Customer Reviews

Apple Aperture 1.5 [Old Version]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As mentioned around the web in various places, the updates in 1.5 (and 1.5.1) are significant. One the the most important updates is the the ability to manage referenced files (as apposed to importing files into the library directly).

I work with RAW files from my Nikon D200 which average around 10mb each. I currently have nearly 4 thousand photos in my library. Aperture keeps the thumbnails for the originals (masters) in a vault on my MacBook Pro while I store the actual raw files on a collection of external Raid 1 drives. The new tools in 1.5 make it easy to migrate images from my laptop to external drives and back as well as backup the entire Aperture database. The local thumbnails let me find images I want without having to mount each of my external drives. I can find the photo I want and pull up where the raw version is currently stored.

As one of the others mentioned, go ahead and give LightRoom from Adobe a try, and while your at it give the free 30 day trial of Aperture a go as well. If you work with a lot of images especially from a mobile platform you will love Aperture.

I worked with both back to back and found the Lightroom interface cumbersome and annoying at times. The stepwise workflow of Lightroom seems to be focused on the development process of a single photo. Aperture on the other hand makes it feel very natural to make quick adjustments or add metadata to a full shoot of photos without the extra fuss of switching modes. Features such as stacks and the Loupe tool are indispensable when organizing many similar photos.

In the end I would give Aperture 5 stars except I believe it should not be so ram hungry. With 2GB of ram in my 2.33Ghz MacBook Pro the performance is acceptable but it does not leave much memory for running other applications. Based on the performance updates in 1.5.1 I think the Apple developers may wring some more performance out of this application yet -- when that happens a 5th star may be in order. And as for Lightroom, I am sure that if Adobe thought it was actually ready for prime time it would not still be in beta.

When I purchased my MacBook Pro I had no intention of switching to Aperture, but downloaded it and tried it out of curiosity. I have since sold my Lightroom license and am purchasing Aperture. There are specific reasons for that decision.

First, I really like the feel of Aperture 1.5 better than Lightroom, it is more intuitive to me, and the whole project thing with light tables works great. I have ~10,000 images that I never did get organized with Lightroom and was able to do so in the first few days on Aperture.

The intergration with other apps on the Mac is great - Aperture 1.5 (not 1.0) creates hi-res previews of all my images (see speed note below) and I can work away from my files to update my website, email proofs, design, etc. I keep all my photos on an external drive and leave them at home with me. When I am out of the house working, which is most days, I have my entire library with me without filling up my MacBook Harddrive. Once I need the hi-res file to either edit or send to a customer, I plug back in at home and work seamlessl. With lightroom I was not able to work unless the files were with me.

I had expected Aperture to be slow, but it is not slow. It is very comparable to lightroom, really no difference to mention. There is ONE RALLY BIG CAVEAT ABOUT SPEED with aperture -- when I imported those 10,000 images, the import seem to go fast, maybe 20 minutes or so. BUT, it is not done at this point. In the background Aperture is creating thumbnails and hi-res previews (which can be shut off, but I need them). That is alot of processing for any program, and in the background it ran for HOURS, without me knowing. When I closed Aperture it paused the process, when I restarted Aperture it resumed the process, so for the first few days that I used it, the speed was slow. Then I realized what was going on -- look in the window menu for SHOW TASK LIST, and you will see the progress.

If others did not know this was going on and tried to get immediately to work in Aperture, they would think it was very slow. I wonder how many people have dumped thousands of photos in and used it for 30 minutes and then uninstalled it assuming it was slow? Lightroom handled this much better, showing the progress in the corner and also was faster by default with the 1:1 preview turned off.

In conclusion, Aperture works great for me on my MacBook Pro 17". I love it and I'm sticking with it. I do miss the vibrabce slider from lightroom, no question, and the develop module in lightroom is better, though not enough to stop me. I jump to photoshop cs3 when I need the vibrance controls.

The best advice I can offer when making the decision between Lightroom and Aperture (or others) is spend the 30 days with them and see which one gets you WORKING and getting things done. For me, that is Aperture.

I've been working in both Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom, and though I really like Lightroom's simplicity and design, I have to say that Aperture wins out in terms of image file management, which is very important for me as a wedding photographer.

Aperture is a little harder to learn because it's more fully featured than Lightroom, at least for now it is. Both applications offer very similiar features, but the smart folder and keywording features of Aperture are for more useful than the Collection features of Lightroom.

Aperture is less linear than Lightroom. You can work in various different moduals without having to switch back and forth between gallery and digital development moduels like in Lightroom.

I also like what Apple is trying to do with the solutions workflow in Aperture. It's almost possible to complete an entire wedding project without having to leave out of Aperture, except to do additional enhancement work in Photoshop or for laying out an album. Aperture has an album layout and creation feature but its printed albums are not as high end as you find outside the program.

Both Aperture and Lightroom have their pros and cons, but for now Aperture is still head of the game in terms of digital asset management (or DAM, as it's popularly called.)

I've been using Aperture for about three months now and can only say that the transition has been amazing. Aperture comes with a free training DVD (watch on your TV or computer) which really helps you learn how to get the most out of the software.

I've gone from someone who only rarely edited photos due to the hassle of making duplicate copies, firing up Photoshop, wasting extra hard drive space, etc. to someone who edits more than half of my photos. Aperture only saves the recipe used to create the changes to your photos, but doesn't make a copy when you edit - this means no wasted space, no wasted quality, and the changes are extremely easy to modify or revert later. The ease with which photos can be edited and organized in this program is phenomenal! Features such as stacks (groups of similar images with only the top one showing) and the vault (to backup your Aperture library with one click!) are wonderful. If you really want to use Photoshop, Aperture even lets you send files to it for editing with one click, and as soon as you save from Photoshop, they come right back into Aperture with the changes!

The only drawback of this software that I can see is the CPU and graphics horsepower it requires. I use it on a 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook with 1.5 GB of RAM, and it works well enough on JPEG images; but feed it a bunch of RAW files from my 8 MP camera and it takes its sweet time! I'm sure this would run much better on a modern Intel based Mac. If your computer is any slower than mine, I wouldn't bother. But anything from mine on up should be fine.

Come on - order your copy today! ;-)

I hated 1.0. It was slow and buggy. It forced you to store all your files in a single library on a single disk. The editing tools ranged from extremely difficult to impossible to use. It was incredibly expensive

This latest release is what we were originally promised. The editing tools actually work. In fact, I find myself very rarely using external editing programs any more. You can use files that are referenced on other drives or even CDs or DVDs. The stacks are a usable tool. Some dangerous shortcut key combinations were revised. RAW file rendering is better. It runs like lightning, especially on the Intel Macs. It is reasonably priced.

I have used Adobe Lightroom (beta), iView, Extensis, and several others. Aperture is now the best. Lightroom has some serious catching up to do. Several features have not been implemented yet, and we do not have a timetable for commercial release. And it is now much slower than Aperture. iView needs to learn how to handle larger catalogs and fix its stability problems. Extensis Portfolio is just showing its age.

Update, now that Lightroom has been released:

In general, I find that Aperture performs most tasks faster than Lightroom. That said, it is hard to choose between the two now that all of Lightroom's features are working. I have become used to Aperture's workflow and so I prefer it, possibly out of habit. Note also that the new iPhone will synchronize with Aperture folders. Aperture exchanges files easily with iPhoto '07 and '08.

Importing new files is fast, especially if you are using an ExpressCard port or FireWire 800. Aperture creates thumbnails immediately and then begins producing larger display JPGs, which can be a time consuming process. Aperture does not interface with tools like DxO Professional and provides no serious batch processing tools of its own. DxO Pro will crash if it tries to open files that are currently being displayed in Aperture. However, this is not a serious problem. You could, in fact, automate a workflow that imports files from a watch folder, sends them to DxO, and imports the resulting files into the correct project. This means that there is little reason to use anything but Adobe RAW in Aperture. You can archive your original RAW files and keep the much smaller Adobe RAW files to work with in Aperture. If you really need a camera RAW file, just retrieve it from your archives and import it into Aperture.

I generally do not like an Aperture library of more than about 10,000 files, as it starts taking too long to load, so I create a new library when my library exceeds that. The "manage files" window still needs some work. Links can and do get lost in the ordinary course of things and the "manage files" window is supposed to help you restore them. Unfortunately, it is a little too confusing and it does not always work. A better "manage files" window is probably the only item on my wish list for version 2.0.

There are some interesting tools for automating your workflow in Aperture available now from third parties for free or a very low price. Some allow creation of a "watch folder" that automatically imports photos from your camera and displays them as they are taken -- very useful for studio work. You would also need your camera's image capture software, of course.

There are not enough books on using Aperture effectively. However, most of what is written about Lightroom or Capture NX workflows applies equally well to Aperture.

I have been using Aperture since version 1.1, and love it. The few issues/disappointments I had were resolved with version 1.5.x.

In terms of my camera, it is Nikon's top-of-the-line D2X. As such, the RAW files that Aperture has to deal with are large 12-megapixel images. And Aperture handles said images with ease. (Bear in mind that I am running Aperture on a first-generation MacBook Pro 17" laptop.)

I also evaluated Adobe Lightroom -- both during Beta and after the 1.0 release -- and it is also a great program. But I much prefer Aperture's UI, as it does not "get in the way" as much as Lightroom's does. (Having to switch between Lightroom's various modules -- Library, Develop, etc. -- tends to impede my workflow.)

My personal preferences aside, both Aperture and Lightroom are outstanding applications. The only caveat is that both require powerful hardware when working with large RAW files.

Bottom line, you may want to download the trial version of each, to see which is more comfortable. Otherwise, at least as of this writing (Aperture 1.5.x vs. Lightroom 1.0.x), both are evenly matched feature-wise.

As a professional photographer, I was thrilled when Aperture came out. It was just the push I needed to finally switch over to Apple computers. I've spent the better part of 7 months using the product to manage workflow for sports and wedding assignments.

At first, using Aperture was helpful. It clipped large amounts of time from my workflow, and it has a lot of cool things like the Loupe built into it... but I found that a lot of them were just toys, not usable tools. The interface lacks that Apple intuitiveness and seems to always need more steps than necessary. Using it in conjunction with Photoshop slowed both programs to a standstill. Worst of all, it always wanted to create more thumbnails than necessary. I could understand doing a before and after thumbnail, but if I made an adjustment like a crop with their tools, then also a Photoshop adjustment, pretty soon I was looking at three thumbnails, not two, and to make it worse, if I had rated the adjusted file and then did a search by ratings, all I got in the search results were the unedited results, not the retouched versions. In addition, the internal image adjustment tools don't have the same crispness that the corresponding Photoshop tools have.

When Adobe Lightroom came out, it was a revelation. The image adjustment tools behave like the full Photoshop versions, it's faster, makes batch changes simpler to do, and it even allows you to work on the early files of an import from a card reader while the rest of the images are still uploading. When you consider that Lightroom is also PC compatible, it opens it up to a lot more users. If most of your adjustments are just color and exposure corrections, you'll never even need to open Photoshop anymore, instead of the co-existing that Aperture forces you into.

I've retired Aperture on my main machine, and installed Lightroom on both of my computers, one of which never had Aperture. My workflow now takes 1/4th of the time it did on Aperture. I realize that this reads as much like a Lightroom review as an Aperture one, but I don't think you can discuss the one product without comparing it to the other. If you need to, download the free demos of each of them and see for yourself-- Adobe beat Apple at their signature style: their product is simpler, more intuitive, and more elegant.

I wanted a raw converter that allowed sufficient control and adjustments so that I could avoid the use of another program for printing (e.g. photoshop). Aperture provided that and eliminated the use of iView Media Pro as my photo organizer. I tried Lightroom but Adobe cleverly left out some adjustment controls (sharpening) so that you still needed Photoshop. (Gee, I wonder why ?) With the demise of iView since it was bought by Microsoft, Aperture has filled the bill. I tried Bibble but it was not able to make conversions of high key photos.

I've used just about all the tools out there and I have to say that this one is really, really great. Some people complain about the user interface, but it's the user interface that makes this a rock-star product to me. With no manual or instruction of any type, I was up and running with Aperture within hours of installing it and importing my 50+ gig worth of RAW photos. On my MacBook Pro (core duo), Aperture is acceptably speedy processing large RAW files from my Canon EOS 5D. I now take my laptop to the field with me and feel that my workflow has never been better or faster. I can't wait for version 2. It can only get better and better.

Apple has again outdone themselves and created a terrific tool for organizing and cataloging photographs. There is a small learning curve, as to be expected with any product that provides so much flexibilty, but the user's manual that came with the product is excellent and walks you through everything you need to know - easily and understandably. Some of the best money I've ever spent.