Apple OS X Leopard for Photographers

Came in to work to be greeted by my copy of Leopard laying on my chair. Over the course of the day I will post my impressions of the upgrade, in particular how some of the new features help with photography.

Step One: Backup your entire system with something that creates bootable archives, like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. This way if anything goes wrong you lose the least possible amount of time before you’re functional again.

Be back in a bit…

Alright, after getting some real work done and waiting for the backup to finish I began the install. From beginning to end it took 1 hour and 41 minutes, including the checking of the DVD before the installation on my 1.33 12″ PowerBook with 1.25Gb RAM.

Now I’m waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing my drive before I really start messing with some of the new features. The system is surprisingly responsive even though it’s indexing, even in CoverFlow.

UPDATE – 11/1/2007

After several days with Leopard, here are my thoughts, in no particular order.

QUICK LOOK

By far, this is the single most useful feature for anyone working with images is Quick Look. Select any file and simply hit the spacebar to get an instant preview of the file. The difference between Quick Look and actually opening a preview application is significant. No matter how fast the machine, a preview app takes some time to open and load the file. Not to mention the need to actually have the file associated with Preview to even get it to open in the application. Once an image is processed in Photoshop, for example, double-clicking the file open it in that app. Quick Look makes file association and loading times a moot point, since it literally instantly previews the file and is totally separate from the application association methodology. Its usability doesn’t end at previewing stills either, it plays videos and lets you page through supported multi-page documents. Third-parties are free to add support for their particular formats.

When a file is selected…

…just hit the spacebar to get an instant (even on my PowerBook) preview.

COVER FLOW

Cover Flow is one of the more debated additions to the latest OS X release. But for anyone that works with images, it can be quite useful. Once again, the performance even on a lower-spec machine like my laptop is impressive. As soon as a folder opens the thumbnails begin to load at a pace that does not compromise the ability to use the feature right away. This, and the fact that it’s always available instantly, make it a very valid alternative to image browsers. I use it often to very quickly get a feel for the files contained in a folder. Its usefulness is limited, but the fact that it’s instantly accessible and very good at its intended purpose more than make up for it.

That being said, it is possible to get ahead of the caching and end up staring at the generic placeholder until the computer catches up. This happens much less on the iMac than on the PowerBook for obvious reasons, but luckily on neither do you have to wait too long for it to catch up. It helps that the caching favors the file you currently have selected so that it’s the first to get the updated preview.

SPACES

If you often find yourself switching applications then Spaces might be helpful to you. Essentially it allows you to switch between up to 16 virtual desktops at whim. This method for organizing applications and windows has been around for a long time in pretty much every OS, but Apple has taken it and refined it. For one, the feature uses a zooming effect for the different desktops in the same vein as Exposé, just clicking on one of the spaces switches to it. A key combo can be used to switch as well. Windows can be reorganized by dragging them from desktop to desktop while zoomed out, or by dragging them to a screen edge and waiting for a brief moment. Some more powerful features include the ability to define the space in which a particular application should open as well as tying the trigger to keyboard shortcuts of mouse buttons.

Notice how multiple monitors are represented:

One other feature I get a big kick out of that is far from useful is the new “Mosaic” photo screensaver view. It goes through your image databases (iPhoto and Aperture) and makes an index of the tonal qualities of your images. It then uses this info to create a screensaver that starts with one image, zooms out and uses all the other images to render a mosaic of some other randomly picked photo. It’s totally useless, but a blast to watch. It does hammer the system, as the whine of spinning fans will testify, but it can be worth it.

TIME MACHINE

I can’t stress enough how important backing up is. I personally use and will continue to use SuperDuper! for backups, but the fact that Time Machine is built-in and works so seamlessly makes it so there’s no more excuse. Beyond simple backup, Time Machine allows you to go back and restore files at several different points in time since it backs up many different versions.

Quick summaries of other features that will also benefit us in the long term:

64-bit: OS X is the first mainstream OS to switch entirely to 64-bit. For us, this means access to much more accessible RAM and some other benefits that over the next few years will start being used by software developers. This change will be the least noticeable over time, but also has the most potential for the future.

16-bit printing: What used to be provided by custom software by printer manufacturers now is supported system-wide.

Spotlight: Improvements in speed and usability make it a much more effective search tool. Notable additions are searching by phrase and the ability to search system files. I use it to quickly find images by cutline when I don’t want to open Aperture.

Back to my Mac: .Mac subscribers have the ability to access their machines from anywhere. Working on your laptop and need to get a file from your desktop? Connect over the internet and browse your desktop, copy what you need. This does get blocked by some firewalls and might require changing some settings in your router, but when it works it works very well.

Software compatibility:

Photoshop CS – Opens and runs fine, have not tested all filters and adjustments. (I mainly use levels and curves) Did have a weird problem with not being able to paste from Illustrator CS. Adobe has stated that CS3 should be compatible and that any issues will be fixed in updates. Those of us that stick with the older versions are officially out of luck if there are any problems.

Aperture – Minor issues were fixed in the 1.5.6 update that came out the day of the Leopard release. It also brought significant speed improvements to the app.

Gretag Macbeth (now X-Rite) Eye-One Match software and Eye-One Display 2 Calibration hardware – both work as expected.

Missing Sync – Sadly Mark/Space Missing Sync products are not Leopard compatible yet, so Treo/Blackberry/WM users have no ability to keep their PDAs synced with their Macs for the time being. Mark/Space expects updates within 90 days.

That’s it for now, will update once I learn more. In the meantime, if there’s any doubt, this upgrade is well worth it.