Who remembers Aperture 1? Aperure 1 probably was one of the applications that raised high hopes with photographers and editors of small publishing companies alike. Unfortunately, many users found the approach inefficient and ineffective. Apple didn’t take long to adapt the program so it would meet photographers’ needs better, but Aperture 1.x remained second (or even third) choice.
For a long time, nothing happened with Aperture, and the world thought the giant that Apple is, had fallen asleep. But then Leopard was released and not so terribly long after, Aperture 2. And now we have Aperture 2.1 only weeks after version 2.0.1 was released. And the photographers’ world is cheering, and for a reason. Aperture 2.x is fast, its RAW 2 engine—Leopard’s really—is excellent, giving near-perfect results when converting. Aperture 2.1 has an open architecture; developers can—and are—creating plug-ins for Aperture 2.1.
Who could have thought a year ago the Aperture 2.1 would become almost a hype? Well, I for one couldn’t. I liked Aperture all along, but found other applications to be better, both in RAW decoding quality and in terms of management features. Aperture 2.1 is better than anything I’ve seen so far. Adobe Lightroom 2 beta has been released, but Lightroom 1 is light years behind on Aperture 2.1 and I am afraid Lightroom beta 2 is only marginally better than version 1.
But let’s concentrate on Aperture. The photo management system of Aperture 2.1 hasn’t changed that much. You can still opt for having your photos managed in a “package” library or by reference. The first option appeals the most to me, although I must admit that it is best to immediately make a secondary copy of the RAW files themselves—preferably to an offline medium such as a CD or DVD. The packaged library has one distinct advantage: it’s one file holding all of your assets. You can, however, create multiple libraries by selecting others in Aperture’s preferences.
Manage as You Like, but Keep it Orderly
Managing by reference is what DxO Optics Pro, Bibble, Capture One, Lightroom, and many others do: you simply leave the files where they are stored in the file system and create a link to them. All corrections and adjustments you apply to the photos, are stored as XML files in a folder somewhere on the file system. The RAW files—just as inside the packaged library—aren’t touched. You can mix these two management options if you like with Aperture, without it becoming confusing.
Confusing is what Lightroom’s management options are: you create catalogues and collections, and make a real mess of your photographs. Aperture will allow you to do whatever you like, but you’ll have to be somewhat less sloppy in your thinking. If you want to be your chaotic self, Aperture is not really for you. However, if photography is part of your workflow, or your livelihood, my guess is that Aperture is better at managing and therefore securing your assets.
Also, I wouldn’t be too surprised when Apple releases version 3, to see an equivalent to Final Cut Server, for Aperture. In a sense, such a heavy-weight digital asset management isn’t necessary with Aperture, as you can upload your files to a file server and manage them from there, but you wouldn’t have the versioning and locking features necessary to not end up with dozens of different versions of the same RAW file—something that magazine editors for example, wouldn’t appreciate much.
Enough said about Aperture DAM capabilities. Let’s move on to its interface. The interface has become vastly more streamlined. What I noticed immediately when using Aperture 2 for the first time, was that thumbnails and previews load instantly. The main reason why anyone with anything less than the latest Intel Mac would hold back from using Aperture 1 was undoubtedly the lack of performance in the area of screen refresh. That’s been fixed with a dramatic speed boost. Now, on my Power Mac G5 dual 1.8GHz processor, Aperture still isn’t a speed demon, but it’s not slower than any other photo asset management and conversion software, so that’s good news.
The interface has also been made a lot more simple. For example, the many different HUDs and Inspectors have made place for one single HUD that contains all you need to handle your photos. The views themselves are also more streamlined, with the possibility to have a filmstrip at the bottom of the screen and the main area dedicated to the image. Full screen views immediately show the toolbar in a slimmed down version. If you have two monitors, you can have a full screen view on the one and the “ordinary” interface on the other. Both views will give you access to the available tools.
50% off for a limited time only.
Sign up now!
- A Monthly Newsletter with unique content not found anywhere else
- Selected Product Reports
- 25% off the Reports in the Research Store 50% off for a limited time only | claim your coupon!
- Advice, Analyses & Multimedia Tutorials on Graphic Design, Photography, Video-editing, and Publishing Systems
- The best content on cross-channel publishing on the web
All Projects View
The All Projects view lets you see all of your projects in a view that closely resembles that of iPhoto and iMovie 7.x (the latest versions). You can set a “Key Photo”—the equivalent of setting a poster frame in iMovie. Moving the mouse from left to right over the key photo will scroll through the photos in the project on show. Very nice.
The toolbar can move out of the way in full screen mode, just as the filmstrip can. Aperture 2 has more control over shortcut keys as well. Just as with Final Cut Pro, you can now completely change the keyboard shortcuts using an on-screen keyboard representation, save those commands to a preset and load them at will.
The ability to handle non-destructively Camera RAW files was Aperture 1’s main selling point, but there were few RAW formats the application understood. What I always found disturbing was that Aperture was positioned as a professional tool, without support for Hasselblad RAW—you can hardly find a more “professional” camera than a Hasselblad in my opinion. We had to wait for Aperture 2.1 to see the program gain support for Hasselblad 3HD camera RAW files.
The good part of the wait has been that Apple shows how fast it now actually can update its support for new RAW formats and versions. Although the RAW support is not handled by Aperture, but on a system level, the updates to the Leopard OS happen frequently enough to be guaranteed of an almost continuous stream of improvements and additions in that area.
Aperture Handles Hasselblad RAW Better than Hasselblad Does
The Hasselblad RAW support immediately showed me how well Aperture (or Leopard, never mind) now handles RAW files. The quality of Aperture’s (definitely Aperture, this time) built-in RAW adjustments—even in automatic mode—is simply stunning. I compared the H3D test files renditions by Aperture 2.1 with those rendered in Hasselblad’s own RAW conversion program and to my eye, the Aperture auto-adjustments did a better job of getting out the detail while simultaneously giving the image more “punch”. In Aperture I could finally see why photographers become lyric when they are allowed to play with a Hasselblad.
Adobe’s Digital Negative format (DNG) is also finally supported by Aperture. The Kodak P880 files that I had converted into that format will now show, and I can adjust them as any other supported format. Of course, the quality is not as good as of an original RAW file.
RAW is what most semi- and professional photographers will use. RAW and JPEG is what you can also use with most dSLRs, and when using Aperture there’s actually a sense in doing that, because the program will use your JPEG images as Quick Preview versions. Aperture will transparently use your camera’s JPEGs while adjusting the RAW file.
On the Adjustments front, a lot has improved and added. On top of its built-in adjustment features, Aperture 2.1 has the first plug-in that shows what can be done with Aperture’s new architecture. The built-in adjustments all work on the photo as a whole. Although you can saturate or de-saturate on specific colour areas, and you can brush-retouch using textures from other areas (with colour and lightness adjusted to the target), the big and good news is that you can now dodge, burn, saturate, de-saturate, etc, using a brush in the plug-in window.
Lens Correction: an Idea for a Plug-in
Image editing companies like Nik and PictureCode have already announced they’re going to deliver plug-ins for Aperture 2.1, and that’s good news, as this will potentially set Aperture 2.1 further apart from its competitors than anything else. Even with that one Dodge and Burn plug-in available now, you can see where Aperture is going to. The special window that has to be opened to use the plug-in is not even a drag, as it makes sense to have other controls than the ones the main Aperture application offers when using these plug-ins.
Some effects Aperture 2.x offers are new or so dramatically improved they look new. Vignetting, for example, can be done by adjusting exposure or gamma. The latter creates a more dramatic effect. Vignetting is applied to the photo after cropping it. Devignetting is applied before cropping it. At least, that’s what some other reviewers have noticed in Aperture 2.0.1. In Aperture 2.1 I can’t see the difference before or after cropping anymore. So, it’s very clear Apple is closely listening to comments, irrespective of where they come from (and—I hope—only when they make sense).
Other complaints, even after version 2 was just released, were that Aperture really should have lens correction capabilities (type barrel, etc). Well, they are potentially there now that the plug-in architecture has been thrown out in the open. Perhaps a good idea for DxO Labs; to develop a plug-in that links to their lens corrections capabilities?
Wanted: XML Export
At the end of the day, I don’t think you can currently do better than what Aperture has to offer. It has a strong management system, excellent adjustments, a near-perfect RAW engine that gets basic corrections right in 99.90% of the cases as far as I can see, and support for plug-ins. And it costs less than the first versions. For the time being, Aperture is aimed at individual photographers, rather than to photographers working in workgroups, like photo reporters, for example. I can see that changing—if Apple can make a digital asset management server system for TV studios, I’m sure they can do the same for a relatively simple workflow like photo management.
If that should happen, publishers will have another reason to migrate to Mac OS X and its products. Even without such an asset management system, Apple should really offer XML export capabilities to Aperture. The ability to publish photo journals and web pages is all good and nice, but for photographers to merge their work with cross-media publishing systems, Aperture would vastly benefit from XML export capabilities. Although most big-name publishers will have a Digital Asset Management system in place and won’t need an XML export capability, smaller publishing companies have nothing in place, and would benefit from such capability.
Surely, even individual photographers who want to expose their work on the web could benefit from a semi-automatic system to upload their photos and update the related contents.
To wrap up this review, I believe Aperture 2.1 could be a Lightroom killer on the Mac. I think much will depend on plug-in developers being willing to create interesting solutions for real problems. I also think Aperture should further move in the direction of professional photo management as well as keeping its appeal as an individual photographer’s management and adjustment tool.
