Jeremey's Weblog

Aperture 2 Mini-Review

So Aperture 2 (affectionally A2 from here on) is out, and it's pretty good. My initial impressions, subjective of course:

• Performance is much improved, especially once previews are rendered (or if you turn them off)
• Quick Preview mode is fabulous for edits
• To my eye, the RAW conversions look even better, and they were already my favorite of the RAW converters (tied with Capture One Pro). Keep in mind I haven't imported any of my old images and I can't upgrade my library until I buy A2, so this is based on new images shot around the house
• The new interface is nice, I prefer it (the tabbed interface on one side) to the two-side-panes interface of 1.x
• The new adjustment tools are excellent... the retouch tool has worked very well for me so far, the definition and vibrance controls are very welcome, and the new exposure brick is really nice
• Vignette tool! Hopefully it isn't broken like Lightroom's
• The straighten tool is much improved and much, much faster
• Publish to standalone .Mac web gallery is very nice
• Workflow is essentially the same with some incremental improvements... this is a good thing, workflow is the biggest reason I use Aperture (that and the RAW conversion quality)
• Background exporting!

Things that disappoint:

• No curves adjustment (come ON people... yes I know Aperture's quarter tone levels manipulate an S-curve... but sometimes I don't WANT an S-curve, I want a W-curve, or a C-curve, or just any bloody curve I want... Apple should not have shipped a major upgrade without curves, there is no excuse)
• No color-based B&W conversion (vs. channel-based)... sigh... to Photoshop I go, to Photoshop I go, hi-ho... etc.

Things I haven't tried:

• Tethered shooting... the demo/tutorial for this makes it look fabulous
• Searches... I hear they're faster
• Time Machine... not using it yet
• Vaults... I assume they are unchanged
• Importing my 1.5 library
• Actually publishing/exporting except to local folders
• Plugins like FlickrExport

Supposedly there's an image adjustment API/SDK now? Which could mean actual plugins? Which could mean curves or good noise reduction or what have you? That would rock. I haven't confirmed this yet.

All in all, it's a very good upgrade. It's a little weak for a 2.0 IMO, but that's because I'm really put off by the lack of curves. A2 is an incremental upgrade, it feels like a very nice 1.6 or a bit weak 2.0 to me, but maybe that feeling will change as I use it. Will I pay for it? Yep.

Technorati Tags:
aperture, apple, aperture 2, dam, workflow

Aperture Experiences

I've been getting my feet wet in Aperture and for the most part I'm very pleased with it. I think I can unquestionably say that it is the most complete RAW workflow software out there. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best in all areas, but there is no end of cool features. This will be a rather long-winded rambling on my experiences.

The most surprising thing to me is that Aperture's RAW conversion is very good. I would say that it is very, very close to my results with Capture One PRO. So close, in fact, that it would make me wonder if Apple didn't license a RAW engine from Capture One. The Aperture output looks like I would expect C1PRO output to look if C1PRO didn't include camera profiling... which I guess amounts to C1LE. Very interesting.

The second most surprising thing is how slow Aperture is, even on my quad 2.66GHz Core 2 Mac Pro with 2G of RAM. I've heard that it really works the graphics card and that you really need to upgrade that to get the best performance out of it, and that could well be. Many things are quite speedy, but overall it feels sluggish and very sluggish when making adjustments, especially in full screen mode. I have one of the fastest personal computers one can buy, I would expect it to be snappier. That's the most disappointing thing, and very likely will keep me from buying it, given that C1PRO exists and doesn't have that problem. Granted, it doesn't have half the features, but iView MediaPro picks up the slack (and then some).

Let's get some screen shots out of the way... the browser/grid:

The browser/grid, with loupe:

The full screen, with loupe:

Full screen, w/o loupe:

Centered loupe:

More rambling after the jump...

Technorati Tags: aperture, DAM, photography

Aperture Trial... FINALLY

Apple is finally offering a 30-day trial of Aperture.

Technorati Tags: DAM, photography, software

A Screeching 180: Capture One PRO

Well... it's been a strange couple days on the photography front. For some reason I decided to give Capture One PRO another whirl. Maybe because of its reputation, maybe I was reading something, I dunno. In any case, I decided to do some comparisons between Lightroom and C1PRO. WOW is there ever a difference! C1PRO's images are so much cleaner and the tones are so smooth. They're jaw-dropping good. So now my workflow world is reeling... and so will my wallet be, I'm afraid. I'll post alot more details later on, but here are a couple images I took tonight:

Technorati Tags: DAM, photography, RAW