Aperture
Apple's Aperture is an all-in-one digital image management system, with advanced processing and very extensive printing capabilities. It offers completely non-destructive editing; preserves an untouched master file; requires no manual saving of adjustments; and lets you store the images anywhere you choose.
In its organizing ability, Aperture goes even further than Adobe Lightroom, which, in many ways, it resembles. It has an incomparable set of features for examining, comparing, rating, ranking and selecting images. It is hard to believe that anyone could use them all, but they form a compelling reason for buying this software if you are a Mac user.
Aperture's organizational structure may seem complex at first, but photographers quickly grasp how to use it, especially now that the Projects, Metadata, and Adjustments panes have been consolidated into a single unit. Aperture allows you to sort hundreds or even thousands of images after a busy shoot. The Stacks feature lets you rank images alongside a "pick" image, beneath which the stack can be made to collapse. Auto-Stack allows you to specify a time interval between shutter clicks: great for people who shoot in burst mode. Compare mode lets you examine the shots with the Loupe or Zoom tools before comparing a chosen shot with a third image, and so on. A Light Table extends beyond the viewing window and offers a free-form method of examining, grouping and comparing images. You can create a new Light Table at any time, save it in Projects, and populate it by dragging images from the Browser. Loupe magnification is from 50 to 1600 percent, selectable from a pop-up menu or the mouse's scroll wheel.
Image adjustment starts with RAW Fine Tuning, then goes on to provide a full set of adjustment tools. Their function might be called "image processing" in other software, or "Develop" in Lightroom, but here they constitute the software's main workshop, with controls for white balance, exposure, highlight recovery, enhancement, colors and levels.
Other key features include the Quick Preview mode in which the software loads only the Preview image, enabling photographers get up-and-running immediately after shooting; Lift & Stamp tools allow you to lift metadata and adjustments from one image and apply them to another; a Retouch tool goes beyond "spot and patch" repairs to provide intelligent retouching with a soft-edged brush; and Tethered Shooting provides useful support for studio photographers.
Output and publishing features include full color management to ensure color consistency between imaging devices; automated contact sheet creation; and Custom Books with many attractive templates for making your own printed book with images and text.
You can extend Aperture's functionality with plugins and upload images directly to all the major social networking and file sharing sites. There are plug-ins for sophisticated image editing, such as Curves and Grid Effects from Human Software, for filtering, such as Color Efex Pro from Nik Software, and for many other processes. Whatever you want to do photographically, there's a plug-in for Aperture to help you do it.
The host program itself, Aperture 3, introduced around 200 new features including Faces (to put names to faces in your images using face recognition techniques) and Places (to identify locations using GPS). Retouching, too, was beefed up in Aperture 3, although it understandably falls a long way short of Adobe Photoshop. Further retouching features are expected in Aperture 4, in early 2012.
Comment
For sorting out pictures after a shoot, for general image handling, cataloging and backup, for consistent color management, dual monitor support, creative contact printing, and easy web gallery loading -- Aperture is a winner. It is one of the best Mac-specific applications, almost a good enough reason to buy a Mac if you don't already have one.
In fact, if it were not for Adobe Lightroom, which runs on both the Mac and on a PC, the decision to buy the Mac/Aperture combination would be far easier for most photographer. But Lightroom is a great alternative and has an equally cool, polished interface.
The best advice for non-Mac users is to see Aperture in action and decide whether its unique facilities, and those of the Mac environment, are worth the switch.
Tech info
- OS: Mac OS X
- Price level: Approx. $80 in the App Store
Apple, Inc.
Apple is one the world's largest computer and digital media corporations, having pioneered the personal computer in the 1970s with the Apple II, then reinventing it with the Mac in the 1980s, and exploring new platforms with iPod and iPhone.
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