Aperture 4

[snberk103]

Yeah, I agree... I was the person you're referring to that did some side-by-side comparisons. A lack of time has prevented me from evaluating their local adjustments but so far, out of the box, Capture One produces a great image for my camera's RAW files that requires fewer adjustments. So it can be a huge time saver. Although I haven't committed to a switch, if Apple EOL'd Aperture tomorrow, I would definitely switch to Capture One before Lightroom.

I hope I remembered to thank you for doing the comparisons! It was quite useful, even if you haven't finished the reviews. Thank You.

I'm so thoroughly entrenched in the Lightroom workflow, that I don't know how easy it would be to switch. There are features in Lr that I'd miss, and that I use extensively. By the same token, the features in C1 that Lr doesn't have I haven't been using. But when I have a difficult image, I work with in C1 because even as a novice I seem to be able to improve it beyond what I can do in Lr.

 

[flynz4]

Source?

Personally, I'm happy with Aperture. I don't need crazy editing choices, as I like 'true' colours and bw. If one needs more ambitious editing choices you need PS anyway(even if you have LR). So what's the point?

I am quite amused by people who do the "feature comparison" between A3 and LR... and choose to switch on the more feature rich of the day. It is like watching a tennis match, and continuously declaring the winner based on instantaneous position of the ball. Silly.

The only think that I would add to your post is that before PS... either LR or A3 users would benefit from plugins such as those fro Nik Software. Nik supports both A3 and LR... and leaves the two almost identical in tools to make a fantastic image.

Personally... I think A3 leaves LR's user interface in the dust. I own both... and I didn't even bother installing LR on my new iMac.

/Jim

 

[maflynn]

and choose to switch on the more feature rich of the day.

The problem as I see it that LR is a moving target with adobe adding features, both minor and major. Unfortunately Apple has only tweaked the product, added bug fixes since 2010. So while it may be unfair, LR is a more dynamic product where as AP has been somewhat static.

Personally... I think A3 leaves LR's user interface in the dust.

I agree, while its mostly personal preference I do like AP's interface but I'm mostly on LR. I like how easy it is to create libraries with AP and use the vault feature. That works well with my work flow. LR has similar in creating different catalogs but its not quite the same.

 

[Razeus]

Yes, A3 has a better interface. Unfortunately, the software is abandonware at this point.

 

[maflynn]

Yes, A3 has a better interface. Unfortunately, the software is abandonware at this point.

Unfortunately apple seems to have a large list of abandonware at the moment, such as iWork and even iLife

I'm hopeful we'll see something but to be honest I'd love to see apple make a statement on the future of Aperture, whether it will be updated or they'll be killing it off.

 

[Razeus]

Unfortunately apple seems to have a large list of abandonware at the moment, such as iWork and even iLife

I'm hopeful we'll see something but to be honest I'd love to see apple make a statement on the future of Aperture, whether it will be updated or they'll be killing it off.

Oh, it'll be updated. As long as it pertains to iOS functionality.

 

[Bending Pixels]

Unfortunately apple seems to have a large list of abandonware at the moment, such as iWork and even iLife

I'm hopeful we'll see something but to be honest I'd love to see apple make a statement on the future of Aperture, whether it will be updated or they'll be killing it off.

Keep in mind that Apple has quite a number of employees on the iWork, iLife and Aperture teams, and recently had a number of postings for software engineers on each of these. So...these programs are still active and not abandonware.

Apple IS up to something. They've released the 12th beta of OS X 10.8.3, and alpha versions of 10.9 are starting to appear in testing. WWDC is a few months away, and that's when Apple usually showcases their new OS and other goodies.

 

[maflynn]

Keep in mind that Apple has quite a number of employees on the iWork, iLife and Aperture teams, and recently had a number of postings for software engineers on each of these. So...these programs are still active and not abandonware.

I hope so, but so far circumstantial evidence seems to indicate otherwise.

 

[Razeus]

Keep in mind that Apple has quite a number of employees on the iWork, iLife and Aperture teams, and recently had a number of postings for software engineers on each of these. So...these programs are still active and not abandonware.

Apple IS up to something. They've released the 12th beta of OS X 10.8.3, and alpha versions of 10.9 are starting to appear in testing. WWDC is a few months away, and that's when Apple usually showcases their new OS and other goodies.

...well it's been 3 years for alot of this software so...

But I've moved on to better supported software and stuff that's cross platform. Apple doesn't seem to care about it's desktop users. Mountain Lion was just to add iOS features. I learned my lesson in sticking with proprietary stuff. If I don't like how they are playing the game, I can just take my toys and go home.

 

[mlblacy]

The problem with Aperture 3 is that you have to depend on plugins to do things that should be native, and this requires creating a new master, which goes against the whole principle of non-destructive (ergo non-additive) workflow. Why do we have to export to a plugin to get decent sharpening and noise reduction, or to burn directly to a DVD, or apply lens correction.
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I use the NIK suite professionally and have zero problem with using a third party editor/plugin. It is no different than exporting to pshop for final sizing & color space conversion, and just part of my workflow.

 

[twitch31]

With Lightroom much of the round tripping I use to do with Aperture has been avoided; good noise reduction, lens corrections and perspective corrections can all be done natively within LR

 

[MattSepeta]

The problem with Aperture 3 is that you have to depend on plugins to do things that should be native, and this requires creating a new master, which goes against the whole principle of non-destructive (ergo non-additive) workflow. Why do we have to export to a plugin to get decent sharpening and noise reduction, or to burn directly to a DVD, or apply lens correction.
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I use the NIK suite professionally and have zero problem with using a third party editor/plugin. It is no different than exporting to pshop for final sizing & color space conversion, and just part of my workflow.

I can attest to this with one caveat- The Nik plugins save the files as monstrous TIFFs. Huge pain in the butt.

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It's a shame that Apple has dropped developing Aperture. Adobe needs the competition (on the Mac side anyway) to keep them on their toes.

But Aperture will recognize FACES! Can Adobe? This magical technology has revolutionized me!

 

[MonkeySee....]

Just having a browse on the Aperture videos on the Apple website and they still showing a video where you can see the mobileme icon in the "upload to facebook & flickr" video.

Instead of redoing the vid to get rid of that I reckon they are waiting for the update an will release new help vids?

 

[Razeus]

I can attest to this with one caveat- The Nik plugins save the files as monstrous TIFFs. Huge pain in the butt.

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But Aperture will recognize FACES! Can Adobe? This magical technology has revolutionized me!

Apple's Faces are just a fancy tag. Which LR does really well. Just because Adobe doesn't throw a box around someone's face doesn't mean I can't tell who's in the photo. It's just another feature "fluff" instead of adding real features.

 

[MattSepeta]

Apple's Faces are just a fancy tag. Which LR does really well. Just because Adobe doesn't throw a box around someone's face doesn't mean I can't tell who's in the photo. It's just another feature "fluff" instead of adding real features.

I was being sarcastic, and I totally agree.

Fluff feature that is well suited for iPhoto, not so much for Aperture.

Seems to me that the main areas LR is whomping Aperture's butt are:

-Shadow/highlight recovery. LR can recover gobs of detail. With Aperture you may as well be working with a JPG.

-Sharpening and noise reduction are a bit better on LR.

-Native Lens correction in LR. Duh

 

[snberk103]

Apple's Faces are just a fancy tag. Which LR does really well. Just because Adobe doesn't throw a box around someone's face doesn't mean I can't tell who's in the photo. It's just another feature "fluff" instead of adding real features.

With respect, I disagree with this statement. I think... if Aperture's Faces is the same as iPhoto's Faces then it is way more than just a box around a face. Faces uses facial recognition technology to go hunting for faces in photos you have not yet tagged and compares them to faces you have already tagged. Once you have tagged and corrected a few faces it can be frighteningly accurate. In iPhoto Faces has found and identified a couple of relatives in framed pictures on the wall in the background in a couple of shots I had. And Lr has nothing like it.

I agree that generally speaking, if you are working with current images, it is just as easy to identify and tag people as you import. And at that point the Lr tag is the same as the Faces tag. But Lr doesn't have the Facial Recognition ability to search all your images for faces it knows.

In one project I did I scooped a couple thousand photos of my young relatives from their FaceBook pages. Of course I had created Folders for each "victim's" account, but even then there was a lot of overlap of the relatives into each other's FB pages. Once I had them all imported into iPhoto, and tagged by FB account I then let the Faces technology loose on the collection and quickly added all the face tags for the relatives who appeared in photos from multiple FB. At the last minute I needed to find all the photos where a non-relative appeared. Because I hadn't tagged them on import, I simply asked Faces to find all instances of that face.. and it worked really well. Within a couple of days I had every face that appeared in everyone of those couple thousand photos tagged with a name or an "Unknown".

With that said, once I had them tagged in iPhoto I then imported specific sets into Lightroom to work with since that is my application of choice. But... don't dismiss Faces...it is much more than just a tag.

All of this is assuming that Faces in Aperture is the same as Faces in iPhoto.

I keep iPhoto specifically for a couple of features that Lightroom does not have.... Faces is one of them.

 

[farbRausch]

I've been using Aperture the last few weeks more than usual. Actually, there are only two things I would like to have:
- More options for bw conversions. Not just R,G,B. Give me a 'pipette' for the b&w adjustment to pick a certain tone and adjust it. I believe LR can already do this.
- Using a brush mask for several adjustments. I don't tweak my images heavy, but when I do I'm working on a critical section (e.g. the sky/foreground exceeded the dynamic range of my camera). In this case I use several adjustments(Enhance, Exposure, Burn, Darken etc) and have to select the same image section over and over again.

This is not a big issue, but would be quite useful and would save some time:
- Basic features for putting text into images
- Taking two images put them side by side and be able to export it. I like to do this, but atm have to export both images, open another program save it again etc.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

- Using a brush mask for several adjustments. I don't tweak my images heavy, but when I do I'm working on a critical section (e.g. the sky/foreground exceeded the dynamic range of my camera). In this case I use several adjustments(Enhance, Exposure, Burn, Darken etc) and have to select the same image section over and over again.

I have not tried this myself, but have read about it on other forums and it appears to work. It's a bit of a kludge, but handy for those times when you truly need the same "mask".

http://sdaven.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/brush-mask-lift-and-stamp.html

 

[VirtualRain]

I was being sarcastic, and I totally agree.

Fluff feature that is well suited for iPhoto, not so much for Aperture.

Seems to me that the main areas LR is whomping Aperture's butt are:

-Shadow/highlight recovery. LR can recover gobs of detail. With Aperture you may as well be working with a JPG.

-Sharpening and noise reduction are a bit better on LR.

-Native Lens correction in LR. Duh

I recently compared Aperture, Lightroom, and Capture One in a thread here and I have to disagree with you on the shadow/highlight recovery. All are capable tools and both can recover poorly exposed areas in photos, it's just a matter of learning the controls.

LR definitely has the best high ISO NR but it doesn't appear to offer any automatic NR as part of the RAW conversion which can create work and is not as convenient as the other tools which offer camera specific settings for NR during the RAW conversion.

It's unforgivable that Aperture lacks lens correction, but thankfully the PTLens plugin is there for Aperture stalwarts until this is addressed.

I've been using Aperture the last few weeks more than usual. Actually, there are only two things I would like to have:
- More options for bw conversions. Not just R,G,B. Give me a 'pipette' for the b&w adjustment to pick a certain tone and adjust it. I believe LR can already do this.
- Using a brush mask for several adjustments. I don't tweak my images heavy, but when I do I'm working on a critical section (e.g. the sky/foreground exceeded the dynamic range of my camera). In this case I use several adjustments(Enhance, Exposure, Burn, Darken etc) and have to select the same image section over and over again.

This is not a big issue, but would be quite useful and would save some time:
- Basic features for putting text into images
- Taking two images put them side by side and be able to export it. I like to do this, but atm have to export both images, open another program save it again etc.

If you haven't already, I would recommend you investigate NIK's suite which recently went on sale. It's an essential companion to Aperture in my opinion and would probably resolve all of your concerns and more about B&W and local adjustments. It's u-point technology makes local adjustments a breeze... It's MUCH faster and provides better results than you get with painting since it's essentially a tonal mask. Although you still need to adjust each image, it's super fast point-and-click.

I don't have much to add on your last two points unfortunately... those definitely qualify as image composite work, even if it is pretty basic, and goes beyond what photo adjustment and cataloging apps like LR and Aperture are designed for.

 

[farbRausch]

I have not tried this myself, but have read about it on other forums and it appears to work. It's a bit of a kludge, but handy for those times when you truly need the same "mask".

http://sdaven.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/brush-mask-lift-and-stamp.html

If you haven't already, I would recommend you investigate NIK's suite which recently went on sale. It's an essential companion to Aperture in my opinion and would probably resolve all of your concerns and more about B&W and local adjustments. It's u-point technology makes local adjustments a breeze... It's MUCH faster and provides better results than you get with painting since it's essentially a tonal mask. Although you still need to adjust each image, it's super fast point-and-click.

I don't have much to add on your last two points unfortunately... those definitely qualify as image composite work, even if it is pretty basic, and goes beyond what photo adjustment and cataloging apps like LR and Aperture are designed for.

Thank you both for pointing this out. But alas, I'm still a student and don't want to spent too much money on software(rather on good glass). Hence, I will wait what happens to Aperture.