Monday, December 19, 2005
Two Reviews of Apple's Aperture
Posted by James Fee in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM
"As of this writing, Aperture is very new (hardly a month out). It offers some new functionality. Every maker of a RAW converter, image browser, asset management system or image editor for photography should take a very close look. It is extremely resource hungry (actually designed for the next generation of PCs. Something Steve Jobs has done before). Aperture retains some severe deficiencies, e.g. speed when applying several corrections/filters in RAW conversion quality or when stamping lifted metadata or settings to several images. Noise in dark areas (RAW images) seem to be much stronger than we Adobe Camera Raw, RawShooter or Capture One. It will definitely take Apple some time to rectify all shortcomings. Some of their design decisions may not be the best ones (e.g. embedding basic RAW conversion into the operating system - though Microsoft may do this soon, as well). Aperture will not replace Photoshop in the near future, and Apple may be well advised not to try this for some time. You are well advised to test Aperture thoroughly before embedding your images into the (rather) closed Aperture environment. Maintaining some projects inside and others outside of Aperture may be a good idea for some time."
As people start to look more closely at Aperture, you begin to question Apple's decision of releasing a beta version and charging people for it. The whole point of Aperture is to simplify work-flows, but currently its shortcoming end up causing more work in the long run. No wonder Steve Wozniak says Apple turns out the "crappiest products".
PC World has another take on Aperture.
"Aperture strikes me as a sort of executive-level tool: It won't replace Photoshop for graphic artists who do extensive and intricate image manipulation, but art directors and photo editors who decide which images to put in a publication will probably like it quite a bit, and not balk at paying to have both programs. It's somewhat more of an open question as to whether pro and semipro photographers will embrace Aperture; I think it will depend on whether they find the editing tools robust enough. As for us Joe Point-n-Shoots, we'll mostly find it too rich for our blood. I'm hoping that Apple puts the pretty stuff from Aperture, like Full Screen mode and the Loupe, into a new version of IPhoto so we can all enjoy it."
A more upbeat assessment, but if the software doesn't improve, not even "management types" will want to invest in it.
As people start to look more closely at Aperture, you begin to question Apple's decision of releasing a beta version and charging people for it. The whole point of Aperture is to simplify work-flows, but currently its shortcoming end up causing more work in the long run. No wonder Steve Wozniak says Apple turns out the "crappiest products".
PC World has another take on Aperture.
"Aperture strikes me as a sort of executive-level tool: It won't replace Photoshop for graphic artists who do extensive and intricate image manipulation, but art directors and photo editors who decide which images to put in a publication will probably like it quite a bit, and not balk at paying to have both programs. It's somewhat more of an open question as to whether pro and semipro photographers will embrace Aperture; I think it will depend on whether they find the editing tools robust enough. As for us Joe Point-n-Shoots, we'll mostly find it too rich for our blood. I'm hoping that Apple puts the pretty stuff from Aperture, like Full Screen mode and the Loupe, into a new version of IPhoto so we can all enjoy it."
A more upbeat assessment, but if the software doesn't improve, not even "management types" will want to invest in it.
