I’ve been a fan of Aperture ever since its first version. Despite some dabbling in Lightroom I’ve always stayed true to Aperture and I was very enthusiastic when the latest version was released. While I think it is a great piece of software, and while I still prefer it overall to Lightroom, lately it’s really been bugging the life out of me. Why? I hear you ask. Well, It’s not the performance issues that some have reported. I was lucky enough not to experience any major issues on that front. I also haven’t had any of the stability issues that others have reported either. My version seems to run fine. The problem is that Apple changed something fundamental in Aperture 3 and they have, in my opinion, ruined the software.
Tag Archives: Software
Aperture 3 vs Lightroom 3 Beta 2 Noise Reduction
Over on my Aperture Blog, I have a comparison of the noise reduction abilities of Aperture 3 and Lightroom 3 beta 2. Check it out here.
Hands on with the New Aperture 3 Adjustments
I’ve been playing around with the new adjustments options in Aperture 3 and I’m really impressed. Here’s an example. It’s a pretty bland image to start with.
Note the sky is completely burned out. The recovery slider would only bring it back in so far, but thanks to the new extended range curves adjustment I was able to recover much more of the sky. Here’s the final result after playing around for about half an hour:
I used multiple instances of adjustments and lots of brushing to get this result. It’s not perfect by any means but it’s far more interesting than the original. Here’s a quick breakdown of what I did. I’ve put a screenshot of the full adjustments panel and if you click through you can see it full res. As you can see, I added lots and lots of adjustments to try and push it. It never slowed down or crashed on me, and remained very responsive despite stacking on more and more.
The first thing I did was add a black and white adjustment. I didn’t really touch the settings on this, as it was fine for what I wanted. I then added an extended range curves adjustment and recovered more of the sky. I also darkened it down a bit. As it was darkening the whole Image I chose to paint the curves in and painted over the sky with a large soft edge brush.
First Impressions of Aperture 3
I’ve only had a little time to play around with Aperture 3 (as I’m still recovering from a fairly serious illness) but I thought I’d post my first impressions. I had installed the trial version on my laptop and when the boxed version came in the post I put it on my main machine. I should point out that both are about two years old. My laptop is a core2duo 2.4ghz and my desktop is a 24″ iMac 2.4ghz. In no particular order then here are some thoughts on the software:
Performance seems to have been much improved since the previous version overall. They seem to have implemented a tiling system, where as a low res version is loaded first and adjustments are made to that, and then if you choose to zoom in a higher res version is generated. It speeds up performance in general, but if it’s doing anything in the background it can take a little while to generate the full res version which can be a bit of a pain.
The whole interface looks like it’s been redone. Everything looks much more polished than the previous version. Icons are much clearer and text is more readable. There are some really nice features in fullscreen mode too. If you are making adjustments you can hold down the shift key (I think it was the shift key) and the rest of the adjustment hud fades out so you’re left with just the adjustment you’re working on. One cool thing they’ve added is the ability to see a focus point overlay. This basically shows your cameras focus points and highlights the one that was selected when you took the picture.
Top 10 New Features of Aperture 3
Aperture 3 is an amazing upgrade. People had begun to worry about the future of the software, as it was two years since the last version came out, but I can see now that they’ve been doing some major work under the hood. I feel silly for doubting Apple’s commitment to the product now. What I find interesting though is that some of the features Apple has chosen to highlight as part of the marketing bumph, namely places and faces, while understandable from a marketing point of view, are not the software’s greatest additions. They really have put a lot of thought into this release and it addresses pretty much all the concerns most people had about it. It more than bridges the gap with Lightroom. There are so many new features though that it can be difficult to get your head around all of them. So then, here are my top ten, in reverse order !
10. Support for sRaw and mRaw
Owners of Canon’s DSLRs can now use the reduced size RAW format with Aperture. This has long been a bone of contention, as Lightroom had supported this feature. If you own a Canon DSLR with a high megapixel count, now you too can shoot at half the resolution, just the way your Camera manufacturer intended.
9. Import GPS Data from iPhone Photos
WordPress 2.9 is Out
For those of you out there who are running their blogs on WordPress then you probably already know this but 2.9 has been released, and it seems like a major upgrade. Of biggest interest to me is the new image tools (especially for my little photo site!) although there is a lot more they need to do on that front. Anyway, I haven’t heard of many issues with it yet, so I’d say it’s fairly safe to upgrade. I use a lot of plug-ins on this site so I’m a bit weary, but I’ll probably brave it later today.
Apple finally adds support for Nikon D300s and Canon 7D
Apple has finally added Aperture and iPhoto support for the Nikon D300s and a few other cameras including the Canon 7D. Considering the length of time the D300s in particular has been available it seems to have taken the company a long time to get Aperture support for the Camera, leading once again to frustration amongst users with Apple over the pace at which it adds new camera support. Other Cameras now supported in the update include the Eos 1D Mk IV, The Nikon D3s, The Nikon D3000, Canon G11 and the afore mentioned Canon 7D. Even if you’re not an Aperture user and you have one of these cameras (and a mac) you should download the update anyway, as it will add support to Preview and quicklook for their raw files.
Available now in your Software Update panel.
Mac Update Holiday Bundle
Check out MacUpdate Promo Holiday Bundle. I had bought one of their bundle’s before and so keep getting emails whenever they release a new one. I normally don’t pay that much attention to them but there’s some good applications in here for a very low price. Certainly worth getting hold of are PathFinder, Socialite, Drag Thing and Speed Download. Oh, and iPod rip is pretty handy to have too. I was just about to buy socialite as my trial was ending so now I get a bunch of other stuff too! See, sometimes it pays to read your junk mail.
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