Paul Inskip Photography

Aperture was one of the final reason I switched to Mac back at the end of 2006. I am a huge fan of the program and often find myself defending it (more and more frequently) on forums and twitter as more and more people become disillusioned with the very slow RAW support and the seeming lack of development compared to Lightroom which seems to be gaining more and more ground (despite being inferior software IMO) We really NEED some new information. is AP3 on the way, 1 month? 3 months, 6 months? With Lightroom 3 in open beta and very up to date new camera RAW support its increasingly hard for any new adopters to to choose Aperture over Lightroom when their cameras aren’t supported.

We also need faster RAW updates, I know these are tied to OSX updates but 6 months between the last two is very long, and lots of cameras released in that time still aren’t supported. People don’t mind waiting as long as they know something is on its way, if there was a standard policy of an update with X months after a new format or something like that then people would be happy knowing their camera was going to be supported rather than the current situation of being left wondering IF rather than when. As far as most people can tell at the moment, Lightroom is being worked on very hard and version 3 is on the way which would mean it has overtaken versions of Aperture. Pros like myself who use Aperture don’t have to worry as much about new camera support but we do look closely at performance of competing software and future development, no pro wants to adopt a workflow or software that they believe will be poorly supported in the future.

I know that you like to keep development close to your chest but at the moment that is helping spread the view that Aperture has been abandoned. There was (still is but smaller) a great community of Aperture users but that is slowly starting to dwindle as people get scared and jump ship. The irony to all of this is the LR3 is very underwhelming and ONLY the localised edits are of any interest to me (yes I have the beta installed) Aperture is pretty much perfect for my workflow (which relies on CS3 for all complex edits).
However I believe that Aperture can do a few things (and do them very well) and leave Lightroom for dead:

1) More speed, a constant request I know but always important particularly with ever growing RAW files
2) Localised edits, LR implementation is buggy and unintuitive (like most of the LR UI) But I can imagine an Aperture version which would be alot better
3) more non-destructive plugins/options - I know alot of this is down to 3rd parties but with a seemingly dead or dying product what is the incentive for these companies to develop anything for Aperture?
4) More flexible editing and saving of web and book templates And the big one that would all but kill LR. Aperture to use the huge advantage that it can have. Adobe will ALWAYS limit LR to protect PhotoShop but Aperture doesn’t need to do this, so go that extra step with the localised edits, and give us less and less reasons to use photoshop:

1) Advanced sharpening tools (localised)
2) Advanced (noiseninja level) non-destructive NR tools
3) Basic layer type support for edits and brushes (being able to paint out a white/black/coloured background
4) more options for retouching, more intuitive If you can make those all non-destructive then there would be a massive amount of photographers who would only need Aperture, simplifying workflow and cost, and we’d pay more for the tools, give us all that and this is no longer a £200 piece of software but a £350-£450 piece of software.

Aperture is IMHO the best on the market, but it needs to be seen competing or it will die.

Posted via email from Paul’s posterous | Comment »