Apple upgrades Aperture ambitions to 2.0

CUPERTINO, Calif.--Apple, why hast thou forsaken me?

That, loosely paraphrased, is what some Aperture customers had been asking after Apple went too long without updating its higher-end photo editing and cataloging software. It got to the point where some were plotting strategies on Apple forums about how to flee to Adobe Systems' rival Photoshop Lightroom software with their photo metadata intact.

On Tuesday, though, Apple came back with the new Aperture 2.0, a version that addressed many common gripes, caught up with Lightroom in several important respects, and signaled that the company hasn't lost interest in the market. On the contrary, a price cut to $199 from $299--also Lightroom's current price--shows Apple wants to expand Aperture's use.

Apple's Aperture is used to edit and catalog photos.

(Credit: Apple)

"There's huge interest from the hobbyist market," said Joe Schorr, Apple's senior product manager of photo applications. "It was clear this was the right price to make that more palatable to them."

He said Apple's October 2007 market research showed 54 percent of iPhoto users thought of themselves not as mere snapshooters but rather as photo hobbyists, some serious enough to aspire to sell photos. Apple is trying to bring those customers into the fold while also catering to the professionals whom the company initially targeted with Aperture.

Schorr bridled a bit when I asked him Wednesday about some people's fears that Apple isn't committed to Aperture. "Releasing a new version is as big a commitment as you can demonstrate," he said. "This is not a maintenance release. It takes quite a bit of engineering resources. Apple's commitment is unmistakable."

Aperture is designed to edit the detailed and flexible but unwieldy and proprietary "raw" image files taken unprocessed from higher-end cameras' image sensors. Apple was first to market with software that not only handles this computing-intensive editing task but also lets photographers sort images into catalogs and add metadata such as captions, tags, and titles.

However, since then, Adobe came on strong with Lightroom in 2007, outpacing Aperture's adoption among professionals in a matter of months, even after factoring out the fact Lightroom also runs on Windows. Apple has clout with creative professionals, but that's the center of Adobe's business.

Whipping Aperture into shape
Schnorr knows the company hit a rough patch with Aperture 1.5, which wasn't able to support many high-profile new cameras such as Nikon's D3 and D300 and Canon's 1Ds Mark III and PowerShot G9. Apple's new raw support only arrived this week, months after Lightroom could handle those cameras' raw files.

The problem: Apple's product cycle was out of sync with the camera companies. The new cameras "happened to hit when we were in the thick of replacing the entire raw engine...It was a perfect storm," Schnorr said.

Another big problem was performance. Processing raw-image files is a computationally onerous job, but Lightroom outperformed Aperture, and speed is essential for either to meet their potentially.

With the ability to manage images, edit them in large batches, and export them as Web galleries, Aperture and Lightroom have liberated raw images from the one-by-one plodding interface of regular Photoshop and other raw-processing tools. The vision was ahead of the technology, though: a free-wheeling editing style, jumping from one photo to another, only works if you don't have to spend a lot of time waiting for the computer to laboriously construct and update images from the raw originals.

Apple has done well with Aperture 2.0, based on my test of ingesting and editing a batch of my own photos on a dual-core iMac. On top of a general performance boost, it's got a new preview mode that specifically emphasizes speed by using only fast-rendering JPEGs instead of the full-on raw images. Lightroom and Aperture are geared to map a photographer's image workflow, but I generally take an extra step to review images with BreezeBrowser to cull out the duds before I import the rest into Lightroom.

I also liked the single-keystroke ability to switch editing controls swiftly into metadata controls. I find that adding tags and captions is a process that's not as far removed from editing as Lightroom's separate library and develop modes would have you think.

I'm not alone in noticing Aperture's kick in the pants. "I feel like someone snuck a new CPU into my machine," gushed photographer Josh Anon in a Wednesday blog posting about Aperture 2.0.

Plug-ins ahoy
One of the unknown factors for Lightroom and Aperture is what the future holds for third-party editing plug-ins. Photoshop has a rich supply, but the nondestructive editing requirements of Lightroom and Aperture throw a wrench into the works of an algorithm that permanently alters an image's pixels.

Lightroom's future here is fuzzy, though Adobe has released a beta version of a software development kit (SDK) for plug-ins limited to actions during the photo-export phase.

Aperture 2.0 will accept editing plug-ins, though, Schorr said.

"We've laid the groundwork for an image-editing plug-in architecture," he said. Asked about the difficulties of nondestructive editing, he said, "We've found a way of implementing a plug-in system we believe is very effective."

Schorr wouldn't share further details about the plug-ins architecture, but did say Apple will release its own SDK.

Raw engine overhaul
Aperture 2.0 got several of its new editing abilities through Apple's new raw-processing engine. So what's so great about the new raw engine? Schnorr points to several changes:

• It handles highlights better and lets photographers use a recovery slider to pull back overexposed regions.

• It handles noise better, preserving details and changing the turning speckles into a something closer to the grain of high-speed films of analog photography days.

• It preserves more detail in shadow regions rather than blocking them up into a dark murk.

• It's got changes in color rendering to handle skin tones better.

The flip side of the new raw engine, which is built into Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2 is that it requires the latest software to use it. That means Aperture 1.5 users will have to pay the $99 upgrade fee if they want the new camera support, Schnorr said. For iPhoto users, the newer version 7 released last fall, is required.

Apple has supported many cameras much closer to their debut in the past, sometimes even releasing new camera support software independently from operating system updates. With the new engine now done, adding support for new cameras "should be easier for us," Schorr said.

[keaggy220]

Nice upgrade, but

A little too late... I switched to LR. Not only is Adobe committed to
LR, but they've also demonstrated that it is a top priority.

I do believe Apple when they say that they are committed to
Aperture, but they've got a long way to go before I'll believe that
Aperture is a priority.

[Shankland]

Lightroom users get indirect benefits from Aperture 2.0

Even if you're a Lightroom customer, there are competitive implications to Apple's move. Most obviously, Adobe might lower the price of Lightroom 2.0 and its upgrade.

[Galaxy5]

Hobbyist market?

Schnoor said: "There's huge interest from the hobbyist market,"
said Joe Schorr, Apple's senior product manager of photo
applications.

Then add RAW support for prosumer cameras. I shoot with a
1DS MkII sometimes, and Aperture handles those files well. But
when I take my 'happy snappy' Fuji S9500 out - a prosumer
grade RAW-capable camera, I get no love from Aperture.

Living in Silicon Valley, I know it is normal for most 'hobbyists' to
have $6-8000 worth of DSLR equipment they don't know how to
use, but what about us semi-pros who have more than one
camera in our bag and who choose to shoot RAW sometimes? I
prefer to use my S9500 in situations where the 1DS might be in
danger; since the 9500 is ostensibly more of a 'hobbyist'
camera, why doesn't Aperture support it or many of the other
RAW-capable prosumer cameras?

[Shankland]

Adobe DNG bridges the divide

With Aperture 2.0's support for Adobe's DNG (Digital Negative) format, you now can use Adobe's DNG converter to bring raw files into Aperture if Adobe supports the raw file, and the S9500 is on that list:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

[Jonathan]

Canon EOS 450D / Digital Rebel XSi Support?

Yah it won't ship until April but does anyone know if Aperture will support the XSi? Frankly the lag between updates has me worried about this. This will be my first DSLR and I would love to use Aperture however its obvious Apple has other priorities *coughs*iPhone*coughs* that trumps Aperture. seriously its like Apple acts like there are 20 employees at that company working on all their wares. Apple has how many freaking Billion in the bank now....stop being cheap Apple and hire some more freaking team members to multi-task.

[Shankland]

Apple won't say, but...

If there ever was a camera to be supported, mainstream SLRs from Nikon and Canon are it. Note also that Apple managed to get support out for the Canon 30D on the day it went up for sale, indicating that at least some of the time they understand the priority, have engineers on hand to do the analysis and programming, and get the cameras in house early.

Note also that you can use Adobe's DNG converter to bring raw files into Aperture if Adobe's support arrives earlier than Apple's.

[shunchu]

Forget the price

What about some UI sugar? I hate the way Lightroom handles its "modules" based UI in 1.x. It totally slows down my workflow compared to using Aperture. I am hoping the "indirect benefit" is in the improvements of the UI... Hopefully Adobe will shamelessly borrow more than a few tips from Aperture. Seeing that it's the new Microsoft for web/design apps, I wouldn't be too surprised if they do for LR 2.0!

[paperscience]

Does anybody know.....?

I have Aperture 1.5 but don't use it because it doesn't appear to
fulfill my prime need which is to make a catalogue of image
thumbnails that I have stored on DVDRs. As far as I can see
Aperture 1.5 forces me to store all my images at full size on
HDDs of ever increasing size. I found that iView Media Pro (now
owned by MS and renamed MS Expression Media) does exactly
what I want - I can archive all my images to duplicate DVDRs
and then prepare a visual catalogue of what is on each one
without having to buy a new HDD every year. Does anyone know
whether Aperture 2.0, or Lightroom offer this feature in addition
to all the metadata and RAW processing features that are the
main objective of these two apps. It would be good to be able to
use a single app that does both cataloguing and RAW
processing.

[davidjschloss]

This is possible and easy to do.

paperscience,

Just a bit of background here, but Aperture 1.5 already does
what you want it to do.

Images in Aperture can live anywhere, including referenced
DVDs, while the previews of these images (along with your
associated data) lives in the Aperture Library files. You CAN opt
to have your image live inside the Aperture Library as well,
incidentally, which is the default behavior, but this is just one
way of working.

You could handle this particular situation one of a few ways, if
you're set on using DVDs as your storage medium (and
remember, that writeable DVDs do not have a very long shelf
life, we're talking decades at the most) you could either put your
images on DVD first, and then bring them into Aperture using
the option to leave the images in their current location. Aperture
will then create a preview of each image on that DVD, and then
you can go put that disc on a shelf somewhere. If you ever want
to do an adjustment to the image, the program will just prompt
you to insert it so it can reference the original raw data.

Additionally you could take images stored on a local hard drive
and reference them to a recordable DVD, burning that DVD at
the end of the process.

A primer on managed images (those stored in a library) vs
referenced (those stored elsewhere) can be found on our site
here.

http://apertureprofessional.com/showthread.php?
t=1668&highlight=managed

The great thing about the previews that Aperture creates is that
even with your original media offline on DVD or hard drive or
wherever, you can still do things with your files. For example,
my early photography is stored offline, but I can still make
keynote presentations, movies, podcasts and more without
having that referenced material. Soon as I need to an
adjustment, I just plug the drive back in and off I go.

This also makes it very flexible to work locally vs in the field.
Locally I have all my images on a drive, currently about 800GB of
images from a variety of cameras. My Library though is about
30gb. When I go on the road, I've got the previews of every
photo I've ever shot with me, and I leave that 800 gb of images
at home.

While sitting on a plane I can do keywording or captioning, apply
ratings and much more.

More info on these topics at our ApertureProfessional.com site.

[sparksdean]

Aperture not as good as Nikon CaptureNX for d300

I have been waiting for months for Aperture to support the new
Nikon D3 and D300 cameras with their new high dynamic range
sensors.

The first photo I loaded into Aperture 2.0 was a RAW format file
from my D300. It was taken at ISO 3200 with exposure at 0.8
seconds. The photo pushed the capability of the camera sensor.
Aperture did a terrible job reproducing the photo. The image
lacked the suble color variations of the same image opened in
Nikon Capture NX. The RAW files can be found at

www.gallagher.to/Candle

I don't believe apple tries to deal with sensor nonlinearities at
extreme operating ranges

[davidjschloss]

Before after

Thanks for posting those NEF files. Most people forget to when
talking comparison.

Can you post some before/after shots of the adjustment you like
in NX? Often this is a mater of different programs having
different default settings.

>>I don't believe apple tries to deal with sensor nonlinearities
at
extreme operating ranges<<

On the contrary, they spend a lot of time making tone curve
studies of each camera at each setting.