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Here are some quick impressions of Aperture...
My hardware configuration is a 1.25GHz Aluminum Powerbook with an ATI 9600 Mobility GPU. This is the absolute bottom configuration that Aperture will run on. So far performance is acceptable but noticeably slow in a few cases -- I don't think that this is surprising given my hardware -- I already knew it was painfully slow at other tasks. I've put my Aperture library on a 7200RPM external disk, which is definitely helping.
I've been using iPhoto 5 til now. I haven't used Photoshop or any of the fancy RAW converters (or even Canon's DPP package or that matter). My general impression is that things are a bit more responsive than iPhoto on the same pictures.
Due to disk space limitations on my internal drive, I was copying off my iPhoto libraries to the external disk after burning them to DVD. So I've been importing these libraries into Aperture. It takes roughly an hour to do a DVD sized photo library full of Canon Digital Rebel XT highest quality JPEGs. The import can run in the background and doesn't totally pound the CPU, so I can still work while I am waiting.
The big issues being raised in the dpreview and Rob Gailbraith forums are related to the quality of the RAW conversion and the control of white balancing. I haven't gotten to the iPhoto libaries that have RAW images in them (iPhoto didn't support the XT RAW's until 10.4.3 came out), so I can't comment on these issues yet, and I might not be able to since I don't have another RAW converter to compare against. Some people are also complaining about the Aperture library "file" which is really an OS X package, which is really just a directory. So you'll be able to get stuff out of there if you need to, and it means that you'll be able to use UNIX tools and scripts to do stuff if absolutely necessary.
The organizing / rating / searching workflow is a lot better than iPhoto, and there are tons of keyboard shortcuts. The support for dual displays is nice -- I have it set to what's called Alternate, which shows a single image on the Powerbook display regardless of what I'm doing on the main display. I was hardly doing any adjustments to my pictures using iPhoto, and it seems that Aperture has all the adjustments that I actually know how to use. Not coming from Photoshop, I guess I don't know what I'm missing.
Things that I know I am immediately going to miss (and yes, these are not "pro" features, I understand that):
1. Frasier Spier's excellent FlickrExport plugin for uploading to Flickr. I guess I am going to have to figure out how to use the official Flickr uploader for a while.
2. Integration with the OS X screensaver
I got my copy through a friend at Apple, so I didn't pay full price. Given that my hardware is at the botttom of the pile, I'm pretty happy so far. It sure beats iPhoto, which is all I really have to benchmark against. I'll probably have to wait till tomorrow to get to my RAW's and see whether I can find any problems there. The big problem I really wanted solved is the organization/searching problem, and I think I'm going to be almost completely happy there. A secondary problem is the managing insufficient disk space problem, and here it's a sideways move. We'll have to see how that really turns out in actual usage. There's still a whole bunch of stuff that I haven't tried, so I'm sure there will be more posts on this.
I wish they could internet-deliver this stuff. I mean, they deliver 2Gb DVD images for Mac OS X seeds, so they can do it. I'd rather give Apple £5 to cover the bandwidth than give £10 to a carrier and sit waiting.
I shall spend the weekend twiddling my thumbs :-)
Posted by Fraser Speirs at Thu Dec 1 01:22:42 2005
I don't have another RAW converter to compare against
You should have both DPP and ImageBrowser's Raw Image Task (RIT) - they came with the camera. RIT will produce essentially the exact same result that you get in-camera... it's a software emulation of the Digic-II chip (except for JPEG compression).
DPP 2.0 is pretty nice. Maybe a bit slow on the conversion, but with the 2.0 version DPP has now stepped into the big leagues.
If you're willing to download:
The SilkyPix RAW-file processor has a "free" mode. SilkyPix is particularly interesting if you like "punchy" pictures with a lot of contrast, color saturation, and sharpness - SilkyPix can do that quite easily and without making your picture look overprocessed.
Another no-cost alternative is dcraw, which is a command-line tool. Well, "tool" is almost a strong word for it - dcraw is the open-source RAW-file conversion routine used by many RAW-file programs, and it comes with a simple but effective command-line wrapper :-)
Of course the big guns are the proprietary programs that come with a pricetag: Capture One, DxO Optics Pro, and Bibble come to mind. And of course PhotoShop (CS2) and PhotoShop Elements (3 or 4), with the Adobe Camera Raw plugin.
Posted by Doug at Thu Dec 1 10:24:58 2005
Posted by rick at Sat Dec 3 20:41:40 2005
Posted by rick at Sat Dec 3 20:44:33 2005
You're right. I just starting using iPhoto when I got the Canon and never looked much at the included software, so I tend not to think about it. Most of the commentary that I've read has focused on Capture One and Photoshop, etc.
I haven't seen anything noticeable on the small number of RAW's that I've shot so far. But I wouldn't claim to be particulary discriminating.
Posted by Ted Leung at Sun Dec 4 18:18:42 2005
I really like the workflow aspects of Aperture, although I am seeing some performance hiccups here and there. I've been having some problems with my Firewire disk, so I've been forced to use the Powerbook's internal 4200rpm disk until I can get those issues resolved (not until after I get back from my trip), and the drop from 7200rpm to 4200rpm is hugely noticeable.
I have have seen some issues with white balancing - so I think I'll need to get a grey card to really sort out what's going on there.
As far as the contents of the library package, this post http://www.majid.info/mylos/stories/2005/12/01/apertureInternals.html
has some of the best detail I've seen so far.
Posted by Ted Leung at Sun Dec 4 18:26:26 2005
its convincing me to hold off - my workflow isn't as pretty, nor is my metadata that rich, but it works.
I do like the notion of "stacks" of related images, the transformation layers are nothing new (we had versions in PSA 1.0).
It seems like Aperture is the first attempt at a "pro" version of PhotoShop Album. The only unique thing I've seen so far is the "loupe" metaphor.
Too bad Adobe got so distracted by the low-end of the market for a workflow tool that they neglected the high-end.
Posted by rick at Mon Dec 5 10:26:53 2005
Posted by rick at Mon Dec 5 10:36:14 2005
Posted by James at Tue Dec 6 09:51:29 2005
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