Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: KiwiRob on November 25, 2005, 05:50:48 pm
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Has anyone used this software yet. I'm looking at moving to a MAC mainly based on what I have read about this software, has anyone here had a play with a beta version.
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I don't think I've heard of anyone playing with a beta. I've got a copy on order, and it's supposed (rumoured) to be shipping Nov 30th, so we'll see very soon what it's like.
Looking at the specs I don't think it's going to replace Photoshop, and it might not even replace camera raw, but it's looking a darn sight better than iPhoto for capturing / organizing your photos. But it also looks like it need a beefcake of a mac to run on as it really uses the GPU of the graphics card to the max, to do it's realtime de-bayering etc.
Graeme
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I've got a copy on order, and it's supposed (rumoured) to be shipping Nov 30th, so we'll see very soon what it's like.
Graeme
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We'd definitely be interested in your impressions, Graeme, once you've given it a shakedown cruise.
I am trying to decide whether to upgrade my Portfolio v7 to v8 when it comes out next week, vs iView Media Pro 3, vs Aperture. Their functionality overlaps with that of Bridge, for which I have all but abandoned Portfolio v7 due to its unwillingness to play nice with Bridge over metadata, esp .xmp sidecar files.
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It just started to ship today (26th).
The best information I have seen on it is at Galbriath (http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7887-8063) and PDN (http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/prodtech/reviews/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001435191).
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I just got my copy yesterday. My only advice is to sit down and spend the hour watching the training DVD that comes with it. And, if you're going to use it with Photoshop, turn the legacy compatibillity on in Photoshop preferences. That way you can see previews of multi layer PSDs.
So far, I'm impressed, especially for a version 1.0 product.
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There's a new thread on Rob Galbraith website: Aperture First Impressions (http://forums.robgalbraith.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=382043&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1).
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OK, it's just arrived. Seems nice enough, but I'm crying out for a "Open RAW in Photoshop option", not just "Open PSD or Tiff in Photoshop" button.
Graeme
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How is the RAW conversion quality thus far?
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Raw conversion seems fine, but I'm not liking the controls in the image tweaking section. I think that Aperture is only really for quick and dirty changes, and that Photoshop is really needed for any kind of serious work.
But, no LAB support for the PSDs in Aperture, which is a pain as I'm finding it much easier to get the results I want in LAB mode, rather than RGB. I think that lack of FULL Photoshop support is a bad thing, but the cataloguing is quite nice.
The HD-DVD is also nice to show you how to use the app - great for this kind of thing!
The stacks feature is great - I like that a lot. Very simple, yet powerful.
Graeme
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ArsTechnica has a very thorough review up. Between that numerous threads on the Apple Discussion Fora, it sounds to me like they're definitely on to something with this app, but it needs to be put back in the oven and cooked for a version or two:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.ars/5 (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.ars/5)
(That link will skip you straight onto page 5 of the review, which discusses RAW import quality)
Are we allowed to pixel-peep when it comes to RAW converters? Well.. I can't help myself sometimes. Up until page 5 of the review I was only mildly disappointed by what I was reading.. The addition of this side-by-side killed my interest in it until it matures somewhat:
ACR: http://media.arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/.../adoberawhr.jpg (http://media.arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.media/adoberawhr.jpg)
Aperture: http://media.arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/.../aperturehr.jpg (http://media.arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.media/aperturehr.jpg)
Apple ships software for free that will give you those kinds of results..
(Not so bad? Sadly, HERE (http://web.njit.edu/%7erussell/D70s.html) is a page showing even worse results using one of the D2X sample images supplied with Aperture)
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I do not like the RAW conversions that Aperture is making from my 20D. They are not as nice as ACR, and the tools are not as easy to use. Currently Aperture is only good for the capture / selection / database side of things and NOT raw conversion.
I was using iPhoto for capture / database etc. of photos, and it worked fine, but was slow. Aperture is a lot quicker at this, and nicer.
I've made some folder actions to auto-import an exported RAW from Aperture into Photoshop, and to take the finished PSD back into Aperture. It works, but is a hack.
Apple need to decide what Aperture is - is it capture / catalogueing, or is it RAW conversion/image adjustment.
Unless they can meet Adobe ACR quality for RAW conversion, they're dead in the water as far as that's concerned as you just loose picture quality using Aperture, and that's not good. If it's the capture/database side of things Apple are aiming at, then they need to address Photoshop PSD workflow to make it a lot smoother, and to handle a lot more of the types of images Photoshop does, like LAB files etc.
Apple can't expect photographers to do "everything" in Aperture, if they don't meed established image processing standards. Until then, I'm happy enough using it as a databse, but Aperture should be a lot lot better than it is.
Graeme
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Greame, if you have a spare moment, I'd be interested to know whether or not this is true (from the same ArsTechnica review I linked earlier):
Eyedropper tool
In the course of making tweaks in Aperture, I went to reach for an eyedropper tool to check my pixel values and was pretty shocked to see that there is no numeric readout of RGB pixel information available. This is so profoundly basic and essential a tool for a professional that I don't know what Apple was thinking to leave it out.
As thorough as the good folks at Ars are(s), I find that omission to be incredibly hard to believe. Surely there has to be somewhere that you can view live pixel values under the cursor? Perhaps this is hidden in the loupe feature somewhere?
Is Apple secretly hoping this will finally get people using DigitalColor Meter?
Anyway, if you wouldn't mind poking around to see what's going on there, I'd be most appreciative!
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Unless they can meet Adobe ACR quality for RAW conversion, they're dead in the water as far as that's concerned as you just loose picture quality using Aperture, and that's not good. If it's the capture/database side of things Apple are aiming at, then they need to address Photoshop PSD workflow to make it a lot smoother, and to handle a lot more of the types of images Photoshop does, like LAB files etc.
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As the Ars article said, Apple's got some guts releasing Aperture into this pixel-peeping industry.
I have to say I'm rather disappointed in the results in that article however I'm not all that surprised. Considering the technology (core image and current vid-cards) I have to wonder how they could get results that match ACR/C1/BB/RSE/Etc. It should be interesting to see how well it improves in the next update or version. I'm sure it is possible that there is a lot of optimizing to be done.
Remembering back to all of the video card reviews I've read in the past for gaming, what I'm most curious about is how consistent the results will be between different brands of video cards. There are differences between manufacturers in how things are rendered (how much is between the drivers and the hardware I can't say of the top of my head) and I wonder if the $1600 NVidia Quadro will produce different results than the ATI 9650 for example. Then there would be the issue of upgrading cards one year to the next. Unless consistency is maintained via Core Image this could be problematic.
If someone with more up to date knowledge on that subject could chime in, I'd be interested in their opinion.
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I don't see anywhere to read RGB values in Aperture....
http://www.nattress.com/Photoshop.jpg (http://www.nattress.com/Photoshop.jpg)
http://www.nattress.com/Aperture.jpg (http://www.nattress.com/Aperture.jpg)
Says it all - and no, I couldn't use the eyedropper to get a good white balance in Aperture.... A gives me a warm 4039K +13, whereas ACR gives a neutral 3520K +12.
http://homepage.mac.com/gnattress/Graeme_N...tographs_Album/ (http://homepage.mac.com/gnattress/Graeme_Nattress_Photographs_Album/)
Was done with Aperture for the web gallery. That was quite nice, but all the images are ACR -> Photoshop!
Graeme
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Says it all - and no, I couldn't use the eyedropper to get a good white balance in Aperture.... A gives me a warm 4039K +13, whereas ACR gives a neutral 3520K +12.
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Don't put too much into the numerical difference in WB. I've noticed that different Raw converters have a different idea of what each Kelvin rating should be (ACR and C1 for example never match up numerically).
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Don't put too much into the numerical difference in WB. I've noticed that different Raw converters have a different idea of what each Kelvin rating should be (ACR and C1 for example never match up numerically).
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Ah, but the ACR version looks neutral to me eyes, whereas the Aperture one looks very warm indeed. Putting the figure from ACR into Aperture manually makes them match visually, so I think that confirms Aperture has a bug...(and not the only one)
Today, trying to pull back an over-exposure in Aperture posterised my shadows quite nastily, but in ACR I can fully under-expose the same image, but I dont' get any posterisation artifacts.
I'm writing a lot of GPU based code at the moment, for colour correction etc. so I just know there's no way that the GPU should be causing this kind of issue unless something is really broken inside. Aperture seems not to have been thoroughly tested.
If you open the task viewer, for instance, your contextual menus and other things stop working until you shut it again!
Graeme
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I've had Aperture since Monday (December 5th) and imported about 10,000 photos from a D30, 1Ds, 1D Mark II and scans from various sources. There are things I like about it and things I don't like about it.
I'm running it on a new Quad 2.5 with 4 gigs of ram and Aperture is noticably faster than Photoshop CS2 when opening a RAW file. However I have two .cr2 files from my 1D Mark II that it can't open where malloc fails. You can find out what errors are like this by opening a terminal and running the command "open -a Console". There are also about a dozen 250mb tiffs that it can't open and they were saved with compatability mode from Photoshop. It organizes my photos better than anything I've used previously, it has the vault feature which is simply awesome and it is very fast when browsing around my photos. It won't replace photoshop, but it is great as a replacement for Bridge.
What I'm really needing from it is the ability to burn a CD or DVD directly from Aperture like iTunes does, to have it integrate with Photoshop (File | Open in Photoshop) and then Photoshop being able to save to Aperture.
I hate the small 8pt font and tiny buttons but this is standard for Apple pro apps for some reason. The only useful tools are rotate and crop; I wish Adobe would look at how Aperture does crop. The rest of the tools aren't worth using. If you compare the raw conversion from Aperture and Photoshop you will notice that Photoshop is better on certain files. Aperture does some funny things. But ya know, I bought it as a catalog tool and it does this very well. I just need to figure out how to integrate it into my work-flow.
Chris
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Well, as disappointing as some of these issues are, this is all very much par-for-the-course when dealing with a 1.0 release from Apple in my experience. People do seem to be somewhat unanimous in their agreement that the app does have the potential to be very very nice in many ways, so I suppose we'll just have to hope they're quick with patches and tweaks..
Then again, one other thing that would be par-for-the-course would be for them to release Aperture HD in a month or two for $500 with no upgrade path because they've decided it's a whole new beast
I'm still hoping Michael will give us his impressions when he gets back from penguin-peeping
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Oh indeed, tonnes of potential! But Apple have to act quick on the issues to make people really want to adopt it, knowing that Apple react properly in such a situation....
Graeme
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Am I the only one to feel that Apple is going in the wrong direction with their one-do-it-all Aperture application?
They are mixing 2 very different specialities, which are data Mgt and RAW conversion.
My view is that the killer app will be the asset Mgt tool that integrates seemlessly with the RAW conversion software on the one hand, and the image editing package on the other hand.
Regards,
Bernard
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If Apple do RAW conversion, it has to be "best" or it's not worth having. Because they practically force you to use their RAW, it had better darn be best. Or they could really enhance photoshop integration, and I wouldn't care so much about their RAW. Either way, it needs fixing.
Graeme
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Remembering back to all of the video card reviews I've read in the past for gaming, what I'm most curious about is how consistent the results will be between different brands of video cards. There are differences between manufacturers in how things are rendered (how much is between the drivers and the hardware I can't say of the top of my head) and I wonder if the $1600 NVidia Quadro will produce different results than the ATI 9650 for example. Then there would be the issue of upgrading cards one year to the next. Unless consistency is maintained via Core Image this could be problematic.
If someone with more up to date knowledge on that subject could chime in, I'd be interested in their opinion.
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You shouldn't see any differences in the rendering, just the dynamic performance. Remember, that's what color management does for you.
p.s. I'm also in the Aperture disappointed club - my pet peeve is the poor DNG implementation that only supports images in the RAW formats that it ALREADY supports which in my mind is next to useless as a DNG implementation. You can't transfer images shot with non Nikon/Canon/Olympus cameras as DNG files into Aperture at this time.
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What I'm really needing from it is the ability to burn a CD or DVD directly from Aperture like iTunes does, to have it integrate with Photoshop (File | Open in Photoshop) and then Photoshop being able to save to Aperture.
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It does export to Photoshop and I thought I read it can burn to disc too.
Am I the only one to feel that Apple is going in the wrong direction with their one-do-it-all Aperture application?
They are mixing 2 very different specialities, which are data Mgt and RAW conversion.
My view is that the killer app will be the asset Mgt tool that integrates seemlessly with the RAW conversion software on the one hand, and the image editing package on the other hand.
Regards,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53004\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I think producing an all-in-one is an excellent idea. Tight integration is the primary reason I switched to ACR when Bridge became available in CS2. It's very convenient as long as the app does everything well.
I think the ultimate app would be much like Aperture but it would also allow the option of using a third-party raw converter if you desire.
You shouldn't see any differences in the rendering, just the dynamic performance. Remember, that's what color management does for you.
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My concerns are non-color management related. Things such as noise, posterization, detail and so-on and so-forth.
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Just thought I'd post a follow-up Aperture experience in here:
I had a chance to play with a friend's copy this afternoon, and while I didn't spend any time working with the RAW importer functions, or the image editing facilities (I simply imported a folder full of print-ready TIFFs I had scanned from film and prep'd in PS), the application appears to work quite nicely as a catalogue-building/metadata-editing interface, and I was very pleased with how it simplified the process of building web galleries, organizing groups of images, etc..
I never did run into any of the nasty "slow metadata editing" bugs that haunt the Apple Discussion fora, either... maybe because I've got 4GB of RAM in the dual 2.0 G5, but it's an old machine by today's standards, so I'm not sure what's up there... the folder I imported is 18GB on the drive though, so I was expecting issues, but instead was very pleased with how well things worked from this point-of-view (and fully realise Apple are billing the app as a RAW-import tool). Being able to use the lupe on a thumbnail to instantly check IQ was a trip.. Very cool indeed
Some parts of the interface bug me though - like the black-on-grey colour scheme and tiny font you can't adjust - but I'm sure learning a few hot-keys would solve those issues in no time..
I'm not sold yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll be buying v2.0 the day its ready. Apple has a habit of making their faithfull beta-test software lately, but they seem to be reliable on massively improving things in later releases for a cost (he says, having used their .mac service since the day it went "pay", and cursing their recent iLife '06 zero-upgrade BS)
Anyway, I'm content to wait it out for now, but a hefty patch for v.1.0 might just push me over the edge.. there are some things the program does very well right now if you're not concerned with using it as a RAW converter..
Thinking Apple will screw their v.1.0 users with crappy upgrade options and pretty features in 2.0, I entreat their forbearance and remain (patiently),
Gabe