levels control in Aperture

[BJL]

I am happy to read that there will son be an Aperture forum here at LL, since I am considering getting it (now that Apple added support for the humble Intel graphics card in my humble Mac Mini).
My main interests are raw development (global adjustments to color, contrast, sharpening, and such), cropping including leveling the horizon, and fairly basic local adjustments (some dodging and burning). And batch processing, and Aperture's reportedly great ability to "back out" from changes.

I have one concern though, after reading early critical comments about Aperture, and that is Aperture's levels controls.

I expect levels adjustment to be my one of main tools, for example to fit extremes of highlights and shadows into the rather limited luminosity gamut of a print, so I wonder how Aperture's levels controls perform, and how they compare to alternative software. Full Photoshop is probably out of my price range (and I have no interest in Photoshop's many sophisticated image manipulation abilities), so I am more interested in comparisons to other raw handling software priced not too much more than Aperture.

Thanks in advance!

[Julian Love]

I was playing with Aperture at the local Apple store a few days ago...the levels control appeared to be fine. It also supports individual RGB channels as well as overall luminescence, which some RAW converters do not. Version 1.51 is now available as a demo, so why not download it and give it a try?

Julian

[BJL]

Thanks for the promising comments.

Version 1.51 is now available as a demo, so why not download it and give it a try?
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Because I would need a RAM upgrade to run it! Which I will happily do if I decide to buy Aperture, but not just for a trial. Unfortunately, there is not yet an Apple Store in my part of world for a test-drive.