Thursday, March 15, 2012 at 11:00 AM by Joseph Linaschke Welcome MacCreate Readers!
It is with great pleasure that I announce the joining of forces of MacCreate, one of the largest and most popular resources for Aperture users on the web, with ApertureExpert.
The growth of ApertureExpert has been deliberately slow and steady, as I have always felt that the quality of training and support is of paramount priority. I’ve experimented along the way, one step at a time, allowing the growth the be organic and metered, and unbiased. For example, you’ll notice there’s no advertising on this site — all revenue is derived from sales of ebooks, video training, presets, AppleScripts and more — and all Aperture and photography related.
However today we welcome the biggest single change we’ve ever faced. MacCreate has been shuttered, and we are welcoming all of their users and contributors here, to ApertureExpert.com.
Meet David Schloss
David Schloss, the founder of MacCreate, will continue to contribute to the Aperture community here on ApertureExpert. David has been writing about technology and photography for many years, has published multiple photography books, and was the Technical Editor for Photo District News for six year prior to launching MacCreate.
Meet Thomas Boyd
Thomas Boyd is another familiar face to MacCreate readers. He’s a professional photographer, has been a photojournalist for several publications, is published in National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, and many more, and is currently on staff at The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon. He will write tips and create videos for the ApertureExpert readers. You can check out his photography at thomasboyd.net.
What’s Next
We’re all predicting the imminent release of an update to Aperture, and with that will come an influx of new training, discussions, posts and so much more. And now, more than ever, ApertureExpert is poised to deliver the absolute best training available on the web.
Every single contributor to this site is a working professional photographer or a professional trainer — and in many cases, both! They don’t just use Aperture, they live by it.
So again, we welcome you to the site. Check out the abundance of tips, the user forum where you can ask (and contribute answers to) any questions on Aperture you like, the brand new FAQ for the most common Aperture troubleshooting questions, and of course, the store.
Welcome our new friends
ApertureExpert members… please join me in welcoming our new friends from MacCreate. Feel free to add your own message in the comments below; I’m sure they’d love to know just how dedicated we all are!
-Joseph & the ApertureExpert team
Reader Comments (9)
An amazing site just got better.
I do hope that AE won't go the way of MacCreate's predecessor - which was a free to air Aperture user's site!
It then became MC and started charging for access, at which point I moved here...so I hope I won't be looking for Version 3 of the Aperture User Group in due course.
Marcus,
MacCreate always had free access; they just had additional "premium" access to get additional content, which non-members had to pay (more) for. It's a pretty standard subscription model, I think.
Anyway, I have no intention of charging for access to this site. As long as people keep buying the content that we create, then that funds the site and puts a little money in our pockets. There's a nice balance of free vs paid, and so far I think I've done a pretty good job of maintaining that balance :)
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
Have you signed up for the ApertureExpert mailing list?
I've attended Davids aperture class at adorama,and I have all of Thomas's aperture videos. They are both wonderful instructors.
Welcome David and Thomas.
Joseph and David,
Smart move.
Looking forward the new and improved ApertureExpert.com
Matthew
I think MacCreate swallowed the Aperture Users Group or whatever it was called then but it was a long while ago and I have enough trouble remembering what happened last week, never mind what happened 5 years ago!
Marcus,
AUN grew into MacCreate; it wasn't swallowed.
-Joseph
I'll add a less positive comment.
I have avoided the maccreate site like the plague.
I loathe the fanboyish attitude that both Thomas and David have expressed on their maccreate site, eager to pick on any person who speaks badly of their beloved software, and eager to do comparisons to prove their software of choice is ahead of any competition. Any update that apple has put forward was always immediate bliss for them, but nonetheless many people, including me, have had ongoing issues with Aperture, but according to maccreate everything has always been golden.
I do hope you impose strict rules here and at least moderate all content on this site.
Please carry on bringing us knowledge, tips & tricks, and please avoid opinion pieces.
Preferences aside, it is sad to see yet another aperture resource bite the dust, the o'reilly inside aperture was my all time favourite, and I hope it's not a sign on the wall for the direction aperture is headed.
f p,
I appreciate your opinion and willingness to share it here.
On ApertureExpert, we make an effort to not share opinion except when asked, and while I could be accused of being an Apple fanboy (using Macs for 20 years and working at Apple for eight years will do that to a person), I do not tolerate any sort of "hurrah hurrah we're the best" attitude from this site's contributors. Competition is a good thing and I welcome it. I don't know Lightroom well enough to compare it except for what I read in marketing text, and I wouldn't dream of saying anything negative about it. Sure I may poke a little fun here and there, but at the end of the day, this site is about Aperture, the Aperture ecosystem, and is written for Aperture users. If you're a Lightroom user, you're welcome here. If you leave Aperture for Lightroom and want to tell us why, please go right ahead. However if you come here to slam Aperture just for the sake of being a jerk, you'll be banned. Comments and forum questions can only be left by registered users, and while I don't moderate comments or forum posts before they are published, I do read every single entry. I believe only once in the history of this site have I had to delete a comment because someone was being disrespectful. I've only deleted one user account and that was a spammer. This community is respectful, and will continue to be that way.
I do have a different approach here to how posts are written and formatted, and I do and will continue to work closely with any new contributors to ensure the same level of quality is maintained on new posts that I launched this site with. The only "op-ed" piece I've ever posted here was after the price drop to $79 when Aperture became available in the App Store, and David and I collaborated to produce complementary articles on our sites to counter what we felt was an onslaught of negative press around a positive event. There's only so much "Aperture is dead!" you can listen to when you believe that quite the opposite is true. And remember, I have a business to protect as well.
As far as "a sign on the wall for the direction Aperture is headed", David had his own reasons for choosing to shut down MacCreate, and I believe those were expressed quite well on his site. This is a challenging business to be in and sometimes life doesn't proceed as planned. But as long as Aperture is around, I intend to keep ApertureExpert around. And I expect that to be for a very, very long time.
regards,
-Joseph Linaschke