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.