For those new to the site, I’ll say it again… unless you have three copies of a file, the file doesn’t exist. The original, a local backup, and an offsite backup are critical to your data survival!

I’ve written about Blackblaze before here. Check out these article if you haven’t already:

• Cloud Backup; Backblaze in the Real World
• Backblaze and the Backup Bouncer Test

As always you can sign up for the service here and try it out for free.

On a personal note, while I’ve never had to recover an entire drive to to crash or theft, I have recovered many accidentally deleted files. I think that’s even more embarrassing, frankly… but thank goodness they were on Backblaze!

I’ve been discussing in quite a bit of detail the steps along the way, but I haven’t shared anything here. This post is a bit of a summary so if you are interested, you know where to go.

• Official “Sculpture Series” page
• A summary of links to each of the eight stories published
• The one post with the detailed steps followed
• And, not to beat a dead horse, but my 15% discount on the Google Nik Plugins (Silver Efex Pro II was the cornerstone of these B&W conversions and look amazing on 60ʺ prints!) will absolutely, positively, expire. I don’t know when, but I’ve been informed that it will. So… if you haven’t yet, click here to get the best deal possible on the suite.

And below I’ve embedded the narrated video capture of the entire edit of one of the images.

Hot on the tail of the Aperture 3.4.4 update is the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 4.05, including… wait for it… Fujifilm cameras!

yaaaaaaayyyyy (I can hear it from here)

Here’s the list:

• Fujifilm X20
• Fujifilm X100S
• Fujifilm X-E1
• Fujifilm X-Pro1

I have a few RAW files from the X-E1, and loaded one up pre and post update. It took a few seconds of looking at the “unsupported image format” screen before it kicked in, but there it is!

Look ma, Fuji X-E1 support in Aperture!It’s in the App Store now. As of this writing it’s not on apple.com yet.

Aperture 3.4.4 has been released, addressing a series of specific bugs and the ubiquitous “includes stability and performance improvements”. There’s a bit of discussion going on in the forum here as well as on Google+ about it. As always, do have a backup before proceeding—at least one user has reported new issues since the upgrade, and apparently the library is updated after the upgrade, which usually means you can not go back a version. I haven’t updated myself yet, and will run a full backup today before I do.

Here’s the fix list:

• Addresses an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly during image import
• Nikon P7700 RAW images are now displayed correctly in the Import window
• Thumbnails with version names longer than 250 characters are now displayed correctly
• Fixes an issue that could cause multiple warning dialogs to appear when web albums are synced after waking from sleep
• Addresses an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly when uploading photos to Photo Stream
• Shared Photo Stream invitation lists now scroll correctly
• Includes stability and performance improvements

As always you can get this via the App Store or Software Update or directly from apple.com.

If you find anything, good or bad, do tell us about it here.

You may have at some point seen a notification badge show up on your Aperture icon, like you’d see on Mail or Messages, and wonder what it’s for. The simple answer is it’s from a Shared Photo Stream. Whenever someone “likes” or comments on a photo you’ve shared with them, you’ll get a notification anywhere you’ve enabled Photo Stream. That could be any iOS device on iOS 6, or it could also be in iPhoto or Aperture.

We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

When you see the badge, if you open Photo Stream in Aperture you should see a blue dot on the Shared Photo Stream that has a notification, and if you open that, you’ll see blue dot(s) on the photos that have new likes or comments.[more]

Oddly, some of my presets were there. Namely, older ones. Probably the same ones I’d imported back when this exact same thing happened after the Aperture 3.4 “sandbox” upgrade. If you need to catchup, read this and this.

Based on the sandboxing theory, I started digging and sure enough found the presets I was looking for. Here’s where they were hiding:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Aperture/Data/Library/Preferences/Nik Software/Silver Efex Pro 2/UserPresets/

I haven’t got a clue why the some presets moved and others didn’t, but suffice it to say, finding them again is excellent.

To reimport them, as before, copy the presets to your desktop, open your Nik plug-in, click on the Import button, and select the copied presets.

If you upgraded from a partial collection of Nik plugins, did you notice if your presets were carried over or not?

Check his ad here… I know he’s gotten quite a bit of interest but is still looking for “the one”.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/med/3683097768.html

The entire collection is now just $149!

This is huge… it used to be $499, so that’s what we call a Good Deal™. For those who weren’t sure if the Google acquisition was going to be good for the software or not, you can’t argue with a massive price drop. They also made Snapseed for iOS free, however they did kill Snapseed for OS X. Owell, ya can’t win ‘em all.

You can read more about the price drop here, and you can get the software here.

And as made famous by the Ginsu Knives commercial…

But wait, there’s more!

The 15% discount code “ApertureExpert” still works as well, so that brings the price down to a piddly $126.65! The code is now automatically applied when you use this link.

Didn’t one filter used to cost more than that? Yeah… that’s a good deal. 

Don’t forget the training…

Of course with all that freed up change, now you can afford to pick up my Nik training, too :-) Check out my course Nik Creative Effects Workshop — a must have now that you’ll be getting the entire collection!

However, on occasion, it won’t let you reconnect the files. You can navigate and see the file in question, but the Reconnect All button is not active.

Well, if you are suffering from this annoyance, I have a solution and it’s very simple. But, unless you know about it you’ll never think to do it.

Ready, here it is, write this down: Hold down the Option key and the Reconnect All button will light up and reconnect the files. That’s it. It’s called “Force Reconnect”.

Notice the “Reconnect All” button is not lit up even though the corresponding photo has been located. Hold down the Option key and the button will light up.

NOTE FROM JOSEPH:

It’s been a while since I looked into this, but if memory serves, Aperture is doing several things to compare the file it’s looking for to the file you are attempting to reconnect, including file size, name, and more. Holding option key to enable force reconnect will not, in my experience, allow you to reconnect to any file at all — i.e. you can’t force it to connect to a completely different photo. However it will bypass one of the checks, and usually allow you to force the reconnection to the right file. Perhaps that’s changed now and it’s more liberal, but that’s how I remember it. If you are having these sorts of reconnect issues, here are a few more things to read:

“Reconnecting Missing Files in Aperture—A Discovery” — the fourth post ever on ApertureExpert, back in January 2010!

“reconnecting pictures in Aperture” — a forum post also dating back to 2010

“Relocate Masters - Changed Names” — a recent forum discussion (Jan 2013) where the option key didn’t help (maybe someone reading this can offer other insight?)

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