Apple Aperture 2.0 | Good software is hard to find

Apple Aperture 2.0 | Outstanding RAW Workflow Manager

software:

Apple Aperture 2.0

	Apple Aperture 2.0 Mac OS X \| Apple, 2008 average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

You can access your entire iPhoto library directly within Aperture 2, to import selected events, albums, or individual photos using the iPhoto Browser. Aperture 2 includes an all-in-one inspector that consolidates the Project, Metadata, and Adjustments panes and lets you switch between them simply by typing W. Quickly locate images in the innovative All Projects view with project skimming. The new Quick Preview mode provides rapid-fire photo browsing, letting you quickly compare, rate, and make image selections. Aperture also offers enhanced performance when making processor-intensive adjustments, such as Noise Reduction and Highlight and Shadows. Leveraging the next-generation RAW image processing in Mac OS X Leopard, Aperture 2 delivers images of astounding quality, offering superb color fidelity, increased shadow detail, reduced noise, and advanced highlight recovery. Aperture provides RAW support for the leading digital cameras and camera backs. It also supports DNGs made from the RAW files of most digital cameras. With a .Mac account, you can take advantage of new support for .Mac Web Gallery to create beautiful online portfolios even allowing clients, colleagues, or friends to download JPEG or RAW originals complete with embedded metadata. Aperture also lets you sync your Aperture library to an iPhone or iPod. Or enjoy your photos on a widescreen TV in glorious high definition using Apple TV.

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Good software is hard to find

Aperture is a fantastic piece of software for managing and enhancing all your photos. You can manage master photos with various versions, which unlike iPhoto will store the adjustment parameters rather than a copy of the photo.

Importing and generation of previews is threaded so you can continue working while it churns away in the background.

I am a strong user of keywords and Aperture does not dissapoint. You can search on these keywords, any of the EXIF data, import date, photo date etc.

I also recently designed and printed a book using Apples book printing service embedded in Aperture. It was an absolutely seemless process. I designed the book with ease. Apple pay attention to many of the minor details which make authoring a joy rather than a chore. Uploading, paying and receiving the book could not have been more seemless.

I have not noticed any major bugs. One niggling bug, however, is that occasionally the thumbnails are not displayed correctly. Fortunately you can force a rebuild of those thumbnails.

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Outstanding RAW Workflow Manager

If you shoot in RAW and manage large numbers of photos, you need to give very serious consideration to Aperture 2. The program provides truly outstanding RAW conversion tools - greatly superior to Adobe's free Digital Negative Converter. It provides very flexible, easy-to-use tools to compare and rate photos, including stacks, ratings and comparison tools. The library management tools are truly outstanding, giving you multiple levels of keywords, a variety of tools for organizing your shots, and a hierarchical system for organization. And it links tightly to the photo editing application(s) of your choice.

Batch processing is well-supported, both on import and on photo selections. Essentially all data associated with the photos - both image details and EXIF - can be handled individually or at a batch level.

Famously, Aperture makes its edits to photos by linked mathematical formulas; the RAW photo itself is not touched. So manipulations can always be reversed. This also keeps the photo database from growing through duplicate files; there's just one file, and a series of small files representing the edits.

Aperture isn't perfect. While it is adequate for simple edits to photos, you'll still need a tool like Photoshop of Elements to perform serious adjustments to your photos. Aperture does a fine job of working with those photo editors. And Apple can be slow - sometimes, seriously slow - supporting the RAW formats of newly released cameras. In the case of the Olympus E-3, the camera was released for five months before Aperture could import its RAW format. There are always worksarounds - Adobe DNG if nothing else - and in fairness to Apple, its Aperture RAW converters are outstanding, but be prepared for a wait if you have new model camera. And Aperture demands significant resources: at least G5 (an Intel chip is better), at least 2 GB RAM (4GB _much_ better), an approved video card, hard rive space adequate to your projected ibrary and a backup or removable drive to hold a backup (a "vault").

Perhaps best of all, Aperture lets you define your own workflow. Adobe Lightroom, by contrast, pretty much imposes its workflow structure on you. You can do things in the order you want, not the order some programmer wants.

If you are new to Aperture, I recommend the Classroom in a Book tutorial, Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2 (Apple Pro Training Series).

I could not be happier with this program. I have some 25,000 shots, and add 1,000-2,000 per month. It has been flawless. And I've never lost a photo.

My highest recommendation.

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Excellent for photographers

I was an iPhoto user before, but I'm very happy with the expanded capabilities in Aperature. The only drawback I've seen is that I can't figure out how to convert/save a picture into black & white or sepia. But I can always use iPhoto to do that. I also love the custom books part - all the pages are customizable (you can change the layout, fonts, sizes, etc on each page), which you can't do in iPhoto's custom books.

Overall, I'm very happy with Aperature 2 and would recommend it to anyone that's serious about photography!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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