Aperture 4 & beyond?

[stevegoldenberg]

What do you all think Apple is planning with Aperture? Do you think they will continue developing this application into the future?  I get worried some times that they're going to drop it (and I really like Aperture so much better than Lightroom and other competitors).  Just curious.

-Steve G

[ixania2]

i don't care. there are quite a lot good programs on the market, so you don't lose much, if apple decides on quitting. think of raw photo processor, raw developer or capture one. the demosaicing quality of aperture is not the best, that's for sure...

[CatOne]

People seem to worry this every time it's been 18 months since the last version was released, or so ;-)

Aperture was like the top grossing app on Apple's App Store for months, and it's still #18.  It certainly seems like there's interest in the product: Enough to make decent revenue...

[Kenneth Sky]

There has been a very recent update to 3 so I doubt Apple will let this app die.

[Ailsae]

I spoke with Apple in Ireland in November and a senior told me they are working on Aperture 4 and have every intention of keeping Aperture alive, they told me its extremely popular and used by 10s of thousands of Pros.

[john beardsworth]

Of course they'd say that.....

But I wouldn't believe whatever you think you were told. It's not a good career move for an Apple employee to speak about future product plans.

[Hywel]

We use aperture for all our photo processing (thousands of shots a month). I also MUCH prefer it to Lightroom, and nothing in the new LR4 Beta looks like it is going to change that. We find the ability to do non-destructive retouch with skin smoothing, clone and repair tools as well as RAW development turns Aperture into a one-stop shop.

If I had one feature request personally it would be to talk to Hasselblad and get the colour science from Phocus into Aperture. But that's a minor point. These days I look at images in both Phocus and Aperture, see which one gives me the result closest to the look I want, then choose that one as the basis for the rest of the processing. (Even the Phocus shots go through Aperture for retouching and export). It is almost like having the choice of two film stocks, in post

I'm actually at a bit of a loss what features I'd request from Aperture 4. More speed, obviously, always. Keeping up to date with latest camera RAW formats. Maybe negative clarity, although that's basically what skin smoothing does in a nicely targeted way.

I'm REALLY happy with Aperture, my absolute workhorse app so I just hope they keep it ticking along, I don't need any particularly grand new features.

  Cheers, Hywel.

[rockaw]

Aperture 2 was released on the 2nd Tuesday in February -- Feb 12, 2008.
Aperture 3 was released on the 2nd Tuesday in February -- Feb 9, 2010.

Aperture 4: Feb 14, 2012?

[Kenneth Sky]

It's a shame no one (or 2) does a tutorial for Aperture like Michael & Jeff do for LR. I've stuck with Aperture riht from the beginning but am having second thoughts about #4 as it is difficult to appreciate the fine points of a programme without such a tutorial at such a reasonable price.

[budjames]

I've been a LR user since the early public beta. Now working with LR 4 beta, it's awesome.

That said, I've used iPhoto forever on our family Mac for all the snap shots we take (90,000 plus over 10 years). I never liked the tools in iPhoto and the idea that any crops or edits create a new image file in iPhoto. So, 5 months ago, I purchased Aperture 3 to replace iPhoto.

I like the way it works, but still prefer LR for the lens corrections, graduated brushes, sharpening and printing capabilities. I hardly ever use Photoshop anymore.

I think that Apple should replace iPhoto with Aperture in the iLife suite since they work so similarly and Apertures tools are so much better.

All good stuff!

Cheers.
Bud James
http://www.budjamesphotography.com

[DeeJay]

A version that doesn't constantly crash would be nice.

[jeremyrh]

When I started getting interested in digital photography I used PaintShopPro. At that time it would do all I needed (I think...), but the problem was that there were very few learning materials compared with Photoshop, so I bit the (financial) bullet and switched. I find myself a bit in the same boat with Aperture. Probably it is very powerful, and with the addition of Nik plugins it has tremendous functionalities, but the user community seems to be small, and there is no contribution from Apple to that community, so I find myself drawn to LR.

In addition, I am puzzled and annoyed by the slow support for new RAW formats. I don't buy so many new cameras that this is more than a minor point, in practice, but it just makes me frustrated with the corporate "silent policy" from Apple.

[DeeJay]

Apple do seem to have lost their enthusiasm for the software.

[RobSaecker]

A version that doesn't constantly crash would be nice.

A version of what that doesn't crash constantly? Aperture? If so, something's wrong with your system, and it's probably only remotely related to Aperture, if at all. With daily use, I haven't had an Aperture crash since 09, according to my logs.

[JonRoemer]

Apple do seem to have lost their enthusiasm for the software.

Based on what?

It was just updated in December.  It's in the 25 Top Paid apps in the Mac App Store.

It is due for a v4 soon but the current moment is no different than the months leading up to Aperture v3 being released -> then many folks online were predicting its demise.

[DeeJay]

It is due for a v4 soon but the current moment is no different than the months leading up to Aperture v3 being released -> then many folks online were predicting its demise

well I hope so. The current iteration is still quite unstable and laggy though.

[JonRoemer]

well I hope so. The current iteration is still quite unstable and laggy though.

Similar to Rob above, I don't find that in least and that's bouncing between three computers - a 5+ yr. old Mac Pro, a MacBook Pro, and an iMac.

[DeeJay]

Weird. Don't know what's up with mine then. I have a 2010 Mac Pro 3.3 6 core 24GB of RAM SSD Raid. It should be OK.

Adjustments, such as curves, are generally rather laggy and tethered shooting continually crashes.

I've read a fair few other people having the same issues on the net.

I was running 3.1. I've just downloaded 3.2 update. Should that help?

[JonRoemer]

Weird. Don't know what's up with mine then. I have a 2010 Mac Pro 3.3 6 core 24GB of RAM SSD Raid. It should be OK.

Adjustments, such as curves, are generally rather laggy and tethered shooting continually crashes.

I've read a fair few other people having the same issues on the net.

I was running 3.1. I've just downloaded 3.2 update. Should that help?

Don't know.

I'm running Lion.  My Mac Pro is actually ~5.5 yrs. old, 2 x 3 dual-core, 12 gb ram, etc.  Aperture runs fine.

I tether to my laptop all the time and never had Aperture crash while tethered.

Anyway, really sounds like something else is up with your system.

In terms of Aperture you can rebuild the library and do that type of thing.

You can also repair disk permissions on your Mac via the disk utility.

Could be possible that you have a bad ram chip.  You can use a utility like Remember to test the ram.

[DeeJay]

Very Strange.

There's nothing wrong with the machine. no need to rebuild the library as I only just got the software. The Mac Pro It smokes my very heavy workload and my P65+ tethers just fine with C1 v5, v6. No problems there.

I haven't had a chance yet to test out the 3.2 update. I hope that is the issue.