Apple announces Aperture

I've been dissapointed in Adobe's slow evolution of Bridge into a full image management app. I have tried IView and Portfolio and ended up less than satisfied with either app. I now just manage my files on my HD's and use Bridge which is slow, to navigate.

Aperture looks very promissing and has some features that I would love to use like the book layout options, "Vault" system for backing up files to external HD's which I like better the making backup DVD's. I have been waiting for a "Pro" version of iPhoto and I guess my wait is over. I just hope the RAW converter is fantastic or at least better than CS2.

Keith

Pretty good article here:

Apple's Photo Op, Abobe's Frown

On Wednesday, Apple Computer (AAPL:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) introduced Aperture, new digital-image-editing software targeted at professional photographers.

 

Although Apple touted the fact that the new program will work well with Photoshop, Adobe's program that dominates the photo-editing market, the new software has the potential to carve into Adobe's cash cow...

 

But, perhaps more pertinently, earlier this decade Apple displaced Adobe in the digital-video-editing market when it introduced a rival program.

 

"Adobe is just getting slammed" with competition, says software analyst Chris Swenson at NPD Group. Although Swenson doubts Aperture will knock Photoshop off its pedestal, Apple has an opportunity to grab a significant piece of the market.

 

"Apple is Adobe's most serious competitor in the creative space. They create amazing software," he says.

 

For now, Adobe is minimizing the potential threat. Aperture is just one of a number of programs developed to handle specific tasks that Photoshop doesn't yet address, Kevin Connor, Adobe's director of product management for digital imaging, said in an email statement....much more

Jack

We definitely need a news item about this - with a link to this thread.

Pretty good article here:

 

Apple's Photo Op, Abobe's Frown

Good article. Right now I would see using Aperture for my RAW conversion and Management of images AND Photoshop for more creative editing. My only worry would be that 5 years from now, Adobe abandoning the development of Photoshop on the Mac platform like they did with Premire. Then again if that happens Aperture, hopefully, would be a full fledged Photoshop Killer App.

Keith

For me, the real interest is that Apple quite clearly see a substantial market amongst photographers for Raw processing software. As a Mac user since 1990 I have found Macs to be pretty reliable and most Apple software to be very usable. I'll have to upgrade some of my machines to run Aperture but most certainly will do so! Interesting to note that it supports Adobe's DNG format too!

"Right now I would see using Aperture for my RAW conversion and Management of images AND Photoshop for more creative editing."

Keith your right on with the above statement. This is not intended to replace Photoshop.

"My only worry would be that 5 years from now, Adobe abandoning the development of Photoshop on the Mac platform like they did with Premire."

Rumors have it, and I'm betting it's true, that Apple already has a Photoshop killer app developed. The release of Aperture may just be a shot fired across Adobe's bow to encourage them to continue to develop for the Mac. Steve is too smart to allow software companies that are mainstream to abandon his baby. I think this is something he did to Microsoft as well when he released Keynote which is much better that Powerpoint IMHO. You can bet if Microsoft stopped developing Office for the Mac, Steve would release a competitve product that is probably alreday on the shelf somewhere in Cupertino.

http://www.apple.com/aperture/specs.html

You guys might want to scan through this before you start lambasting the program...

There are a lot of features previously unthought of in other RAW tools...

Almost makes me wish I could afford all the necessities buying a full-fledged Mac would require...

~Matt Segal

Oh man, I'm all over that. And the new dual-dualcores.

 

I'll stroll on over to our campus bookstore and kick the tires in a couple of days (got to love that faculty discount).

 

Herb: I suspect that curves adjustment is in there, but not called by that name. I'll look into it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Mate...no sales tax too... say can you get another one por mi?

Aperture definitely looks like a Bridge replacement.

From the tech specs:

"Seamless Photoshop integration

One-click export directly into Photoshop as .PSD or TIFF

Native support for flattened or single-layer .PSD files

Manage Photoshop-generated image versions"

In other words, files modified in Photoshop may be managed as versions linked to the original. I could use this sort of organization.

-Brad

Aperture definitely looks like a Bridge replacement.

 

-Brad

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

IMHO it's not hard to be better than Bridge.

Apple is the king of marketing hype. The first two bullets under Image Processing are:

- Non-destructive image processing

- Master image becomes locked digital negative

Translation: we don't write over the original raw files

I for one am looking forward to getting Aperature. I love photoshop, but it doesn't solve my problems managing 50,000 images now on multiple hard drives and backup dvds. My next purchase though will be to upgrade my 5 year old desktop to an modern system, my 12" powerbook is also 2 years old and run Aperature it won't.

As far as Adobe is concerned, Apple should buy them lock stock and barrel, just as they did with Video software companies before Final Cut Pro was released.

Doug

I saw a presentation yesterday at the Photos Plus Expo in New York City on Aperture. The main emphasis of the program is sorting, organizing and selection of images. As mentioned it has basic editing functions as well and some nice output (web page, book & album).

One of the neat tools is the Loupe, you can place the loupe over any image on the light table or even in the thumbnails. The loupe gives a 100% view of the selectable image area.

Images can be easily grouped into "stacks" which can be done manually or automatically based on exposure time stamp. Once in the stacks functions can easily be perfomed on all of the images in the stack.

Another article comparing Aperture to other digital asset management programs:

It Enquirer

Aperture competing with Adobe, and many others

 

Aperture will be competing directly --albeit a subset only-- with the capabilities and features of Photoshop CS2. No doubt about that, and regardless of what Adobe may have to say. But Aperture competes with other applications as well. For example, with Digital Asset Management software.

 

We can be short on the Photoshop features in Aperture. There are features which you will also find in Photoshop, but they’re limited to photo correction. For example, Aperture comes with highlights and shadows correction tools, patch brushes and red eye correction, but it lacks filters like the lens flare or lighting filters, to name only these two.

 

Nevertheless, professional photographers in journalism, fashion and any other “market†where the photo by itself is the art form, will take a good, thorough look at Aperture. That we can bet our lives on. Photographers for whom the art part starts with processing the photo in Photoshop, will find Aperture interesting, but little more.

 

But Photoshop isn’t the only sort of application Aperture aims at. Celartem/Extensis Portfolio, iView Multimedia, Canto Cumulus, and many other vendors developing digital asset management (DAM) tools will feel the impact of Aperture’s “natural†way of doing things. Rather coincidentally, Extensis has only just announced Portfolio 8 and iView MediaPro 3.

 

Let’s take a look at what is new in those DAM applications, and then compare their capabilities to Aperture’s....much more

Jack

Aperture pretty much altered all my plans, as I currently use IView Mediapro for image cataloging, Photoshop/ACR for raw processing, and an increasingly anemic 1 GHz Powerbook to run it all. IView is going to release version 3.0 fairly soon (in about 10 days I think), which will cost me about as much as Aperture would cost. I have become increasingly frustrated by the integration I can get between IView and Photoshop, particularly using IView to add/edit keywords to IPTC. Unless IView has made some HUGE changes and improvements, I don't see it holding a candle to Aperture.

At least IView 3.0 would (probably, slowly) run on "old creaky" here, while to run Aperture I'm going to have to buy a G5-class machine. If I'm planning to make the new machine last about 3 years (as the PBook has), then I'm probably going to have to go for either the 2.7 GHz dualcore, or the dual-dual.

I imagine this is Apple's plan. If so, mastercard thanks you Apple, but my wife may not

I watched the 3 photog videos last night hoping to get a quicker download (took a number min for each) - looks very cool but I am a > 20 year Mac user (still have my 'fat Mac' (what it was called in the fall of 84) bought with a student discount/loan - the second model with 512K of RAM) so have a slight bias. However, I suspect it may be rather slow on the 1.33 GHz G4 17†laptop I am now using as my main computer.

Since it is called aperture, a silly name IMHO, I was wondering if the major versions would be released as multiples of the square root of 2 (i.e., 2 raised to integer value powers: 2 to the 0 power, 2 to the 1 power, 2 to the 2 power, 2 to the 3 power, etc.) as has been standard for many years for camera lens apertures, 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, etc.... !!!!

Tom

There's talk of Aperture not supporting custom camera profiles like C1 or 20/20.

Will be interesting if Apple fails to implement this feature. I guess we'll know in 6 weeks.

Very interesting... I will wait to upgrade my powerbook when they start shipping with intels next year and will consider this too.

After viewing the very slick presentation on Apple's site, I would order Aperture in a hearbeat just to escape Bridge, except that this step of my workflow is usually done on the boat using a G4 laptop and is usually finished before it ever makes it to my G5 at home. Aperture requires a faster G4 or G5 meaning I'll need to spend at least $?? grand more for the new laptop when its available. Having just ordered the D2X and shopping for a housing, yikes, this is getting expensive. I'm going to have to change one of my favorite sayings "Nothing another $5000 can't fix" to "Nothing another $10,000 can't fix". I guess I'm going to have to get a real job.

Its interesting that my first version of Adobe Photoshop version 1.2 was delivered on a couple of 128 kb floppy discs. Aperture takes 5 Gb. How things change!

A G5 is "recommended" not required. Look on the Apple website for hardware requirements.

Jack

A G5 is "recommended" not required. Look on the Apple website for hardware requirements.

Yep, you're right, but my G4 laptop is still too slow at 1 GHz. I wonder how fast it will run on the minimum required 1.25 GHz machine.