It's now been just over a week since Aperture 2 showed up and I've been poking about all of its corners and learning what it has in store. Along the way, I've been keeping some notes. Here they are in a rather loosely structured form. Obviously, since I've been using Lightroom as my primary tool for about a year now, there are lots of comparisons between the two tools in these impressions.
Caveat reader: This is not a review or an in-depth comparison between Lightroom and Aperture. At this point, all I have is a collection of these impressions, very barely edited. They're in a pretty raw from, but I hope that they are useful. If you would prefer more structured (and better edited) thoughts, I'll have those later over the weeks to come. For now, this is what I have to offer.
With that said, let's start out by looking at some of the high points.
Pros
The new Preview Mode is awesome. It works just the way it should and is super speedy. I'm really impressed with it and, even though everyone wanted more speed from Aperture and this is a great way to implement it, this feature feels like it was made just for me. I can't say enough good things about this mode. It makes browsing through images as fast as using Lightroom's Library module.
I love the fact that you can run multiple imports at once. Over the years, I've found that I like to start an import of my images from their cards and then move on to doing something else, such as shooting more photos, while the computer takes care of things. Then, when I come back, everything is ready for me to get down to business. Being able to run multiple imports will fit right into this kind of workflow.
The simplified UI is very nice. I've always liked the non-modal approach that Aperture takes and Aperture 2 takes this to a new level. Hitting the W key to move between metadata, adjustments, and project views on the sidebar is very fluid and quick. And, even though there is now a bit of modality in the user interface with Quick Preview mode, it's not nearly as jarring as switching between Lightroom modules.
The new DNG support is very welcome. I'm very concerned about file formats going into the far future and I support the work that Adobe is doing on DNG to help out with that. I'm super happy to see that Aperture's support is for it is improving. This is goodness.
The ability to target colors to manipulate with the color correction tool is very welcome indeed. It doesn't work quite the same way that the TAT does in Lightroom, but it results in the same level of control and is quite easy to use in its own way.
The Definition and Vibrancy tools are welcome additions and work as well as their Lightroom counterparts of Clarity and Vibrance. I'm glad to see them here and I think they are really great tools for photographers to have in their toolset. There's not a Fill Light control, per se, but the Shadows slider in the Highlights & Shadows section can help do much of the same thing.
The new RAW decoder is quite nice indeed. I've not done side-by-side comparisons with ACR's output, but I've been very impressed with how it handles high-ISO noise in many of the images I've shot at ISO 3200. And not just a little impressed, but very impressed. I can't wait to through some of my challenging shots at it and see how it handles them.
I totally dig how the vignette tool works with the post-crop geometry of the image, not on the original crop, which is the current behavior in Lightroom.
The new retouch controls look very nice indeed. To date, I've been happy with basic spotting tools, but these new tools go a long way beyond what Aperture had before and leapfrog what Lightroom has in 1.3. I look forward to playing with them a bit more and figuring them out.
Aperture really runs nicely on my new 8-core MacPro. Of course, you'd expect that the 8-core should be able to run anything at insane speed, but the previous version of Aperture was so not the speed demon. It's good to see it working as snappy as it demos in the videos.
The announcement that there's image adjustment SDK is very welcome. I've dug around a bit and haven't found it, but will be very interested in it showing up and am looking forward to seeing what people do with it. There's all sorts of third-party opportunities for adjustments, including noise reduction and perspective control. Of interest will be to see if it supports localized corrections like the retouch tool can or if it simply works on the image at a global level.
Dual screen mode and full screen mode, while unchanged from the first version, are super nice to use. I've always thought Aperture has been nicer to use in full screen mode, especially when you put the film strip on the side.
Mixed Results
Tethering is really cool. In my line of work, I'm not sure how often I'll use it, but I like that it's there. And, it may be something that I can take advantage of in the future. However, I've found that support for my cameras is spotty. My 5D works just fine after I figured out that I had to change its USB mode. My 1Dmk3's don't. My G9 can be driven from Aperture, but can't drive itself. I hear good things from Nikon users, so that's encouraging.
People have long wanted a curves control in Aperture. The truth is that with the quarter-tone control additions to the levels tool, the Aperture level tool can do a lot of you want in a curves control. That said, the Tone Curve control in Lightroom is very elegant to use and is a great piece of UI. You have to know more of what you're doing to effectively use the Aperture controls.
Cons
The lack of something like Lightroom's Quick Collection feature is missed. I've started using Quick Collections for more and more tasks in Lightroom. For example, when I am collection selects to publish and want to winnow those down, I've been using a Quick Collection. Sure, Aperture has better support for Albums and Smart Albums, but the Quick Collection concept is a valuable one.
The lack of support for XMP sidecar files on import is puzzling. You can export XMP sidecar files, but not import. This little issue is going to cause a bit of a problem for people wanting to import large collections of RAW files that already have metadata into Aperture. It should be easier to round trip this information. Of course, what I'd really like to see is Aperture be able to interoperate fully using XMP data with other applications like Bridge and Lightroom, picking up changes as they happen either in sidecars or embedded into files. Currently, this is just a dream.
At times, adjustments still don't run in real time on a MacBook Pro. I've not totally isolated this to Aperture as I think there's something else wrong with my laptop. And, this behavior did improve substantially after installing the second Pro support software update. But, the presence of lag at times is a bit annoying. And, using the Tint controls really drag things down.
Aperture heats up my laptop quite a bit. I know that this is just a matter of Aperture hitting both the CPU and GPU hard, but running Aperture makes my laptop run harder in general than running Lightroom. I've not yet seen if there's an impact on battery life as I'm usually plugged in when working with images, but I'm sure there is.
I wished that the master view (hitting the M key) would show the master in cropped form. I also miss the ability to set a compare point for an image like you can in Lightroom. For example, it'd be nice to set this to a white balance corrected image.
Snapshots are another feature in Lightroom that are missed in Aperture. Sure, you can make a virtual copy, but when you are exploring a set of edits, it's nice to be able to mark a point in time to get back to. Virtual copies aren't so smooth to use.
Lens adjustments, such as correcting chromatic aberration, are also another feature in ACR that are missed in Aperture. I'm really curious to see if the promised image adjustment SDK allows third parties to take care of this.
There's no equivalent to Lightroom's Split Toning control. I'm sure you can use the Tint controls to do some of the same things, but it's not as flexible. And, the Tint controls run so slowly as to be painful, at least the MBP where I've played with Aperture most to date.
Bugs
Tethering is really unstable for me, at least with my Canon cameras. Every time I've tethered a camera, I've ended up crashing Aperture. One time, I even locked up the USB chain on my system, requiring a full system reboot to be able to use the keyboard and mouse on my machine. This is very odd behavior and I'm as inclined to blame Canon for this as Apple.
Exporting photos to Flickr via FlickrExport doesn't show status or any other indication of what's going on. This, apparently, is a known bug and will hopefully be fixed soon.
Wrapping Up
As I've said, this is a simple list of impressions. It shouldn't be taken as a review or a straight up comparison to Lightroom. It is what it is. I'll have more to say over the next few weeks, I'm sure. If you'd like to leave your own impressions of Aperture 2 in the comments, please feel free to do so. I'm interested in what other people are finding with the tool.
thanks for the info. This is the first I’d seen regarding XMP support in Aperture. Wonder why they did not implement an import capability - maybe a schedule issue. But w/o XMP import its usefulness in my workflow at least is more limited. Right now I mainly use LR for most processing, and Expression Media for organizing everything. Br/PS only for heavy ‘finish’ work. But they all support XMP.
DNG - I like the idea but the idea of doubling my storage requirements isn’t thrilling me. And I like keeping the camera raw format around because the manufacturers software (Nikon Capture in my case) works well with it, albeit slowly.
Probably I should just convert everything into DNG on a monthly basis or something and archive it.
“At times, adjustments still don’t run in real time...”
You might try turning off the histogram if you aren’t using it. This will speed up adjustments a bit.
Good point about the XMP sidecar files, however, when I ran the trial version of Aperture 2.0, I pointed the test project to a Lightroom directory using referenced masters. In doing that, I was able to pick up the meta data from the Lightroom directory.
Not to double post, but I just finished reading this. Damn phone calls! You bring up a lot of good points in both con an pro form Duncan.
There’s a lot of people that bring up the curves issue; “I want curves’. In a discussion with a friend online the other day, he brought up a good point that the curves might or probably is patented by Adobe. I don’t know this to be true but it’s a good point and one that should not be missed. I myself love curves but have learned to utilize Aperture’s quarter-tone control. I find the the majority of the time that the top controls are more useful than the bottom (if that makes sense).
Aperture does heat up my MBP 17” at times. Sometimes it feel nuclear!
I have not tried it, but I believe if you view the Task Window during the flicker export you will see the progress, I also understand that you can pause it (or similar)
Granted, this is from memory as I don’t have Aperture 2 or Flickr Export with me at the moment.
I “learned” with curves, like a lot of people, but I find Aperture’s quarter tone controls much more intuitive. I may be in a minority, but I don’t think the minority is quite as small as the Curves fans would have you think.
I use AP 1.5 on a MB 2.2C2D model, no slowdowns so long as I avoid the highlights/shadows tool, and even then only when I am using the loupe or making adjustments AFTER applying highlights/shadow adjustments.
Yeah, I think there might be something else wrong with your setup. I don’t even HAVE a GPU. Mine should not be less hindered by spinning beach balls than your rig....
It would be interesting to know whether you are actually considering switching back to Aperture from Lightroom? Or does Lightroom still have the edge?
Aperture vs Lightroom, what to do?
I started with Aperture 1.0 because it was the only thing available and I found that the interface was good (at the time). But in short order the performance became a huge issue and I jumped on Lightroom at the beta stage. I kept Aperture around and updated it as updates were available.
For me the big Aperture features that I miss by using Lightroom are: compact interface, Books, integration with iLife/iWork on the Mac.
However LR offers a tremendously flexible Printing feature and much better (IMO) web output, at least in a creative sense.
Real quick, these are some of my impressions with the trial of Aperture 2.0:
- No convert to DNG on import
- when importing DNG files Aperture ignores adjustments
- as soon as I make any adjustments to a DNG file the performance gets very choppy. no real time drag/pan in a zoomed image for example. seriously bad
- no chromatic aberration correction?
- not only that but I see chroma aberrations in NEF files that don’t even appear in LR
- chroma noise reduction is only fair compared to LR
- no metadata browser (I love this feature of LR)
- still no white balance presets? such a nice simple feature, why not have it?
- no Auto white balance (i don’t mean with the eyedropper)?
- Auto Exposure but no equivalent to Auto Tone, which, like auto white balance (or presets)is a good fast starting point for color/tone correction
- seems very silly to have a histogram view but no method for quickly setting black/white points in it, that has to be done in the levels.
- (Fitt’s Law comment) I do appreciate the non-modal, compact interface but the controls are really small - particularly when moving quickly. On location I am working on a MacBook Pro 15” so those controls and little disclosure triangles can be pretty hard to hit. Its one of those things that take a fraction of a second more and a little more attention each time and that adds up to a mental drag over a few hours. For that reason I have come to appreciate those bars for each adjustment section in LR - big target, easy to hit quick with a flick of the mouse. Plus, I appreciate that all the available adjustments are there by default unlike in Aperture where you need to add them with that wee little fly out menu.
Plus, while the quick preview thing is really great and the iPhoto/iMovie-like skimming feature is really cool I found the same sort of performance slow downs once I started rolling with adjustments as before. My gear: MBP 2.16 Core2Duo 3gigs ram/PowerMac G5 dual 2gig, 750 SATA HD, 3.5 gigs ram
I am going to keep trying it out, but I am not thinking about jumping back, yet.
Any idea if Aperture will run as smoothly on a new MacBook (2.4GHz Penryn / 4GB ram) vs a MacBook Pro?
I’m reading a lot of conflicting opinions about whether or not Aperture really does require a beefy video card, rather than just integrated graphics.
Some say it works just fine on a macbook as it’s basically CPU intensive, others claim it crawls as it needs a dedicated GPU. Anyone know of any objective tests to prove the point one way or the other?
Something I find irritating about the quick preview function is that as soon as you add an adjustment, it will not show the embedded preview. Even if you remove all the adjustments, update the preview, it still will not show it. Am I doing something wrong?