Apple's Aperture Reviewed

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has done an in-depth review of Apple's Aperture. Reviewer Dave Girard gives it a once over and walks away with a sour taste in his mouth. From the review: 'It is also disappointing to see form beat out function here, but hopefully this will be Apple's software equivalent of the G4 Cube. They have only themselves to blame: they set themselves up for a big fall by attempting to dig themselves a chunk of the pro market by purporting to have the lossless holy grail of imaging. The trouble with that is they obviously didn't have the engineering or expertise in RAW processing to pull it off or, if they did, they chose not to include it because of speed constraints due to Core Image.'"

I enjoy the app

[PrimeWaveZ]

And although I don't have a DSLR, or even a camera that shoots raw images, I find it to be a valuable app in terms of form and basic function with my Canon A95.

His technical concerns are legitimate, and Apple will need to work on those issues. However, in terms of organization and workflow, this program is incredible. I cannot forsee this application going anywhere but up in the coming months and years. I enjoy it, and look forward to updates for bugs and other issues mentioned in the article.

price:500. 400 dollars? what do they want 300 for?

[passingNotes.com]

honestly, for most folks who do amateur or high-brow amateur, they're gettin' along just fine with the free stuff that came with their computer...or photoshop lite type software...what confuses me is this: apple wants to get to the serious amateurs as well as the pro's - but since the nearmidformat cameras have fallen in price dramatically (many below the cost of this software), then why on earth charge so much for the software itself? that's like begging to alienate the potential buyers below the pro level...really, this should be priced on par with 'high end' do-it-yourself home printer kits (great ones from 200-300, most below 200, but supplies are expensive)...apple would be more well served by creating a new secondary market for digital images and video stored or manipulated with their software (think: open source flash, but apple - and creative commons and share style networks for video clips, images (from aperture) and so on...) just a thought.

Aperture Light Anyone?

[toupsie]

I am a heavy user of iPhoto but my "shoebox" of photos is getting a little too big for it. At ~29,000 iPhoto is usable but is starting to choke a little. Aperture seems to be perfectly able to handle libraries over 100,000 with no problems but I am not a Pro photog and $500 for Aperture is a little much since all I want is a cataloging app. Anyone have a suggestion on the an iPhoto alternative that will import my iPhoto library?

Apple deserves the same treatment

[Shivetya]

as anyone else. Their products should be viewed just as anyone else's software.

The common joke with Apple products is always to wait for version 2.

Hold them accountable, maybe they will change.

Its like Frontrow, for me its useless as its not a PVR. Yet try and present this argument and you get flamed.

Re:Everyone loves Gimp! :)

[brys]

This is not "blind" conversion of course, I am converting all pictures with 4 or more presets and then I choose the best. It is fast and easy method. But this GIMP plugin is very promising, I am just checking this now :)

Re:My Thoughts

[Kaa]

It is highly desirable to work directly on RAW files, which as Apple says is "non-destructive", i.e. all of your original sensor data is still there. This is not the case when working with RAW files in Photoshop, which have to be rasterized even before they're actually opened. You can make basic adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW before the file is opened but to do real retouching, you have to rasterize and open in Photoshop itself.

I don't understand what does "working directly on RAW files" mean.

RAW files are raw sensor data. To make any sense out of it you need to at least demosaic first (as well as assign gamma, color temp, etc.). Until you demosaic there is no image you can reasonably work with in an editing program.

Photoshop does this explicitly: first you convert your RAW file to something (either an internal Photoshop format, or a TIFF, or something else) and then you work on the converted image. You can tweak quite a few parameters in the conversion process. This is non-destructive in the sense that your original RAW file is still there and you can re-convert (with the same or other conversion parameters) at any time you want.

Aperture, it seems, does the same thing only non-explicitly -- it converts the RAW file into its own internal format and lets you edit the image. This does *not* mean working directly with RAW images -- you just hid away from the user the conversion step. And I doubt very much that if I, say, make some Curves contrast adjustments Aperture will re-mosaic the image and re-create the Bayer pattern RAW file with my contrast adjustments.

So I am inclined to treat "working directly with RAW images" as nothing but Apple marketspeak with a dose of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field thrown in.

Re:My Thoughts

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

Aperture does fill a pretty big hole in the market

What about Portfolio [extensis.com]? Extensis Portfolio has been a pretty big player in the professional world of asset management for a while now. It looks to me that it will do everything Aperature will do, without the v1.0 bug or the price. Not to mention for Coporate enviroments, Portfolio has the Server product which adds a workgroup/workflow piece that Aperature doesn't even address.

I would say that Aperature is the Portfolio for home "pro-sumers" (hate that term), but that wouldn't make any sense given the cost difference!