Aperture, photoshop layers and Alpha channels - notes

Question

In examining Aperture 2.0 to see if I could use it instead of Adobe bridge in my workflow (which makes intense use of Photoshop) I found that Aperture (and, apparently, OS X) cannot properly display a preview for a .psd file with either layers or an alpha channel. In some cases, the preview image is simply an error message, in others the alpha channel is displayed as black. These problems make Aperture a non-starter for me.
Searching this forum for information, solutions, and/or workarounds, I found some references, but nothing of high value. (Sorry, posters.) Started my own investigation, and discovered some things that might lead to a reasonable workaround. My notes are here:
http://homepage.mac.com/bbarlow641/webinfonotebook/
too long, I think, to put into a forum post. Sorry to link out to somewhere else, but if you're interested, it's worth a click. (Or the linked page may not have "high value" either. But it helped me to think through the problem.)
Ben

Answer 1

bbarlow641 wrote:
Saving the file as a layered TIFF file would preserve the layers - that might be a good idea since Aperture doesn't recognize psb files. But any "saving as" step - as a psb or as a TIFF - creates a second (large) file, so I don't think it's an ideal solution.
I don't know if that helps in your workflow, but the way I handle this is:
• import the raw file into Aperture
• open in external editor (i.e. PhotoShop; external editor format: tiff)
• edit in PhotoShop
• when saving I am asked if I want to save it as layered tiff (provided the preferences are set accordingly: File Handling / Ask before saving layered tiff files);
• here two things are to be considered:
_ the file extension used by PS is "tif", so it has to be changed to "tiff"
_ on my MacBook Pro the Save As-dialog opens showing the correct file location (i.e., the correct subfolder inside the Aperture library), on my Mac Pro the initial location is somewhere else (remembered from the last saving procedure); I have to work around this by first command-clicking in the image window's title bar to open the edited file's location in the Finder, so that I can then drag it onto the Save As-dialog. This is actually slightly annoying, but I did not find out the reason so far.
• Aperture automatically refreshes the saved file.
This way I end up with just this one extra file. The whole procedure would be a bit simpler using referenced files instead of storing them in the library.
My settings in PS do have the "Maximize Compatibility" option set (in the notebooked example, it's set to "ask", normally it's set to "always"). I'm using CS2. Maybe this setting works in CS3 to create the composite? I've heard several people here say that same thing, but it definitely doesn't do it for me...
For me this works, and as far as I remember also worked in CS2; do you see a difference in file size between files saved both ways? How does Preview.app display the file saved with "Maximize Compatibility"?
Since my first post, I've been trying to figure out how to add a PS action that would run an Applescript to tell GraphicConverter to open and close a file, creating a preview. But it seems that while an Applescript can trigger a Postscript action, the reverse (having a Postscript action trigger an Applescript) is not possible.
Might something like a hot folder with an automator scripts attached to it be a possible workaround?
Message was edited by: Bernhard Barkow