Digital Home Thoughts: Adobe Welcomes Apple Aperture

"Aperture is a cool product, no question. Apple's designers have a great aesthetic, and their marketing is second-to-none. (This is the company, after all, that can sell the iPod Shuffle's lack of screen as a lifestyle choice.) Aperture zips around on quad G5's with four GPUs, and I'm looking forward to getting it onto my PowerBook 17" to see how it might run in the field. As Apple is the first to say, Aperture is not designed to be a Photoshop competitor. It has a number of very slick features (I dig the Web gallery creator in particular), but if you're looking to do something as simple as make a selection and sharpen someone's eyes, you're out of luck. That's not a knock--just a reflection of what Aperture is and is not. Fortunately Apple has a one-click method of sending a PSD to Photoshop for further editing."



I personally haven't had an opportunity to play with Aperture yet, but I'm getting a little worried about how GUIs have changed over the past few years in high end imaging software. I know the classic Photoshop GUI down by heart and this move toward eye candy (Take Photoshop Elements 3 and 4 for example) confuses the hell out of me. I'm sure there are some great ideas in Aperture, but don't emulate the fancy buttons. Some say the GUI of Photoshop is still in the early 90's and I like it that way.