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Edit Review — Apple Aperture

Jan 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

An all-in-one workflow tool for professional photographers.

First let's discuss what Aperture is not. It's not a Photoshop killer and it's not a super-charged iPhoto for pros. What is it? Apple Aperture is a high-end workflow tool designed for photographers and media artists who need to work with large numbers of images. It supports RAW formats natively. Support for RAW in Aperture is similar in concept to HD support in Final Cut Pro — it allows users to work easily with the highest-quality format in realtime.

RAW is often called a digital negative, because it is the master file before being processed by the camera. All cameras, even top-of-the-line ones, do boosting and saturating and sharpening all to make your JPEGs look nice and pretty. But in this, the hardware is making decisions for you. Pros like the fact that RAW is a pure file that's unaltered by the camera. What they don't like is that RAW files are much bigger. It takes much more horsepower to work with these larger files in realtime. Apple set out to create a speedy tool that is designed from the ground up to work with RAW.

At its heart, the program is a workflow tool, designed to make it easy to manage large numbers of digital photos. Secondly it offers a suite of production tools for tweaking the photos' exposure, levels, colors, and many other parameters. Finally, it allows exporting in a number of ways, from image files to web galleries and PDF contact sheets, and even as printed photo books.

Everything in the program happens non-destructively. You'll never alter your original file, mainly because you can't. There are no Save or Save As commands to be found. You can, however, export a version with your alterations, or a copy of the master file. Aperture works fast because it tracks only the changes you make — it's not constantly grinding away at a cache to save the latest version. As such changes can be made quickly, and you can also, of course, Undo and backtrack through the history, clicking off alterations you decide against.

Before you even import images into the program, Aperture creates thumbnails of import candidates so you can pick and choose which images to bring in. In fact, the program gives you a software version of a photographer's loupe, which lets you zoom in and see incredible detail on any image — even before you load it in. (You can use the Loupe throughout Aperture.) Once the images are imported, they are arranged in a Library Gallery. You can zip through and examine any of them, view several pictures fullscreen to compare, and move around and resize them on a virtual light table.

One of the coolest features is grouping the gallery into photo “stacks” by time. By moving a slider, you separate your images from a shoot into clusters based on when they were shot. I discovered this when I imported some model portfolios. Since the talent took time to change outfits, Aperture detected that time span based on the EXIF data that accompanies each image. So when I moved the slider, the pictures grouped themselves into clusters, each featuring a different outfit. Besides time of capture, you can sort by parameters such as rating, file size, aperture, week, month, keyword, pixel size, etc.

You can even set up Smart Libraries on your hard drive. Say, for example, you set up a nighttime Smart Library. From then on, all images shot at night that you import into Aperture will automatically move to that library.

Another area in which Aperture excels is comparing multiple images. If you are going through hundreds of images, you want to be able to view several takes of a specific scene to pick the best. Aperture not only allows working in fullscreen mode and viewing very large thumbnails for sorting and comparing, but it also supports multiple monitors.

The program has many tools to make sure your photos can be tweaked to perfection. The very handy Lift and Stamp tool lets you grab the settings (contrast, white balance, etc.) from one image and paste it onto another (or onto hundreds). Ever do a wedding and the pictures are all a little too cool? One click will warm up the whole day's shots. The Spot and Patch tool is used for cloning and touch-ups. Along with these are all the usual options for adjusting levels, exposure, sharpening, cropping, red eye, highlights, shadows, etc.

The straighten tool is fantastic. Click your image and drag to tilt and straighten it. Amazingly handy.

Aperture is very smart and thinks like a photographer. For example, if you adjust white balance in other image programs and use the eyedropper tool to pick out your absolute white point, it will work fine. However, if you slide the dropper over a darker pixel, the levels flat-line and you get a blown-out image. In Aperture, white balance works like it should work. It tags the balance from white (or dark pixels) and shapes the color temperature more accurately without crushing your gray scales.

Apple's focus on workflow management is a good one. There are lots of tweaking tools, but the emphasis is organization and sorting, and this is the tool to beat in that department.

A few aspects of Aperture are less than impressive. The interface does not exactly follow those of the other Apple pro apps, so there is a little learning curve. But once you get comfy, everything falls into place and most items are easy to find.

I would have liked to see more touch-up tools, which is almost a deal-breaker for me. I shoot tens of thousands of photos every year and if Aperture really beefed up the touch-up elements, I would have no reason to use anything else. The program does hook into Photoshop seamlessly; it's one click away from inside Aperture.

The Spot and Patch touch-up tool is a very nice super-charged cloner, but it was the only part of the program that did not feel very peppy. Beyond this, I'd like to see, as in Photoshop, a range of different touch-up and cloning tools for different circumstances. Of course, as I mentioned, Aperture was not designed as a replacement for Photoshop. Apple rightly assumes that all pro digital photographers already own Photoshop.

What I loved was the absolute speed at which everything works. I tested on my dual-core G5, and working with RAW has never been so quick and painless. It has got me seriously thinking about shooting only RAW from now on. But don't forget about JPEGs! If RAW is fast, working with JPEG blazes. Don't feel you even have to touch RAW to get the most out of the program.

There has been a lot of talk about the steep system requirements, and yes, it helps to have a couple of gigs of RAM and a fast processor (sorry Mini fans). But Aperture is no different from Final Cut Pro system in this respect: this is a professional-level tool and a good system is required. Also, spec out your video card. You might get most of the realtime power just by upgrading your video card and nothing else.

If you shoot a lot of stills, Aperture can help you make sense of it all. It works extremely well with RAW, has lots of features for tweaking images to perfection, allows multiple ways to sort and choose images, and exports the images out in numerous file, web, and print formats. For a version 1.0, Aperture is very robust. If you spent more than $1,000 for your digital camera, increase the investment and get this solid photographer tool.

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bottomline

Company: Apple
Cupertino, Calif.; (408) 996-1010
www.apple.com

Product: Aperture

Assets: Nondestructive, blazing fast even with RAW image files, easily group photos into time-based “stacks.”

Caveats: Not designed as a replacement for Photoshop.

Demographic: Any pro who shoots a lot of digital still images.

PRICE: $499

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.