But it is very powerful, well supported, particularly suited for blogging, and widely deployed, so was a natural choice for this website.

It does come with its own baggage, however. For one thing, it’s not so easy to develop locally and deploy remotely; having to keep the MySQL databases in sync is a mess trying not to hose something up on one end or the other. Tools like iTheme’s BackupBuddy help a lot, but you still end up having to manually blast your development database over the remote database for each deployment. That’s OK, I suppose, for the main live site, as the updates shouldn’t be happening all that often. But it’s less fun on a remote staging server that sees more development work.

Don’t forget the darned wp-config.php file. Overwriting the remote version with the local version kills the site and requires some hand-editing to get it going again. The whole business is not as easy and clean as I would like.

And, really, WordPress can often be overkill. Take, as an example, my Bob Rockefeller Photography website. It has a simple blog (that is well overdue for some new content), about and contact pages, portfolio galleries, and an area for clients to view their proofs. Hardly an application for an enterprise-scale CMS (Content Management System).

What About Kirby?

There are a number of NoDB (no database) CMSs around from static site generators such as Hammer for Mac and Jekyll to a group of dynamic site creation tools lead by Kirby and Statamic. I decided to move Bob Rockefeller Photography from WordPress to Kirby as a test of Kirby’s abilities and as a way to make development and deployment easier. I have plans to upgrade the client areas of the site and I want to get set up for that work.

What made me look to Kirby? In no special order, I like:

No Database – nothing to sync, nothing to migrate, nothing to query, nothing to mess up. The structure of the site is defined by the organization of the file structure. Metadata is stored inside files as simple text.

Your File Structure Is Your Site’s Structure

Plain Text – use either plain text, HTML or Markdown for content. I really like writing blog posts in Markdown; I can do it on any device, with nearly any program, do it anywhere and then just save it as part of the site when it’s done. And Kirby (through its kirbytext() function) understands Markdown Extra for more formatting power than John Gruber designed into the original Markdown. If that’s still not enough, you can create your own extensions to kirbytext() in a file named kirbytext.extended.php added to you plugin folder.

PHP Templates – no need to learn yet another template language. The rest of the framework is written in PHP, PHP is a natural language for web developers to use anyway, and it’s perfectly good for creating templates of any complexity. Sticking with JavaScript, HTML, PHP and Markdown works for me.

Dead Simple Sync – just upload any changed files right over the existing ones. The local site is exactly the same as the remote site. I use MAMP Pro for local development and then Transmit to sync the local directory to the remote directory.

Expressive Syntax – so clean as to be nearly self documenting. Kirby is really a simple (but not simplistic) PHP development framework (think a much lighter weight CodeIgnitor or Laravel). Want to return an object loaded with all the articles in the blog?

$page->children()->visible();

Need to create a paginated list of blog posts in reverse alphabetical order?

$page->children()->visible()->flip()->paginate(10);

Handy Toolkit Included – get more utility functions in the Kirby Toolkit, the underpinning for Kirby itself. This will be important to me as I work on the new client area features. Having a PHP framework to build with is a good thing.

Documentation – there is a lot of it on the Kirby home site. And tutorials, too.

Support – a must have and it’s there. On the web is a forum frequented by Kirby users. And there is access via email to Kirby’s developer Bastain Allgeier; I’ve had several help email exchanges with him as I got myself up to speed.

If I were to write down a couple of my admittedly few gripes with Kirby, I would wish for a much better tool for moving WordPress content to Kirby and a tutorial on hooking into Kirby with AJAX. But, understanding that Kirby’s intent is to be lightweight, these are probably just nits to pick.

So there you have it. I would recommend that you take a look at Kirby (go see the FAQ, first) if you would like to simplify your blog or need to develop websites with something a little more lightweight than WordPress, but don’t want to have to start from scratch.

I just love Aperture’s approach to RAW workflow. The interface, the tools, it’s file management and image adjustment all feel just right to me. The “problem” of late is that technologies such as lens correction for distortion and top-notch noise reduction for high ISO images have been lagging behind in Aperture.

Let’s not get into the whole issue of whether or not the numerous “point” upgrades to Aperture this past year are equal to what we’ve all been looking for as version 4. I’ll simply say that the Aperture of today has not kept up with its primary competitor, Adobe Lightroom, in some key (at least to me) technological areas. Lightroom can make excellent images out of RAW files shot at higher ISO from cameras such as my new Olympus OM-D E-M5 with Olympus zoom lenses.

Those folks shooting the new Fuji X series cameras feel even more left out than I. Aperture can’t even read the x-trans Fuji RAW file format.

But, personally, I just can’t get along with Lightroom’s interface, even though it’s image output is very good. Switching modes (from Library to Develop, for example) feels wrong. Dialog boxes that don’t match the rest of the interface bug me. Not being able to delete files from a collection view makes me crazy. And the list of non-Mac-like interface features goes on.

Before I started using Aperture at it’s $499 release, I was using Capture One LE for RAW processing and basic image adjustments, the Finder for file management, and Photoshop for greater image adjustments. Capture One is well know in the professional image world, particularly for its ability to handle the files from digital camera backs such as those from Phase One and Leaf. It’s current top-of-the-line is Capture One Pro in version 7.1.

So, could a generally happy Aperture user switch to Capture One Pro to gain access to more current technologies? And if so, would he like it?

Capture One Pro Collections

If you ignore the old Capture One Pro workflow method of session files and work only in a Catalog, Capture One Pro acts a lot like Aperture for file management. Within a Catalog, you can create groups (like an Aperture folder) and projects (which seem like Aperture projects) and albums/smart albums (just like Aperture albums/smart albums). Imported files can have metadata presets attached and then be moved into an album within a Catalog. This file structure is called “collections” but is nothing like Lightroom’s collections. Thank goodness.

A Catalog package is even a lot like the Aperture Library package in that it is really a folder (use Show Package Contents in the Finder to see inside) that holds your original RAW files and the adjustments made to them.

My Tool Tabs

Capture One uses tool tabs for its many options for image adjustments. You can see my customized tool tabs here that represent, in order from left to right, tools for Library, Color, Exposure (with levels and curves), Black & White, Details (like sharpening and noise reduction), Lens Correction, Cropping, Local Adjustments, Presets, Metadata, Process Recipes and Process Batch Queue.

Tools In The Exposure Tool Tab

Coming from Aperture, I felt very comfortable with the image adjustment bricks available within the tool tabs. To the right you’ll see the contents of the exposure tool tab, as an example.

All of the adjustment bricks you would expect are available under one tool tab or another. The only one missing, from my point of view, is the vibrancy slider. Capture One Pro has only saturation.

The good news is that Capture One Pro has bricks that Aperture doesn’t. The color editing brick is much more powerful, there’s a moire reduction brick, a keystone correction brick and a brick to allow an image overlay with control of placement, scale and opacity.

And lens corrections! They include distortion, chromatic aberration and purple fringing. The list of available lens profiles is not as large as Lightroom’s, but many, many favorites are there.

The way Capture One Pro handles local adjustments is particularly sweet. Each correction is added on a layer, like in Photoshop, and you can put the adjustments you want on the layers (up to 10) that you create. With the brush tool you brush in or brush out the effect by editing the layer mask. And one of the available masks is a gradient mask, so you can fade the effect in or out across the image.

Each tool tab also allows you to add any of Capture One’s bricks to the group shown in that tab. That allows you to mix and match tools as they suit your editing style. You can even make you own custom tool tabs and load them with the tools you want there.

The Sharpening Block

Sharpening is black magic. Or a black art. Or both. Capture One Pro gives you the sharpening brick shown here that can be used for the image as a whole, or applied as a local adjustment. The amount, radius and threshold sliders match the terminology for Photoshop. I wonder if the controls work in the same way so that Photoshop tutorials could be used with Capture One Pro?

Process Summary For A Recipe

Capture One Pro offers the concept of process recipes for exporting images. These recipes allow you to specify such things as the output folder, file name and image format options. They work a lot like Aperture’s export presets, but give more options.

The loupe tool is pretty fantastic. I thought Aperture’s loupe beat all (and it sure beats Lightroom), but this tool has even more cleverness. Click on the image and the loupe pops up and grows out of the click point to the size and magnification you’ve configured for it. As long as you hold the mouse button down, the loupe remains. You can then drag it over the image, as you can in Aperture. Release the mouse and the loupe disappears. It looks like this:

The Loupe In Action

What’s missing? Not much. I wish there were lens correction profiles for my Olympus micro-four thirds lenses. Others will wish the same for their Fuji X lenses. You can’t name versions, nor can you stack different images. And I couldn’t find a way to add custom fields. Neither could I create custom views.

Local adjustments could have been, and maybe will be in a future version, a killer feature if you could apply any of Capture One Pro’s tools on a layer. As it stands now you can only use exposure, color editor, sharpening, moire and clarity bricks as local adjustments. If Phase One were to add at least curves, noise reduction and white balance, they would really have something.

Overall I’ve been very impressed with Capture One Pro. It has a good, solid Macintosh feel to it. The feature set is strong and it has a pretty long and storied history with professional photographers. Many swear by its RAW image processing results. What I’m going to do is use it side-by-side with Aperture during its trial period, whenever I have the time, to process the same images and compare the results, the tools, the interface and the overall process.

Technical support from Phase One is available online and was very responsive to my problems and questions as I wrote this. They even seemed happy to accept my several feature suggestions! Documentation is also online as is an active user forum.

Capture One Pro costs $299. You can get a 60-day trial from Phase One that is feature compete and unconstrained. That’s a nice deal that let’s you really work with the software to see all the tricks it can perform.

I’m not yet sure I’ll make the switch, as nice as Capture One Pro is. There is still a chance that Aperture 4 will be along and that it will add enough missing technology to keep me hooked. It is, after all, my “first love.” But will it be out before my 60-day Capture One Pro trial is up? Watch this space for a follow-up post either on my switch to Capture One Pro, or the wonderful new features of Aperture 4.

The favicon was the least trouble. I figured there was no need to do all the work John Gruber explained to make two different resolutions of the favicon to be served to normal and retina displays. So I just created the favicon at 32 x 32, in PNG format, and served that to all comers. Well… not to Internet Explorer visitors. IE doesn’t do PNG, so I put an old 16 x 16 ICO format favicon in the web site’s root directory for it. For everyone else, I called for the 32 x 32 favicon like this:

<link href="wp-content/uploads/favicon.png" rel="icon">

Why do we still have to jump through hoops for Internet Explorer? Never mind…

If you’d like the WordPress dashboard to use that favicon, too, add this to your theme’s functions.php file:

// ! Specify favicon for Dashboard
function favicon4admin() {
   echo "	"
}
add_action( 'admin_head', 'favicon4admin' );

You can get more details from the article Understand the Favicon.

Next up was the site logo and that was pretty straight-forward. I went back to the source file (Abobe Illustrator) and saved it in SVG instead of PNG format. A little HTML work and that was done.

The accordion slider on the home page required a little more work, but after a couple of attempts that turned out to be dead ends, it wasn’t too bad. The root of the solution was to add the retina.js script to my site. This little gem checks your <img> tags for image files that look like image.jpg and swaps them out for ones that look like image@2x.jpg.

Create double resolution images for all your standard resolution files and save them in the same place with the now-common image@2x.jpg naming convention and the script takes over from there. The bonus is that this JavaScript takes care of ALL my images, even the ones in my portfolio galleries. For extra ease, add the WP Retina 2x plug-in and it will create all the right assets automatically when you add media to your site. Done.

Last up was handling images loaded into a lightbox for viewing larger; the thumbnails were taken care of with retina.js. I was using Lightbox Evolution which was perfect for what I wanted before, but when I attempted to contact the author to see if he was planning to make changes to accommodate retina displays, I got no reply. A little detective work lead me to ColorBox.

At first ColorBox didn’t use low resolution images for regular displays and high-resolution images for retina displays. But a posting on the ColorBox GitHub page and a couple of emails exchanged with the author, Jack Moore, and it does now!

I could have just used the JavaScript directly, but instead chose to have the WordPress plug-in jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries handle loading and configuration. The plug-in has been discontinued in favor of features in JetPack, but it still works just fine. I do my development locally and JetPack does not work well in that environment. The only trick was that the plug-in comes with an older version of ColorBox, so I had to update that manually.

To get thinks working just as I wanted, I made a small change to jquery-lightbox-for-native-galleries.php so the JavaScript constructed looks like this:

jQuery(document).ready(function($){
   $(".gallery").each(function(index, obj){
      var galleryid = Math.floor(Math.random()*10000);
      $(obj).find("a").colorbox({rel:galleryid, transition:"elastic",
        opacity:0.65, retinaUrl:true, retinaImage:true, scrolling:false,
        maxWidth:"810px", maxHeight:"830px"});
   });
   $("a.brp_lightbox").colorbox({transition:"none", opacity:0.65, retinaUrl:true,
     retinaImage:true, scrolling:false, maxWidth:"810px", maxHeight:"830px"});
});

That finished the work. All my images, in every size, are shown as normal resolution for normal displays and high-resolution for retina-class displays.

I had been using BBEdit for all of my heavy-duty text editing needs. It’s a classic power tool that I originally bought back at a MacWorld Expo in Boston — so you know how far back it goes for me. But for web design work, I had wandered off to Coda for its convenient integration and pleasant interface, but found it limiting as I started moving towards local MAMP development and SASS. My last revision to this site was done with individual tools, including BBEdit and I described my approach in a previous post.

One of the things I found while making that revision was that BBEdit’s syntax coloring was not good for SCSS and pretty poor at handling a combination of PHP and HTML code. In fact, it just plain sucked; colors were haphazard and instead of helping to understand the code flow, it made it harder. Throw in the fact that it’s interface was starting to look dated, plus a few more niggling details, and I was off looking at the alternatives.

Click For A Screenshot

A couple of afternoons spend futzing around with TextMate 2 (the open source, alpha level, replacement to the venerable TextMate), Chocolat and even the very young Brackets, lead me to Sublime Text (now in version 2). What is it that Sublime Text can’t do? I’d say not much, as the features list suggests:

• Split screen editing
• Multiple cursors (you have to just try that once)
• Highly customizable via XML and JSON configuration files
• Python scriptable and extendable
• Goto anything (lines, files, symbols, …)
• Project sidebar
• Configuration synchronization via Dropbox
• Slick, modern interface
• And, as they say, more …

So I spent a few hours messing with those configuration files and ended up with custom versions of the Tomorrow Night color scheme, the Dark Soda interface theme and Mario Ricalde’s SCSS (my SASS flavor of choice) language definition files. A little while later and I had a few snippets set up.

I wouldn’t say the whole experience was heavenly, because it took a while to learn the format and syntax required to customize all those configuration files (and each is different, plus some are XML and some are JSON). Documentation is spotty (but see my resource reference list below). In the end, you can tailor Sublime Text to be almost anything your programming skills can handle. And GitHub is just full of Sublime Text related projects for you to use or contribute to.

Since Sublime Text is primarily a programmers’ text editor, I guess it’s not much of a problem that changing its preferences and configuration is more like writing code than clicking check boxes. But it’s a Macintosh program! The pop-up panels used also show it’s cross-platform roots. And I’m a bit concerned about its development future; the last revision was 2.0.1 back in July and the @sublimehq Twitter account has been silent since September 28. Let’s hope for renewed activity in the new year.

Once you step away from BBEdit and Sublime Text, your power text editor choices for Macintosh get pretty thin. TextMate, with all its loyal users, is dead (development has stopped — it’s abandon-wear). Chocolat has potential, but is still very young. TextMate 2 will attract many TextMate die-hards, but it’s not ready for prime time and may never be; it’s a pure open source project. Adobe is behind the open source development of Brackets, so there is long-term potential there, but it is even younger than Chocolat.

So, if you want to look at a new text editor, Sublime Text is not a bad choice. In fact, I think it’s the best choice today. You can try it out indefinitely for free and only pay it’s $59 license fee when you’re ready. Here are a few online resources that helped me get going:

• Official Documentation
• Unofficial Documentation (better than the official ones)
• Sublime Text Tips
• Sublime Text Forum
• Sublime Text User Echo Forum
• Tuts+ Introduction Videos
• Oniguruma Regular Expressions Documentation (the regex engine)

This experiment was twofold. The first part was to convert the site’s content and look from the Genesis framework to the Builder framework. Part two was to do it with a different set of development tools.

The Tools

Let me tell you about the second part first. I had been using Coda 2 (and Coda, before that) for most of my web work. Yes, I’d dabble with Espresso from time to time, but Coda was my main tool. And I like it a lot; but it’s not perfect, and I’m always looking for “better.”

It seems as if there as always been two approaches software developers to make tools for complex projects—integrated solutions or individual tools. And there are many examples such as Microsoft Works (integrated) vs. Microsoft Office (individual tools), text editor/compiler/debugger (individual tools) vs. Xcode (integrated). And for me, in the web world, there was Coda (integrated) vs. the combination of BBEdit, CodeKit, Transmit and Chrome (it used to be Safari, but version 6 screwed the web inspector up so badly I had to switch to Chrome).

BBEdit has been on my DragThing dock about as long as there has been a BBEdit (or DragThing). What can this text editor not do? In the face of a lot of new kids on the block the likes of Chocolat, TextMate, and Sublime Text, BBEdit has stuck around adding features and matching new OS conventions year after year. A couple of my favorite features? Tab stops can be shown as vertical lines line pinstripes on the screen to better line up code blocks visually. The alphabetically sorted navigation menu for functions or CSS declarations. And the editing dialogs for HTML and CSS. Love ‘em for when I can’t remember the right syntax.

Where does CodeKit fall in? Its kind of a junk box of handy tools, but I use it mainly for its ability to update a browser window whenever you save a file its been tracking. So as soon as you hit save for the CSS file you’re editing, it updates your browser. Nice! And one of these days I’m going to get serious about Sass or Less, and both of those are compiled on save by CodeKit.

My sites are all accessible via FTP, so something with the power and features of Transmit is the way to go for moving files around. It will handle all the file management chores and do sync and even mount an FTP server as a virtual Mac OS X disk. I’ve been using Transmit for other FTP tasks (outside of web development) for so long I can’t remember what I used before that.

Chrome is my web development browser, but not my day-to-day browser. I like Safari’s interface, iCloud connections, and general feel much better for my usual surfing. And it used to be my web development browser, too, because it added web inspector features; but then came version 6. For some reason the developers decided to change the web inspector and dropped the ability to easily find which CSS rule was overwriting which; it used to be in the Computed Style when exposed by the little down arrow.

Chrome’s Web Inspector

Chrome still has that feature, thank goodness, and so I use it for development and CSS troubleshooting.

So those are the primary tools I used to revise the site into what you’re reading now. But a couple of old standbys were used that get broken out on most of my web development projects. Those are MAMP (Macintosh Apache MySQL PHP) and xScope. Many folks use MAMP as their local development environment since it doesn’t require a web server on the Internet and it’s as fast as your Macintosh and hard drive.

xScope is a wonderful multi-faceted graphics utility that I seem to find a use for in many different projects. It has more parts, but the ones I use all the time are its screen rulers for measuring and aligning, its guides for lining things up across layouts and pages, and its measurement “pointer” (just hover over a graphic to get its dimensions).

The xScope Tools

The xScope tools live up on your menubar and are available with just a click. When you activate one, it floats above all other windows so you can navigate around underneath them.

The Framework

The tools are used to create something on top of a framework. At least for me, I find working with a well-developed WordPress framework makes development a lot easier. If you look back over some of my past posts in the Web Development category, you’ll see that I’ve tried Genesis and Headway on this site. I own licenses for each and added Builder recently to update my Bob Rockefeller Photography site.

So why try Builder? To start with, it’s nothing against Genesis; I think Genesis is one of the best supported, well designed and constantly refined WordPress frameworks available. Builder is also well supported, has just been updated to version 4.0, and has at least one interesting feature that the other frameworks I’ve tried do not. All the theme’s code is right there to be edited. The loop code, the template code, the whole mess.

I’m not picking, because I do like Genesis a lot, but as an example, here is the code you get with Genesis for the standard footer.php:

genesis_structural_wrap( 'inner', '

’ ); echo ’

‘; do_action( ‘genesis_before_footer’ ); do_action( ‘genesis_footer’ ); do_action( ‘genesis_after_footer’ ); ?>

Most of the functionality is “hidden away” in the Genesis custom do_action() calls. If you want to change the output of genesis_footer(), you have to hook into it (Genesis does provide a hook for that, and many more). Builder’s footer.php file has no calls into Builder; all the code is right there for you to see and modify. That’s true for all of Builder and it allows for some very serious customization to happen without hoping the framework developer provided a hook to make the change you want.

After working with Builder for Bob Rockefeller Photography, and now this site, I’m liking it pretty much. It does seem to pile in a lot of CSS classes to differentiate its sections, like this:

class="single single-post postid-903 single-format-standard logged-in admin-bar builder-responsive builder-template-single builder-view-singular builder-view-post builder-view-post-903 customize-support"

But other than making you read though a lot of stuff to find the class you’re looking for, it’s probably a good thing.

If anyone has any experiences with Genesis, Headway or Builder to share, please make a comment on this post.

In the end I was able to make the conversion you see here without much aggravation. The individual development tools worked well in the MAMP environment and Builder proved to be a capable base to work from.

But what about the folks who prefer Apple’s Aperture?

Here’s my overview of the chapters, focused on how much value an Aperture user would get out of each.

Chapter 1: What Is A Digital Negative? Good information for Aperture users.

Chapter 2: Adobe RAW Image Processing an Overview Not helpful for Aperture users.

Chapter 3: Fundamentals Of Lightroom and Camera RAW This is pretty specific to Lightroom and ACR, but Aperture has many of these tools, too.

Chapter 4: Advanced RAW Processing Using Lightroom or Camera RAW Good techniques here for Aperture users; just translate specific sliders to Aperture.

Chapter 5: Deploying Photoshop To Perfect Your Digital Negatives Aperture users can “round trip” to Photoshop, too!

Chapter 6: Creating An Efficient Workflow More good information for Aperture users.

So you’ll see that, other than chapter 2, there’s plenty of good stuff here for digital photographers using Aperture. To help with chapters 3 and 4, you might want to look back at some of my older posts in the Translating Lightroom category.

Aperture’s Basic Adjustment Bricks

For an example of this translation, I’ll use the image presented on page 136 of the book to illustrate a technique for working with images in high-contrast lighting without resorting to High Dynamic Range (HDT) tone mapping. I asked Jeff for permission to use that image in this blog post, but he declined, so maybe you have an image of your own to follow along with.

The first changes Jeff made to his image were to increase Exposure, reduce Contrast, reduce Highlights and lighten Shadows. All of these are tools that exist by the same names in Aperture.


From there, he makes a tweak to Whites (Recovery in Aperture), a reduction in Blacks (increase the Black Point), increased Clarity (Definition for Aperture) and increased the Vibrance (Vibrancy).

Aperture’s Color Adjustment Brick

You can match his color saturation reduction for aqua and blue in Aperture’s Color brick.

The Lens Corrections Jeff applied are a show stopper for Aperture since it has no such control. You’d have to use a plug-in (perhaps PTLens) if you needed to make that adjustment.

Next up are local adjustments using Lightroom’s adjustment brush. Aperture allows you to brush in adjustment bricks, which is pretty similar. But you can’t brush in the Exposure brick, so you’ll need the Dodge and Burn brush tools (at the bottom on the Aperture window) for lightening and darkening specific areas.

Where Lightroom uses Auto Mask to restrict the effects of its brushes, Aperture uses Detect Edges. Both work well at high contrast transitions, not so well in other areas where they tend to leave out small areas. So if you see a grainy mess left behind, turn off Detect Edges and paint over those areas again.

Aperture’s Brush Tools Including Dodge and Burn

Jeff uses Lightroom local adjustments to darken the brightest areas and lighten some of the deep shadows under the cliff. Here’s a place that you’d use Aperture’s Dodge and Burn tools, instead.

He did some more subtle work with color by brushing some taupe into the brightest highlights. For Aperture, that’s an added color brick, set up for taupe and brushed in.

As you read through the book’s description of other small changes made to the image, use what I’ve written above to match Aperture’s tools to Lightroom’s and see if you don’t get very much the same effects as Jeff did.

There’s not much Lightroom can do in its develop module that Aperture can’t do, too. The names of the tools might be different, and Aperture uses brushed in adjustment bricks in many of the places Lightroom uses an adjustment brush, but you can get to the same place with both programs.

In the end, an exact match is not what you’re after anyway. You’ll use Aperture to create the effects you want to see in your image. Using books and articles written for Lightroom to get good ideas on how to manipulate digital negatives in general is a good way to learn new approaches to using Aperture.

Here’s another trick. Although Aperture does not have a graduated filter, you can get a very similar effect by brushing in an adjustment with a huge brush set with a very soft edge. Adjust the softness of the edge to change the rate of the graduation. Paint with the center of the brush at the edge of the frame to make the effect strongest at that edge and then diminishing into the frame. Maybe I’ll need to post a whole article about that one day.

Having said all that, there are a couple of things that Lightroom will do that Aperture just will not. The most notable, in my view, are lens corrections and noise reduction (Aperture does that, but not well). The fact that Lightroom’s brushes and its graduated filter can take on a wide range of adjustments (combining exposure, clarity, and tint, for example) is a great convenience. But when you are all done with an image, it makes no difference which camera captured it, nor which post production tool processed it.

No matter how good your camera’s sensor is at creating low noise images at high ISO settings, it is losing dynamic range. Each step up in sensor sensitivity is accompanied by a noticeable loss in dynamic range.

Take a look at the DXOMark database for your camera and see the effect of moving from ISO 200 to ISO 800, for example. My Nikon D3, who’s ISO vs. Dynamic Range chart is shown below, loses about a stop of dynamic range as a trade off for that much higher a light sensitivity. And it continues to drop right off from there. So, depending on the photographic circumstances, I’ll need to consider that compromise as I decide on the “right” ISO for a given situation.

Chart courtesy of DXOMark

When you read and hear about a camera’s noise response to ISO, look also at its dynamic range response.

Well Allure Multimedia has updated their product and made it slightly better. It works exactly the same way, but the printing, materials and fit have been improved. There’s also a slight flare of color, for those who thought the original black and white version was “too plain.”

If you are in the market, the Focus Pyramid is available for a limited time at $19.95 — the full price will go back up to $29.95 after that. I’d suggest buying it now, if you’re thinking about it, because the limited time price is already a big step up from the version 1.0 price of $9.99.

Why is that?

My first reason is that updates to current apps take much longer to become available through the MAS than directly from the developer. The most poignant example of that recently was the nearly two-week delay that Panic’s Coda version 2.0.1 endured before being released. There were some major crashers in version 2.0 and many folks were pretty anxious to get the update. The only good news was that I bought Coda 2 direct from Panic and got the update the minute it was released.

The next reason is the 30% cut that Apple takes on sales. That might be perfectly fair for the work they do to the maintain and publicize the MAS, but I can give good Mac developers 30% more money if I buy from them. So I do.

And then there’s the limits in functionality imposed by Apple. Apple just doesn’t allow apps to do certain things if they are to be distributed via the MAS. For example, the BBEdit you get from the MAS can’t save changes to protected files (with authentication) as can the BBEdit you get from Bare Bones Software.

That will get worse now as apps are required (since June 1) to live in a “sandbox” that limits what they can access and when. The user can grant permission for some access, but there are still other limits that the user can’t relax. And who knows what restrictions Apple may decide on in the future.

Other MAS irritations are the inability to get trial versions of paid software, no option to upgrade from a non-MAS app to an MAS one (you just buy it again, new), and no upgrade pricing for current users of an app (Panic took a lot of abuse for their Coda 2 pricing model forced on them by Apple).

This whole business has irritated me so much lately that I’ve gone back through my listing of MAS apps and deleted any free ones from my computers, replacing them with fresh downloads from the developers. Evernote was the last one I did. But Skitch is only available via the MAS, so I can do nothing there.

Mountain Lion will add security choices (always a good thing) by requiring the user to loosen the restrictions imposed by GateKeeper if they want to run software obtained outside the MAS. GateKeeper will still provide some safety, because one of its levels of security requires apps to have an Apple approved “signature” embedded to validate its source. I’ll click that option on, but will all users?

And GateKeeper’s safety net for users is only one way Apple steers purchasers to the MAS. Another is access to iCloud; if your app wants to use iCloud services, it has to come from the MAS. The same is true for Mountain Lion’s notification services. What other key features will Apple block access to for non-MAS apps?

In the end, I suspect that Apple wants everyone, except the most advanced and specialized of users, to get all their software from the MAS. And they may get their way through the combination of convenience, security and access to the best Mac OS features. The App Store is already the only way to get apps for iOS, OS X is probably next. I’m not altogether pleased.

But. It turns out that the Headway Themes framework is less that I really want (don’t get me started). And ProofBuddy’s design is a little dated (not that I’m a great web designer). And perhaps the worst problem is that to make any changes in look or style of the combined site, there are three CSS files to edit and keep consistent (one for each of the parts). Maybe three parts wasn’t such a good idea. So I went looking for options, again.

This time I landed back on my favorite WordPress framework, Genesis. I’ve used Headway Themes, looked closely at PressWork and studied Thesis Themes. Each has a strong following of web designers and each has their strengths. But Genesis’ combination of solid code design, excellent documentation, flexibility and user support makes it my choice. Again. Maybe for good.

I knew I wanted to get away from two separate tools for the display of my portfolio images and the sale of other prints. On one level it makes sense to get the best tool for each job, but the maintenance and upgrade issues were just going to be too great over time. And cost is always a consideration. ProofBuddy has a nice pricing model in that the base version is free, while the more powerful Pro version costs $150. NextGen Gallery is also free. Free is good. But sometimes free is not free.

Why Photography Orders?

Before selecting ProofBuddy for the last project, I had looked into Photography Orders. It is a well designed web application created with FasterMVC and therefore uses the popular and powerful Model, View, Controller (MVC) approach to application design. Among the many advantages of an MVC design is that creating themes (the View part) can be more cleanly separated from the logic driving the application (the Model and Controller parts). It’s also nice in that it comes with the full source code so the only limit to your customization possibilities is your programming skill.

But Photography Orders has no free version. It’s $295 and you get all the features and all the code. That was, and is, a higher priced solution than I want. But I was lucky. Luke van de Paverd, the force behind Photography Orders, contacted me and offered me a free copy in return for writing up my experiences with it. And so here we are.

This product is designed to be a standalone web application, not an integrated piece of a WordPress driven site. And I wasn’t about to give up WordPress with its features, plug-ins and Genesis. That left me with the mission of crafting a solution that made it look as if Photography Orders was a part of WordPress, which is just what I had to do with ProofBuddy.

Thankfully Luke has been a lot of help with back and forth emails between Georgia (me) and Australia (him). He’s straightened me out on mistakes I was making and I hope I lead him to a few improvements along the way. But you are reading this at the same time he is; Luke hasn’t contributed to nor edited this article. I welcome his input in the comments, of course, but this part is all my own.

The WordPress Part

The entry point to the site is via a static WordPress page that contains an accordion slider to introduce my portfolio. The code for that is Accordionza, by Geert De Deckere and costs just $11. It is certainly worth that as it comes with the source code and good documentation.

The Home Page Image Accordion

It took me a couple of attempts to get it running under WordPress, but in the end all that was really necessary was to load its necessary scripts in the functions.php file of my theme like this:

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_scripts_method');
function my_scripts_method() {
wp_enqueue_script('first', home_url().'/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js'); wp_enqueue_script('third', 'http://www.bobrockefellerphotography.com/accordionza/jquery.accordionza.min.js');
}

And then you start it up with this in the head via the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin:

css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

The rest of the WordPress setup is pretty ordinary. It’s just a blog with a few other static pages. I designed the CSS to make the site what it is, with an eye towards being able to customize Photography Orders to match.

The Photography Orders Part

The My Selections Display

I wanted to be sure that the switch from WordPress theme code to Photography Orders code was seamless from the users’ point of view. I didn’t want the two parts to feel like two separate sites; they are to be one. The more recent versions of Photography Orders have a theme base that allows them to sell premium themes that are relatively easy to install. That also allows me to make a theme of my own that won’t be overwritten by future updates to the Photography Orders code.

That’s important. I’ve already had to do one emergency fix to the site when it was running NextGen Gallery after NextGen Gallery was updated via the WordPress dashboard and messed up some of my customizations.

As I mentioned above, the MVC style coding of Photography Orders also allowed me to make changes to the look of the site, even to the point of where things went on a page, without having to dive into the base code. Any changes there would be subject to updates that could break my work.

Photography Orders is easy to work with; though I had the advantage of Luke’s knowledge and guidance. Others may have to work with Luke, as well, because there is no formal documentation for the API or other innards of the code. Having said that, Luke was always quick with an email reply that answered my questions.

I found Photography Orders to be well-developed with lots of functionality. There are interfaces to many popular payment systems (I implemented PayPal’s) and the CSS is well written and easy to expand or override for customization. The client interface is modern and easy to use, there is an option to allow discount coupons and the pricing system is flexible enough to let you pick your print sizes and prices.

Another handy feature for customization is the translate settings section of the admin dashboard. Most of the text strings you see in the interface can be changed here without having to make hard edits in the code. That’s great is you need to change the language. But you can also use it to rephrase those strings, which I did on several occasions to make the site more “local.”

Lightbox Evolution In Action

Most of my PHP work, as opposed to my CSS work, was to change the way public galleries were handled. I wanted to use them as my portfolio galleries because this would be the way to eliminate the NextGen Gallery part of my previous setup. With a little cutting and splicing, and the use of the JavaScript lightbox Lightbox Evolution, there are now nice large images for viewing with no other distractions. This exercise shows the value of having the source code to work with when making customizations.

As an aside, Lightbox Evolution is the only lightbox tool that I was able to find that could handle “retina quality” images. It’s just $14 and it has an option that will take the original image size, scale it (I used 50%), and display the image in a classy lightbox. So I upload images at twice the size I want to display, Lightbox Evolution scales and displays them, and then folks with retina displays see high-resolution images while the rest of us still see nice images. The current version on CodeCanyon does not yet do this, but the author, Eduardo Sada, added this additional feature at my request and will be releasing that functionality in version 1.6.9.

All in all, I’d recommend Photography Orders for the photographer who needs to set up an online sales system, but does not want the continuing expenses of a PhotoShelter or a PhotoDeck. You can get pretty far with the premium theme pack and the software. And if you have even modest HTML, CSS and PHP skills, you can make some nice customizations. With a few more skills, it’s not too terribly hard to even do as I did in creating a hybrid WordPress/Photography orders site.

A Few Wishes

I wish that Photography Orders did a few more things that are not on the current development roadmap.

• Allow the client to maintain a profile and edit her contact information directly
• Give each photo a name field in the database instead of only using the file name
• Upgrade the graphics for the new retina displays (especially important for photographers)
• Save the cart for each user profile rather than each computer

As a developer, I would have liked to have run Photography Orders locally in a MAMP environment; but for some reason, it just wouldn’t run there. Neither I nor Luke spent much time trying to get it to, so maybe the problem isn’t all that complex.

I Like It

After a couple of weeks of part-time work, I think I have the photography website I want. Potential clients can look at my portfolio, read my blog and get the necessary contact information. From the same site, and with the same interface, clients can review their proofs and place print orders in a simple to use and attractive system. In the future, I have only to manage the custom CSS in two places and I know the Photography Orders code is upgradable without messing up my work.

Now, if Ryan, over at ProofBuddy, follows through with his concept of ProofBuddy as a full-scale WordPress plugin…