Apple Aperture 2.1.1

I am a semi-pro photographer (that means retired therefore taking on only the jobs I like). I moved into MACs years ago because Photoshop works on a MAC, versus well, works somewhat on a PC. I have been very happy with MACs, and Photoshop, and iPhoto, so I wanted to stick with Apple products for the "in between" product that has the capability of keeping track of thousands upon thousands of photos.

The first problem with Aperture 2 is two-fold. If you use it download automatically from your camera or card, I defy you to find where those photos are stored on your computer. It is like Aperture keeps them in a black hole somewhere, and they are now accessible only through Aperture. THis can be remedied only if you download into your own filing system directories and subdirectories then upload to Aperture, two steps not one.

The next problem is Aperture crashes. When you go to use Aperture it crashes about 15 times before finally settling down top work right. This is downright poor software. What does Apple say? They never heard of the problem, I'm the first one. Yea, sure that's why their chat room is loaded with the same complaint, and on there Apple says it is because of incompatible add-inns. Well, I have no add inns at all. This is about the only time I have ever seen Apple acting more like Microsoft.

Third, I have Apple Care, and those folks are generally excellent and can solve any problem. So I called them. Their answer, Aperture is a "professional product" and they do not support it. Well, my answer is they sure did not have professionals writing the software.

Not to be all negative, except for the above, when it finally decides to stop crashing, Aperture is one of the greatest applications ever for keeping track of your photos and doing some simple to medium editing. It will not replace Photoshop and is not intended to.

One caution I had to learn the hard way, never, ever delete the master file. It will delete all those made from it.

Aperture 2.1 is the first professional digital work-flow tool I have owned and used extensively. Like many photographers, I was in desperate need of something to help me manage thousands and thousands of pictures. The workflow is easy to understand, fast, and has good sorting and selection capabilities. The innovative "Stack" tool is especially useful for sorting through dozens of nearly similar options of the same shot. On my MacBook Pro (Unibody 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo), I am not experiencing any performance issues.

Many reviewers focus on Aperture as an excellent RAW work-flow tool, and while it certainly is that, it is every bit as useful for your JPEGs. In fact, I primarily shoot JPEG, except for when I expect to run into unusual exposure and color issues, for which I will also shoot RAW. (For my needs I find that shooting RAW is quite often overkill, and as a bonus, transferring and processing JPEG is much less time consuming, and requires substantially less storage space.)

The adjustment tools may remind you of iPhoto's, except there are more of them, and they are much more capable and sophisticated. That being said, Aperture is not a full-fledged image editor, and many users will want to use Aperture in conjunction with an external editor such as Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements). External editors are well integrated into Aperture's workflow. From within Aperture, you will be able to address most exposure, contrast and color issues thanks to the strong tools in this category, as well as retouching, cropping, rotation, and some noise reduction issues. All of these adjustments are performed non-destructively, and can be undone selectively.

Aperture accepts plug-ins and comes with one included in the box (Dodge and Burn). When using plug-ins, Aperture creates a new TIFF-version of your original file (actually, more precisely, of the "version" of your original file that you are working on). My only objection to this workflow is that if you need to use several plug-ins on one image (e.g., a Dfine 2.0 Noise Reduction, followed by some Dodge and Burn, and perhaps Pro Contrast from NIK Software's ColorEfx Pro), you end up with a new TIFF file for every plug-in you use, as Aperture plug-ins do not operate in layers like they would in Photoshop, for example. I should also mention that I have on occasion experienced some stability issues with Aperture, and they almost always occur when using it in conjunction with plug-ins. However, these crashes have never compromised the integrity of the database (Aperture users will most often store their libraries as an Aperture managed database).

I have also produced a couple of photo-books which I have to say I have been very happy with. The quality is good (not as good as if you print your own on a high-quality printer, but good nevertheless). You'll find fewer pre-defined layouts than in iPhoto, but the ones that are here are more geared towards professionals. One feature that seems to be lacking, and that I have found useful in the past with other photo-book vendors such as Blurb, is recommended resolutions for each photo, based on the exact dimension of each frame. With such a tool, sharpness is optimized for each image. That being said, the lack of this tool did not seem to affect image quality too much in the Aperture books that I ordered.

All in all, Aperture 2 is a very strong product and one that I now rely on entirely for my workflow. I recommend getting a book about Aperture (I bought "Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2") which will help you use the software more efficiently, especially since the included documentation is pretty weak.

Basically: you can use Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom for managing large volumes of RAW images.

I prefer Aperture. Lightroom's modules are too linear and restrictive for my taste; Aperture's workflow is very open and malleable. Additionally, the user interface of Aperture bleeds polish and simplicity, whereas Lightroom feels clunky and congested to me.

From a technical note, I think the plugin architecture in Aperture is stronger than what Adobe has implemented. Book publishing is non-existent in Lightroom. I've seen the Aperture books at the Aperture 2 launch event and the quality is outstanding.

I wouldn't use any other app for photography library management.

I'm happy with the product. Received it when expected. Aperture is fairly easy to learn, very easy to use once you've learned how to navigate its features, provides a logical and intuitive workflow for photo editing. It provides all the editing features one needs for post-production image refinement, with a few additional bells and whistles.

My only disappointment with it is the lack of RAW reading / conversion for my current camera, a Panasonic Lumix G1. I'm hoping that will be remedied soon.

Very good product. Will take some time to understand fully, but quite an improvement over iPhoto. If you need to enhance your photos on the MAC, this is a great way to go.