Apple Releases Aperture 3 With Faces and Places Tagging Features

[thfcpoole]

Does anybody else get the impression that the people complaining about Aperture are the sort of people that prefer their cameras and software to the actual pictures that they take and will moan about everything not being right. Its like when people buy amazing hi-fis but then only listen to 'audiophile' recorded albums. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC NOT YOUR STEREO! Anyway...

I think that that A3 is a great update to an amazing application.

My dad is a Photographer (Steve Poole- you can see his stuff in the gallery section of http://www.freezelondon.com ) and just after Aperture 1 came out I set him up with a copy on his MBP. He's never looked back. Aperture has sped his workflow up tenfold.

He used to use iPhoto for his personal pics because of locations and the nice presentation, books and stuff but now I'm pretty sure he'll be migrating all his holiday pics over to Aperture because of faces and places. Why wouldn't a professional want these features? Faces and places are great for travel and personal pics.

Another couple of points- Its not like Aperture missed out the professional features too- the new aperture supports Graphistudio and Queensbury album generation. Now THIS is a KILLER professional feature. If anyone's ever tried to use the buggy and slow software from these companies, you'll agree with me in that doing it through Apple software will provide for a MUCH more pleasant experience.

Last point- another example of Aperture being great is scripting. My dad owns a company ( http://www.freezeschools.com / http://www.freezeexpress.com ) where the caption of the picture unlocks a particular gallery on a website (try DEMO on the website). Now with a bit of scripting I've got it so my Dad or any of his retouchers can caption any selected photos with a unique 8-letter code ready for upload with the touch of 1-button on their Wacoms. When the retouching and captioning is finished, there is then a script (which I also made) that exports the files into a folder for burning (to give to the pint company), captions and resizes all the images for the website and changes the version name to the caption AND FTPs them to the right folder online corresponding to the project name... all with one button again.

This is why Aperture is amazing and along with the photographers on Apple's site who have their own 'real-life videos using Aperture' you can add my Dad, who I feel really uses the application PROPERLY (not just fiddling about) day in day out.

It is a far cry from when he was using a nikon coolscan / photo mechanic, photoshop 3 and fetch on a g3 power mac in the 90s.

 

[crees!]

Placebase

Looks like Aperture is using Placebase's Pushpin. If you recall Apple bought out Placebase last year.

http://www.pushpin.com/api/1.3/docs/

 

[mlblacy]

Actually, some Pros are excited about both faces and places...

Faces and Places are the two features that will be latched onto by people who switched to LR and are unsure of their decision. They will use consumer features as a strawman argument to justify their decision by deriding the product. Notice how all the people on here who switched to LR say nothing of the non-destructive editing and other useful features of A3?

The people who use LR and are confident in their decision are off using it right now, and do not feel the childish need to post silly strawman arguments in an article that has nothing to do with LR.

Actually, I wish all the LR users who were confident in their choice, would NOT feel compelled to offer baseless arguments, but it seems there are more trolls than "real" users who chime in.

I deal with tourism marketing, and personally the geotagging that is offered in Places is pretty exciting stuff. Check out the video here:
http://www.apple.com/aperture/action/richardson/

Plus the ability to go back with Google Maps and pinpoint the locations of older photos is handy as well. Places may not appeal to everyone, and some folks may never use it... but already my mind is whirring with ways to change how we are working now. Its all about HOW to find the particular image you need from the muddle of archived images. When you have a thousand or so, it isn't a big deal... but when you have 25-50k+ it gets more complicated.

Faces has the same appeal for me as well. I do some work for a softball team, and probably have a few thousand pics from the last few years. The work is spread out timewise and not really contiguous. I have an album the pics get dumped into, but even with that it can be a pain to track down all the images of a particular player. If this work even a bit, it will save me a lot of time. If I was a wedding photographer, or portrait shooter... I would think this is awesome.

The ability to have libraries of any size, and as many as you want is killer. Plus you can share the libraries with others, export it out to your laptop on assignment, add to it, and then merge back into your main library/libraries. This is big.

Aperture has increased my imaging speed ten-fold, and that is running A2 with the NIK suite. Looking through the list of changes in detail, watching the new tutorials & movie clips, I am impressed. LR was never an option for me, as Aperture (warts & quirks aside) fit the bill perfectly. I had planned to wait and do some hardware upgrades as well, but may take the plunge earlier than I thought after reading through the list of enhancements.

 

[samh004]

anyone else who is having the crashing like me, the solution seems to be that you have to let the app complete the 'processing' in the background before it becomes stable...

all ive had is crash crash crash, but this has stopped it.

one thing, ive only loaded up 650mb of pics, yet its been processing for 5 mins...

I left Aperture running all day yesterday and it ate 2GB+ of my 3GB of RAM, virtually taking it all up, with nothing else running, and then had 700,000 page outs before crashing.

All Apple has successfully done is destroy my HDD so I need to upgrade soon.

 

[Maserati7200]

I'm feeling negative - only because I bought Aperture 2 on Dec 20th to go with my new iMac.

See, it's people like you who make the world worse. I bet you're the same person who gives bad reviews of a product online because you bought the wrong one, or give bad reviews of things you didn't actually buy because you got fired that day. Please stop this behavior, for the good of society. And I'm not just talking to ABG, I'm talking to everyone who does this but doesn't actually admit it.

 

[mlblacy]

My dad is a Photographer (Steve Poole- you can see his stuff in the gallery section of http://www.freezelondon.com ) and just after Aperture 1 came out I set him up with a copy on his MBP. He's never looked back. Aperture has sped his workflow up tenfold.
...
It is a far cry from when he was using a nikon coolscan / photo mechanic, photoshop 3 and fetch on a g3 power mac in the 90s.

Amen brother. Just as I never missed the waxer and paste-up (yikes), I don't miss the wasted time spent with my coolscan & fetch, etc. I ditched Fetch/Portfolio for iPhoto, and when Aperture came out I switched to that. The 2.0 version made it a professional level tool that mostly bumped pshop in my own imaging workflow. 3.0 takes it to another level as well.

Just checked out your dad's website. Beautiful site, and incredible work photographically...
cheers,
michael

 

[RaceTripper]

See, it's people like you who make the world worse. I bet you're the same person who gives bad reviews of a product online because you bought the wrong one, or give bad reviews of things you didn't actually buy because you got fired that day. Please stop this behavior, for the good of society. And I'm not just talking to ABG, I'm talking to everyone who does this but doesn't actually admit it.

Wow! You're probably right. I'll bet he's the one who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear too. Yeah, and he's also the cause of all the bank failures. Surely, anybody who expresses slight disappointment from buying software 6 weeks before a new release has to be evil.

 

[SeattleMoose]

Trolls Wear Out Quickly

To all of you lamenting the huge infestation of trolls and coporate warfare mercenaries that blast ALL new Apple products/releases, take heart. In a week or two after they think they have destroyed all interest in whatever they are attacking, they will move on to the next new thing.

Then we can get back to helping each other with being users of our new toys.

 

[RaceTripper]

...

I deal with tourism marketing, and personally the geotagging that is offered in Places is pretty exciting stuff. Check out the video here:
http://www.apple.com/aperture/action/richardson/

...

I love the places feature. When I shoot an auto race I can end up with thousands of shots for the event. The places feature lets me see very easily which corner a race photo was shot from. I can't always tell just by looking at the image.

 

[kdum8]

Does anybody else get the impression that the people complaining about Aperture are the sort of people that prefer their cameras and software to the actual pictures that they take and will moan about everything not being right. Its like when people buy amazing hi-fis but then only listen to 'audiophile' recorded albums. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC NOT YOUR STEREO! Anyway...

I think that that A3 is a great update to an amazing application.

My dad is a Photographer (Steve Poole- you can see his stuff in the gallery section of http://www.freezelondon.com ) and just after Aperture 1 came out I set him up with a copy on his MBP. He's never looked back. Aperture has sped his workflow up tenfold.

He used to use iPhoto for his personal pics because of locations and the nice presentation, books and stuff but now I'm pretty sure he'll be migrating all his holiday pics over to Aperture because of faces and places. Why wouldn't a professional want these features? Faces and places are great for travel and personal pics.


Last point- another example of Aperture being great is scripting. My dad owns a company ( http://www.freezeschools.com / http://www.freezeexpress.com ) where the caption of the picture unlocks a particular gallery on a website (try DEMO on the website). Now with a bit of scripting I've got it so my Dad or any of his retouchers can caption any selected photos with a unique 8-letter code ready for upload with the touch of 1-button on their Wacoms. When the retouching and captioning is finished, there is then a script (which I also made) that exports the files into a folder for burning (to give to the pint company), captions and resizes all the images for the website and changes the version name to the caption AND FTPs them to the right folder online corresponding to the project name... all with one button again.

Did your Dad actually take the portraits of all the celebrities on his site himself? There are so many!

A very impressive site and some great photography too. He has met some great people. Nice job

 

[jettredmont]

Faces has the same appeal for me as well. I do some work for a softball team, and probably have a few thousand pics from the last few years. The work is spread out timewise and not really contiguous. I have an album the pics get dumped into, but even with that it can be a pain to track down all the images of a particular player. If this work even a bit, it will save me a lot of time. If I was a wedding photographer, or portrait shooter... I would think this is awesome.

The only thing I'd love to have is the ability to say "this player always wears the shoes with a red swoosh, and this player has '17' on their jersey" ... I find I usually need more than the face itself to identify players in my softball shots, so I don't expect Faces to work miracles for me there. It'll help with the non-action shots, though.

 

[mlblacy]

works for cats, not dogs...

The only thing I'd love to have is the ability to say "this player always wears the shoes with a red swoosh, and this player has '17' on their jersey" ... I find I usually need more than the face itself to identify players in my softball shots, so I don't expect Faces to work miracles for me there. It'll help with the non-action shots, though.

If the algorithms are the same as IPhoto, Faces should even work on cats (but not dogs). Odd huh... no help for the number "17"s though.

 

[RaceTripper]

If the algorithms are the same as IPhoto, Faces should even work on cats (but not dogs). Odd huh... no help for the number "17"s though.

Faces started flagging all the blurred wheels in my racing pan shots. I turned the feature off. I really don't have a use for it.

 

[bearcatrp]

Does anyone know if when importing video, does it import as AiC? Couldn't find any info on this.

 

[Roller]

If I could get it to run...

I installed the A3 demo and played with it a while. Next, I bought the upgrade license online end entered it. A3 crashed immediately and now crashes on launch every time. Re-installation hasn't helped. Anyone else have this problem?

 

[macswitcha2]

Would uploading the trial version over ride aperture 2? How does this work? Does the trial version work as a separate program?

 

[TheSpaz]

Would uploading the trial version over ride aperture 2? How does this work? Does the trial version work as a separate program?

If you downloaded the trial you'd see that the instructions tell you to rename your previous Aperture application before installing Aperture. If it sees an app called Aperture already in your Applications folder, it will refuse to install until you rename it.

 

[NoNameBrand]

Does anybody else get the impression that the people complaining about Aperture are the sort of people that prefer their cameras and software to the actual pictures that they take and will moan about everything not being right. Its like when people buy amazing hi-fis but then only listen to 'audiophile' recorded albums. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC NOT YOUR STEREO! Anyway...

I think that that A3 is a great update to an amazing application.

Plus six-hundred and twenty-three million. And five.

Liked the rest of your post too. Great photos from your dad.

 

[190991]

Great update.

Some comments though after just a day of using it:

1) When in places, I'd like there to be some optional viewing preferences:
a - First of all I want the GPS trackline visible even from "far distance" i.e. when the entire globe is viewed.
b - I'd love to see miniature photos along that track line as an option
c - Also, I want the list of GPS tracks to be in a separate window instead of a contextual menu list, and optional to sort by not just place name but date, time etc. –*it's way too much work now to get one out of say 200 tracks deleted. Plus I'd like to delete a track from within the map itself, by just Ctrl+click on the line itself.

2) When in faces,
a - I'd love the possibility to view the entire picture from where the face is taken, when I'm uncertain as to who it is. This seems impossible to do easily.
b - I'd like to be able to see the not-yet-tagged faces in "Browser" mode instead of "Split view" mode (when the upper two thirds of the screen is full of already tagged people).
c - I'd like to be able to downsize the minatures more than as of now –*I get hundreds of faces and they take up too much space as of now

 

[Analog Kid]

I left Aperture running all day yesterday and it ate 2GB+ of my 3GB of RAM, virtually taking it all up, with nothing else running, and then had 700,000 page outs before crashing.

All Apple has successfully done is destroy my HDD so I need to upgrade soon.

Same problem here-- major memory management issues. Ran it over night and it complained that the 200GB free space on my boot drive wasn't enough for "application memory".

My Library is probably in the 60-80,000 image range.

 

[macswitcha2]

Aperture 3 and updating Picture Library

On the welcome screen, it is saying that it will update my picture library which can take hours...

Is this normal?

It is saying once updated I wont be able to use the library with previous versions of Aperture....

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

On the welcome screen, it is saying that it will update my picture library which can take hours...

Is this normal?

Yes. It's reprocessing your images.

It is saying once updated I wont be able to use the library with previous versions of Aperture....

Correct.

 

[macswitcha2]

Yes. It's reprocessing your images.


Correct.

Thanks!

 

[Goldfinger]

Does anybody else get the impression that the people complaining about Aperture are the sort of people that prefer their cameras and software to the actual pictures that they take and will moan about everything not being right. Its like when people buy amazing hi-fis but then only listen to 'audiophile' recorded albums. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC NOT YOUR STEREO! Anyway...

Absolutely except that A3 is the most buggy app coming out of Apple in a loooong time.

Huge memory leaks, completely incompatible with ATI X1600 cards (constant graphical glitches, adjustment brushes just don't work with this card), general slowness, when it hangs it takes other apps with it by trashing the harddrive. It somehow makes the finder trash around on the disk and use lots of CPU. Some edits take aaaages.
Just take a look on the Apple discussion forum.

I really hope they get some sort of quick fix out of the door. These issues aren't limited to a few people.

Otherwise it's a great update with a solid feature set.

 

[Maserati7200]

Wow! You're probably right. I'll bet he's the one who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear too. Yeah, and he's also the cause of all the bank failures. Surely, anybody who expresses slight disappointment from buying software 6 weeks before a new release has to be evil.

But he rated the article negative. You could feel upset about it, but that doesn't mean it's anyone else's fault. Do you honestly think it's a good thing to leave bad reviews of a product just because you bought the previous one at the wrong time?