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Edit Review: Apple Aperture 2

Jul 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

Easy-to-use program includes accelerated performance and more than 100 new features

              

The redesigned interface of Apple Aperture 2 moves just about everything onto one screen. You can surf through thumbnails, adjust settings, and compare several images at once.

For the Mac platform, Apple has little competition in most areas of its software universe. The company's iWork, iLife, Logic Studio, and Final Cut Studio all do a good job of keeping the competition at a distance. However, the area of image management is a different story. Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom have tussled head-on for the past couple years, as each company attempts to establish its program as the industry standard. Heading into NAB, Adobe announced a beta for Lightroom 2, a good move that recalls the initial Lightroom 1.0 beta program that first opened the floor for suggestions and feedback. (That beta is now available at labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom.)

When I reviewed Aperture 1.0 two years ago (digitalcontentproducer.com/workflow/
video_apple_aperture), I was impressed with its speed (although other users have had some issues), its RAW format support, and the way the program lets you create automatic stacks that sort your images based on what time you took the picture — a very promising start for a $500 professional program. Now there's version 2, which supports faster browsing and offers 100 new features, improved touchup tools, and a new $199 price point ($99 for the upgrade). Instead of waiting for the final paragraph, I'll spill the results: Aperture 2 rocks.

A good part of my studio's business involves my work as a professional photographer. I've lost track, but I've easily amassed more than 1 million still images over the past several years. That's a lot to keep track of. In addition, I've done tons of shoots that are part of video and compositing productions — these are pictures that need to be sorted and touched up. Aperture 2 allows you to import all your photos into a dedicated Aperture database, or you can merely point to the files if your images are already on your hard drive.

Either way you bring them in, you can quickly import thousands of images and rapidly scroll through and view thumbnails and full versions. If you have two monitors, Aperture can be set up in numerous ways. For example, dedicate one screen for the interface and thumbnails, and use the second monitor for fullscreen viewing of each image. Aperture has always been fast (especially after the 1.5 update), but now it just plain blazes. I tested on my eight-core Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM, and I hit no slowdowns — no matter how hard I hammered version 2. Aperture now smartly uses the thumbnail embedded with most image files, and everything from importing to browsing to searching in the program happens very quickly.

The interface has been redesigned for version 2 to put pretty much everything you need on one screen. Project settings, metadata info, thumbnails, large preview, and the light table can all be upfront, so you no longer have to switch screens and modes as with previous versions. Aperture 2 uses the semi-transparent,smoke-black, floating heads-up display (HUD) from other Apple programs. Combined with a fullscreen mode for maximum workspace, this HUD makes working in the program a joy.

I've always loved iPhoto for many uses, and the new version of Aperture plays well with it. You can now open your iPhoto galleries directly within Aperture and drag images into Aperture projects. Plus you can go the other way. Aperture libraries now open in iPhoto, so you can drag pics easily between the two program's projects and galleries.

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