thumbnail file is generated with the profile that was active at import time, Aperture shows this while it builds the hires image. If you subsequently changed the profile every time you go back and look at a file imported with a previous profile you will see the preview first then the hires image, you will notice a change of colours as the file is processed to take into account the new profile.

 

3. Do play with the saturation slider and the Boost sliders, make presets if you find one you like.

 

4. These are not accurate profiles I don't have the time, energy or hardware to do exact colour matching. These are rather just my idle playing with the profiles.

 

5. All this is done at your own risk, if in doubt back up your library (you should do this anyway).

 

6. Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera Official Dont modify is the official 10.4.10 profile

 

7.Leica Camera AG-M8 Digital Camera P Original Eoin Hack is the original D200 hack with a twist.

 

8. Have fun! and tell me what you like or don't like and why.

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[Eoin]

Profiles here:

key1.txt

[Eoin]

Oh yes I forgot to mention there is a new border plugin for aperture,

 

You may wish to check it out here

Aperture BorderFX

 

Nothing to do with me, it's just a nice addon.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Eoin even though I am not using Aperture , just wanted to say the effort you have put into it has been nothing short of amazing . Great work

 

You should send Apple a invoice

[Eoin]

Thanks Guy, It's my pleasure. I'm reminded of something you said way back when, it's just a matter of making the M8 work the way you want it to and with what ever you want. No skin off my nose if people prefer other converters, I happen to like aperture(no surprise) and so do a few others here. Community is the key here and you yourself have given so much every where you've been.

[jonoslack]

HI Eoin

Well - I've got it all working, and the default profile looks superficially pretty good to me - just trying a large (A2+) print, which is the real downfall of lightroom.

 

Many thanks for all your efforts - it's much appreciated.

[etms]

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Eoin

 

Appreciate the time you have spent to do this.

 

Many thanks

 

Ed

[wlaidlaw]

Eoin,

 

Thanks for all your incredible work, even though I have currently given up on Aperture and gone back to C1 + PS + iPhoto. I have learnt a lot about the background processes in Mac just by reading your posts.

 

I currently prefer the flexibility of the colour space/selectable camera profile conversion process in C1, even though it is a pain to have to use three programs. I also much prefer the flexibility of the print process in PS against Aperture.

 

Wilson

[jonoslack]

Eoin,

 

Thanks for all your incredible work, even though I have currently given up on Aperture and gone back to C1 + PS + iPhoto. I have learnt a lot about the background processes in Mac just by reading your posts.

 

I currently prefer the flexibility of the colour space/selectable camera profile conversion process in C1, even though it is a pain to have to use three programs. I also much prefer the flexibility of the print process in PS against Aperture.

 

Wilson

Hi There

I vaccilate between Lightroom and Aperture - but I'm interested in your comment about printing - it seems to be one of the things where using Aperture is a complete no-brainer - it produces wonderful output - right up to large sizes, whereas both lightroom and PS seem to be poor at large prints.

 

There are lots of things I like about Aperture, but it's the printing which always brings me back again!

[fjmcsu]

Eoin,

Thanks again for all of this ,it;s just wonderful that would share this with us. I have begun trying differnt profiles & will report back after my big shoot the next two weeks in Belgium,Netherlands & Czech Republic.You certainly DO DESERVE THE FINER (-EST)TEQUILA !

[wlaidlaw]

Hi There

I vaccilate between Lightroom and Aperture - but I'm interested in your comment about printing - it seems to be one of the things where using Aperture is a complete no-brainer - it produces wonderful output - right up to large sizes, whereas both lightroom and PS seem to be poor at large prints.

 

There are lots of things I like about Aperture, but it's the printing which always brings me back again!

 

Jonathan,

 

It may well have been IOE (Idiot operator error) but I could not get Aperture to get A3+ borderless prints consistently right on my HP B9180. I would get one right and the next one would have a small white border on one or more edges, when I thought I had exactly the same setup. I suppose since I have been using PS close to 10 years now, it is just that I am very familiar with it. I have also got it all automatically set up to use the different Ilford Galerie papers, with various Ilford written icc profiles. I use Ilford papers almost exclusively, so it seems very easy.

 

Wilson

[Ergos]

Hi all,

first of all thanks Eoin, really a great work.

 

I am just a newbe of raw workflow playing with Aperture and your profiles.

 

Could you give me more info about the history of your hacked profile (the one with your name), is this the more neutral in respect to the original Apple Aperture M8 profile?

 

And what you mean when you said to save the preset of boost on the Aperture adjustments tab? I can save those settings against one of your loaded custom profile or against the default one?

 

Probably the question is more basical and is: why I need to touch the raw.plist? I can't do everything from the adjustment tab? Why so many different profiles?

 

Thanks a lot for your time and sorry for the very basic questions :-)

 

Thanks again.

[nryn]

I've been similarly appreciative of your efforts, Eoin, and Aperture is now my tool of choice. FWIW, I'm using the D200 profile; Apple's M8 profile makes images look like Lightroom's (too pinkish).

 

I hope that Aperture 2.0 makes an appearance shortly after Leopard.

 

Thanks!

[Eoin]

Hi Filippo,

 

The reason for the original hack was at that time Apples OSX core image support did not support the M8. Aperture uses this core image support to render raw files. However at that time there was support for Adobe DNG (not the native version the M8 shoots) so we fooled Core Image support and aperture into supporting the M8 DNG once we ran it through Adobe DNG converter. At that time I didn't understand what all the various settings in the raw.plist did and we needed a profile to render the DNG. I found the profile for the Nikon D200 worked best but was a little under saturated.

 

Jump to today, Apple worked on the native support for the M8 and a profile but in time it took them to do it Leica modified the firmware and changed the matrix values in the M8's DNG. To date apple have not addressed this issue and IMO the red & purple colours on decode are off.

 

The Original Eoin hack profile is basically the D200 profile except for the white levels and 12bit instead of 8bit colour depth.

 

The boost setting is top of the raw adjustments window, you don't need to touch it when using the D200 profile, but fractional decrease helps with other profiles, adjust to taste:)

 

Etherfarm, you and me both, roll on version 2. 2nd Q 2008 if I were a betting man. I Hope. !

[mitchell]

Jono,

 

Could you please say what you don't like about large Lightroom Prints. I respect your opinion.

 

Thanks,

 

Mitchell

[Ergos]

Ok, perfect!

 

Just one thing... for what I understand editing the raw.plist gives you much more power to modify the image than applying the transformations using the adjustment tab, right?

 

I mean... there are some modifications you can only do through raw.plist, I am correct?

 

Thanks again.

[Eoin]

In essence no. Modifying the raw.plist you're adjusting the parameters for the initial DNG decode and this sets the tone (ambiance) for all the adjustment sliders. There are no profiles per say in Aperture. You get an initial decode based on the values contained in the M8 entry which map colour values to the application.

 

For best results and remember this is all subjective, pick a starting point you like from all of the entries in the raw.plist and stick with that. Remember if you apply raw adjustments to an image within Aperture whilst using a particular entry in the raw.plist as the initial decode and subsequently change the entry to another in the raw.plist it may lead to un-predictable results in images already processed. The basis on which these adjustments were made will have changed.

 

Hope that helps;)

[Ergos]

Ok, now is clear.

 

I will work as you described and set presets on those combinations of adjustments that I like more.

 

Last thing, how do you deal against the magenta/ir cast with Aperture? Is a combination of profile and adjustment tab tweaking?

 

Thanks again a lot.

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[Eoin]

IR/Magenta cast, LOL

 

Filippe, you have to remember exactly what aperture is and what it's not. It's not a full blown pixel editor like CS2/3. But rather an application which can manage you DNG's and perform basic image adjustments as well as output them to various mediums.

 

With regard to the specific question regarding IR/ Magenta cast, the only effective solution IMO is to use the Leica filters, failing that there are some profiles for C1 LE which you got for free with the M8, you can down load those and install them into C1LE bring your image into C1 process it to remove the cast and export it as a 16bit tiff and import the file into aperture.

A bit long winded perhaps but Aperture is not a pixel editor.

 

If you have a copy of CS2 / 3 you can always use that as an external editor within aperture also whilst retaining complete control of the image management within aperture, perhaps the best option for those hard to process files, perhaps 1% of my images would need to take that path.

[tomhagen456]

Congratulations Eoin for your work....!

I have done everything as you say.... but how can I select each profile to use?

Using a1 is very easy... but not so obvius in aperture.

Thanks in advance...!