Code, Camera, Action

Apple released Aperture 3 a few days ago with official support for the G1 and GH1, but for some unknown reason not for the GF1.

User helloniklas has posted instructions that allow using GF1 RW2 files directly in Aperture 3 on the Apple forum here. Note that this will break support for GH1 in your copy of Aperture and this will also need to be done with ever new RAW Compatibility Update until Apple gets around to adding official support (there is also a risk that a later update without official GF1 support will make this hack non-functional, leaving you with temporarily unusable raw files in your library).

It seems that modifying the RW2 file's exif tag to a supported model will also work. For example, "exiftool -Model=DMC-G1 foo.RW2" seems to make Aperture like the file.

The exiftool technique also works to get Aperture 3 to process DNGs made from my G1. These come over in the upgrade from Aperture 2 just as they were, but Aperture 3 won't allow me to re-process them or adjust them in any way. (Re-processing them turns them into graphic garbage on screen, and eventually crashes Aperture.)

However, changing the exif camera model to something that Aperture does support, like a Panasonic L10, allows the files to render properly, and I can adjust at will.

Here's the command for that using exiftool from the command line (this works for blah.dng -- export your dngs and substitute the name of your image).

exiftool -Model=DMC-L10 blah.dng


Rendering and raw development settings seem identical to what Aperture 2 applied to the DNG. That's less saturated than Aperture 3's rendering of RW2.

My guess is that it this technique would similarly fix DNG support for an Olympus EP-1 -- at least for photos shot with legacy lenses. 

If you were smarter than me and saved your original RW2 files -- or had DNG Converter embed the original in the DNG -- extracting the RW2 is a better deal. But this exif modification will at least give you something to work with.

Let's hope that the next update to Aperture 3 is a bit smarter about DNG handling. It's unfortunate that DNGs that worked fine in Aperture 2 corrupt and crash Aperture 3. I hope that's a bug, not a feature.