What is Aperture?

[kiranmk2]

I'm looking at completing my move to macs by getting a photo manipulation tool. I was all set to get Photoshop Elements (that's what I used on the PC), but I've read some negative things about how it is the PC shoe-horned onto the mac. I hadn't reallt considered Aperture as I didn't really know what it was and had always heard it was more a photo management tool. Having looked at the Apple support page and looked at the video tutorials I'm even more confused as pretty much all the tools (and more) I use in PSE are there - levels, clone, dodge/burn, sharpen etc. I presume it integrates well with iPhoto too. Are there any people who use Aperture as their main editing program (probably people who don't need all the bells and whistles of CS4)?

 

[pprior]

Aperture (at this point at least) is -primarily- an imange management program. Import, organize, keyword, output.

Yes you can do editing, and yes basic editing (levels, contrast, highlight recovery, and others) are non-destructive. However if you need to do pixel level work (cloning, layers, composting) then it's not at all useful.

if most of your "editing" is just adjusting brightness, levels, etc then it will work fine. But if you are doing skin smoothing, composting, etc then you will need something else.

Lightroom (Aperture's primary competition) has added more in the way of editing power as it has matured and I am hopeful that Aperture may do the same.

the demo's on apple's site are pretty good at showing what aperture can do, and there is a demo I believe as well, so try it out.

 

[tripletaker]

Download the trial here to test it out.

I would recommend trying both Lightroom and Aperture to see which one you like more.

Try Lightroom here.

 

[maflynn]

I've alway's likened Aperture to iPhoto's bigger brother. It (aperture) allows for DAM (Digital Asset Management). Within Aperture you organize your images within folders, projects, albums and such. You can create web galleries, books, and printed images. Aperture itself has some very basic editing capabilities.

There's two main photo management apps, Aperture and Lightroom, both offer similar functions. Aperture is a bit stronger in the categorization of images and LightRoom's strengths are editing (hey its from the people who brought you photoshop) and collections.

I used to use Aperture but found Lightroom to be a better fit for my needs.

I'd recommend downloading them and trying them out. Also don't forget about iPhoto, it came with your mac and its a great app.

One final note, both Aperture and Lightroom really shine when you shoot in RAW format. If you primarily use JPG to shoot your images in, then some features may not be available, i.e., easily selecting various automatic whiitepoints etc.