Buying a camera from scratch is never an easy task. But trying to figure out whether you should upgrade a camera is sometimes even more difficult. If your current camera has obvious shortcomings that are fixed by a newer model, then the choice is pretty simple. But if you’re satisfied with your camera and a newer model has some extra “luxury” features, then what do you do? Many Canon EOS 20D owners are facing that dilemma right now.

The Nikon D200, a 10 megapixel SLR with an APS-sized sensor began shipping in November of 2005. At $1700 for the body, it was $200 more than Canon’s nearest competitor, the 8.3 megapixel EOS 20D. Canon has now fired back against the D200, but not with a similarly-pixeled competitor. The new EOS 30D offers several improvements over the 20D that it replaces, but rather than matching Nikon’s pixel count, Canon stuck with the 8.3 megapixel sensor of the 20D, and dropped the price of the 30D body to $1,399. Photographers who are looking for a mid-range Canon or Nikon camera now find themselves asking "Do I need more pixels, or more dollars?"

While Aperture’s toolset provides most of the editing features you’ll need for most of your digital imaging post-production, there are still many occasions for which you’ll need to do additional processing in Photoshop. Whether it’s for simple CMYK conversion, to apply a Photoshop plug-in, or for more complex operations that aren’t possible in Aperture, you might regularly find yourself integrating Photoshop into your Aperture workflow. If you find yourself doing this a lot, then you’ll want to consider automating the process. When powered by Automator, these two applications provide enough automation capabilities for you to easily create complex automated production pipelines.

Aperture’s Open in External Editor command provides a simple, effective way for you to easily take images from Photoshop to Aperture and back again. To provide some additional Aperture automation possibilities, I’m offering this Start Photoshop Roundtrip action which lets you add Aperture’s Open in External Editor command to your Automator workflows.

In December of 2006, clarinetist/saxophonist Don Byron went into the studio with a group of extremely talented musicians to record an album of songs by R&B great Junior Walker. The forthcoming record entitled "Do The Boomerang" is due out from Blue Note Records in September of 2006. The night before the band left to record at Allaire Studios in upstate New York, they performed at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan.