Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Apple Announces Aperture 3

Testing out Aperture 3 with some shots from the CN Tower

When I bought my first mac back in 2007, Aperture had already been out for almost a year and a half. I had just started playing around with Lightroom on my PC before the switch since I have been a long time Photoshop user but decided to use a trial version of Aperture to give it a shot. In all honesty, I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe it was my familiarity with Photoshop but Lightroom just made sense. I was able to navigate intuitively around Lightroom and with little searching, was able to find what I needed to edit my photos. Of course, a long the way, my workflow has developed into something far more complicated and advanced compared to how I previously used the software but I never really gave Aperture a chance after that. Over the years, I’ve opened it up occasionally, imported a photo and fooled around but I never really did much after that. That may change now…

Apple announced Aperture 3 today and to be honest, it looks great. I downloaded the demo today and managed to play around with it for an hour or so before writing this. I don’t know if it’ll get me to switch over my full catalog(s) of photos (I’m still hoping Lightroom will make some more updates to their Lightroom 3 beta features) but at this point, it’s definitely tempting.

Here are the main features that have been included in Aperture 3′s new release:

Faces
Similar to the feature in iPhoto, Faces automatically detects faces in your photos. A step up from iPhoto ’09 though, you can view the people you name in individual projects as well.

Photo courtesy of Apple.com

Places
Aperture 3 can now track your photos through GPS-enabled cameras or by simply dragging a collection of photos on to the map where you shot it. If your camera doesn’t have a GPS tracking system, you can extract locations from photos taken with your iPhone.

Photo courtesy of Apple.com

Brushes
This is one of my favourite new features. Brushes allows you to pretty much have full control on any adjustment setting to any area you choose to paint in your image. This is by far, more superior than the adjustment brush that Lightroom 2 released, which has only a few adjustment options and I find, very slow. Brushes also has a detect edges feature that helps makes changes to your images exactly where you want them.

Photo courtesy of Apple.com

Adjustment Presets
Now since I haven’t used Aperture properly before, I can’t really comment on how these presets compare to ones in the past but Apple claims to have dozens of new adjustments available in this new release. You can apply multiple combinations of adjustments, remove effects, or swap them from ones you’ve previously applied. Of course you can create your own to import and export.

Photo courtesy of Apple.com

Advanced Slideshows
For any HD-DSLR user, this is an amazing add on to Aperture! I never use Lightroom’s slideshow feature. I don’t like it personally and I tend to showcase my photos through this website as well as flickr. The new slideshow feature in Aperture 3 is pretty powerful. Here you can combine both photos and videos in one show. This is great as it allows one application to manage photos and videos from DSLR’s or other cameras that record video. You can also add music to your slideshow very easily and create layered soundtracks: voiceovers, narration, music or sounds recorded on location.

Photo courtesy of Apple.com

You can view all 200+ new features here for a detailed list and you can download your own 30 day trial by clicking on free trial here.

You can also see Aperture in Action here. As someone who’s shot a lot of concerts, I loved watching Chase Jarvis’ feature on using the dodge and burn brushes.

Now I’m still waiting for more features to be announced from Adobe regarding Lightroom 3 but if I didn’t have a database of photos all organized ‘perfectly’ in my Lightroom catalog, I’d be making the switch to Aperture without hesitation. You can buy Aperture 3 for $199.00 off of Apple’s site or upgrade your previous version of Aperture for just $99! For now, I’ll continue using Lightroom, but after I finish my 30 day trial, I may well end up buying myself Aperture 3 as well to use for its Slideshow and Book features. Bravo Apple.

Posted in News, Software Tags: Aperture, Aperture 3, Apple, Applications, News

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mark_3 - March 18, 2010 - 3:42 pm

would love to hear what your current thoughts are of aperture 3. i imagine your 30day trial is just about over. i myself have been a user of aperture since 1.5 and have never used lightroom.

the one thing that i love about aperture is that it has freed me from the file-management side of things and has focused me on asset-management. i no longer need to concern myself with the file system and the management headaches that go with it. i’ve found that aperture along with its library and reference capabilities, combined with time machine for backup has freed up more of my time to take pics and do what post processing i need. of course, ymmv.

i must say that aperture has worked fantastically on my circa mid 2006 macbook pro (core duo 2.16Ghz, 2MB ram, 256MB X1600 GPU) all the way to version 2. version 3 has finally convinced me that i need to upgrade my hardware. aperture 3 is dog slow on my machine now. plus, moving from the raw files of 40D to 5D mkII has not helped either.

finally, i hear you on the “consumer”-ish / non-pro look of aperture 3. it was quite jarring from me moving from 2 to 3. but you can turn off that “consumer” looking top tool bar. it’s not really needed for the most part.

cheers,
m3

[Reply]

Sara Collaton Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:09 pm

hi Mark. I haven’t done much work in Aperture to be honest. Gave it a try for a few days with some ‘dummy’ projects. What you mentioned with the file management side of Aperture is I think, essential for anyone with a heavy amount of photos they want to manage. I find myself in the sam situation with Lightroom which is one of the reasons I love it. I did have Aperture crash on me a few times but it’s a very nice Application. Lightroom 3′s beta version 2 just came out yesterday and I’m eager to test that out as well, though I still use Lightroom 2 for my full catalog and editing until an official release comes out.

[Reply]

Sean - February 15, 2010 - 2:39 am

Hi Sara,
I have to interject on the Adjustment brush comment. What you’re saying is not entirely accurate.

Yes, there are far more options for the mask that Lightroom, and of course there are the blending modes options, which I think are really cool. Lightroom has more options for what can be done in each brush in terms of content, and in terms of effect balance. It also has an auto mask, which is an edge detection feature.

On balance, I don’t think either one is a winner. The Masking options for Aperture are better, but the settings controls for Lightroom are better.

Now if only the trial would quit crashing the whole time.

[Reply]

Sara Collaton Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 6:26 am

Good point Sean and thanks for elaborating a bit more on the brushes. Your website has always been a great resource for Lightroom information.

[Reply]

David Pringle - February 11, 2010 - 11:25 am

Sara,

I am a long-time Aperture user and felt the upgrade was such an improvement that I had to order the day it was released. Many of these features (brushes and video slideshow) make Aperture a ‘one-stop shop’ for my editing. I already use Lift and Stamp on a regular basis while doing weddings… The ability to brush in adjustments… and layer them (you could only make one overall adjustment before) makes this an amazing application. If you could only afford one app, most people could forego PhotoShop now if they had Aperture 3. I see myself rarely using PS now that this has been upgraded, even as a professional. The time-savings that it gave me before have now been multiplied.

Thanks for giving me review from a LightRoom user’s perspective.

David

[Reply]

Andrew Howe - February 10, 2010 - 8:07 am

I do like the look of the new brushes and presets. Now Aperture has Places and Faces, hopefully I can combine the rather clunky arrangement I had to keep both iPhoto and Aperture 2 in sync and standardise on Aperture.

I did see a little bit in one of the videos about new ways of controlling the location of photos. I am hoping this will make it easier to keep back up copies of the photos too.

[Reply]

Joshua Lindsey - February 9, 2010 - 11:09 pm

Excellent review on Aperture. I love how you just touch on the features that stand out the most. You could really make great use of the Flickr integration that Aperture 3 has couldn’t you? Keep rockin’ the blog as always.

Josh

[Reply]

Philip Bloom - February 9, 2010 - 9:01 pm

great blog.

i never got into lightroom, this looks like the app for me.

[Reply]

Michael - February 9, 2010 - 8:55 pm

THX SARA for your thoughts!

well i’m not a Aperture 2 power user (because i’m more a video & audio guy) so i could be wrong … but i think the Adjustment Panel (with Presets and stuff), Brushes and Advanced Slideshows are really great new/enhanced features … seems like i can do now more stuff in Aperture 3 i’ve did in photoshop before …

… so a really nice & sophisticated update!

BTW: Faces&Places is a nice toy/tool but my workflow doesn’t need that at all (so far)

[Reply]

Sara Collaton Reply:
February 12th, 2010 at 7:02 pm

Michael – yes, faces does not fit my workflow at all. Places is great – geotagging with a map function in lightroom would be an amazing addition. For the pros, I think lightroom still looks more professional. I personally don’t like how aperture changed their look to fit more to the consumer level product (iphoto) than keeping it’s professional look. For anyone wanting to get into photo management that has a V-DSLR and is not at a pro level (FCP), I could see Aperture as a great way to get into it for photos and video work.

Philip – for you, especially with the amount of cameras you own, the tiny ones being able to do video as well I could see aperture working for ya.

Josh – LR2 has a plugin for Flickr integration and the LR3 beta has direct connections with their flickr accounts as well.

David – from what I hear with Aperture users, A2 to A3 has massive improvements so if that’s your application and have been using it for ages, it’s an amazing upgrade. I’ve played around with aperture a bit more and I still find it impressive. The two things I hope LR3 includes in their official release is geotagging and something similar to brushes (which I find is close to masking with layers in Photoshop. Extremely powerful). There are a few things that throw me off with Aperture 3:
- I’ve never seen before in a product, consumer level features put into a pro level application (thinking of iPhoto faces and places). While Places is a great feature for anyone with a large collection of photos, I don’t see the point of faces in a pro tool. I’d much rather use keywords/tags. Even in iPhoto, I rarely tag every photo with faces.
- I find the actual look of the application a bit simple looking. Maybe it’s the faces/places mixed with the iPhone style icons for facebook and flickr integration but to me, it takes away from that professional slick look a lot of other (pro) applications have, and I don’t necessarily mean Lightroom. I know this has nothing to do with how your photos will turn out after processing them, it’s just another observation.
- I myself, rarely go into Photoshop for photography editing. There’s very little that can’t be done (with some work) in applications like Aperture (or Lightroom). I do agree, if there’s one application you need and you’re just thinking about Photographs, skip the pricey cost of PS and go for something powerful and affordable.

[Reply]

Sara Collaton Photography

Apple Announces Aperture 3

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