Apple Releases Aperture

[MacRumors]

Apple announced Aperture today during their media event. The new Pro Software application is a post-production tool for photographers.Designed from the ground up for professional photographers, Aperture provides everything you need for after the shoot, delivering the first all-in-one post-production tool for photographers.
The $499 application will ship in November. Other features include:

- RAW image-based workflow
- Importing, editing, catalog, organization, retouch, publishing and archival tools
- RAW formats, TIFF, JPEG, DNG
- Full screen workspace
- Colorsync profies
- Recommends a dual 2.0GHz or faster Power Mac G5.

Article Link: Apple Releases Aperture

 

[Fredo Viola]

such an elegant interface! I wish I had a camera that takes raw pictures just to be able to use it!

 

[Griffindor73]

Requires dual 2.0 Ghz or faster!!!- so, they are going to sell loads of this program then...

 

[mainstreetmark]

As i said in another thread, it sucks to see a new interface come out of Apple, but this interface does look pretty damn cool.

(the Open/Save dialog appears to be all grey in that app)

 

[bitfactory]

Requires dual 2.0 Ghz or faster!!!- so, they are going to sell loads of this program then...

It's a Pro app - the 'Pros' have the equipment - or will upgrade shortly to meet the requirements.

This isn't for you and your momma.

 

[nagromme]

I don't know if anyone REALLY believed Apple would try to kill Photoshop. Happily they did not This app meets a specific need that Photoshop didn't meet.

 

[Object-X]

Super nice

You look at something like this and wonder why anyone would use anything else? Apple is probably hoping the same thing. They want the photo market and I think they have it.

As far as Adobe is concerned Aperture is only stepping on them a little. The problem with Photoshop is that it has to be all things to all people. This is a very focused application. Does anyone think Microsoft could write something this nice?

 

[Fabio_gsilva]

I'm not shamed to admit that I don't know nothing about photo software or even about taking a decent picture...

But I'm glad Apple is in the game with a good app, at least for what I heard!

 

[Object-X]

As i said in another thread, it sucks to see a new interface come out of Apple, but this interface does look pretty damn cool.

(the Open/Save dialog appears to be all grey in that app)

Not sure I see your point. This has a very similar interface with the rest of their pro line.

 

[snkTab]

I'm at work so I can't do that much reasearch now, but how close is this to say Extensis Portfolio?

 

[ipacmm]

It looks very interesting; I will check it out when it is released.

 

[Object-X]

Picture is worth..

Look at this picture. It says it all. A Quad G5 with dual 30" displays and Aperature. If you are a professional photographer that works with digital how could you resist that setup? All it takes is money.

 

[Griffindor73]

Having just had a look at it on the Apple website it does look very cool. I like that little magnifying effect so you can look at detail close up.

Now, if they only put a few of those things into iPhoto....

 

[studiographiko]

It looks great and from the promotional material, looks highly responsive, but I'm invested in Photoshop (been so for many years), and just upgraded my CS2 (Not cheap either). Come on, $500 is a tad hard to swallow no matter how slick the interface is. Throw us a bone and give us a competitive upgrade price! Is there even lens adjustment control? I don't see it in the features list.

 

[mainstreetmark]

Not sure I see your point. This has a very similar interface with the rest of their pro line.

my point is that I, like others, are becoming annoyed at the growing number of interfaces. We have:

- Standard 'aqua' looking apps.
- Brushed metal apps (some folks used to say that these were "digital device" type apps, but now finder windows are BM)
- iTunes is now some sort of polished metal app
- Mail is also a polished metal app, but a different shade of grey. Presumably this is the look of modern Aqua apps, since they pinstripe when in the background, but iTunes doesn't pinstripe when in the background.
- And, then, Aperture's got this new look that none of my apps have.

Too many!

 

[Object-X]

my point is that I, like others, are becoming annoyed at the growing number of interfaces. We have:

- Standard 'aqua' looking apps.
- Brushed metal apps (some folks used to say that these were "digital device" type apps, but now finder windows are BM)
- iTunes is now some sort of polished metal app
- Mail is also a polished metal app, but a different shade of grey. Presumably this is the look of modern Aqua apps, since they pinstripe when in the background, but iTunes doesn't pinstripe when in the background.
- And, then, Aperture's got this new look that none of my apps have.

Too many!

But this is a pro app like the rest. Where is there a new interface? Everything you list are home apps; granted they all differ, but this is very similar to FinalCut Pro, Logic, ect. How is it new? In fact, why is it bad that there is variety. Perhaps an application should be designed to best fit it's use. Maybe they should all differ.

 

[Lacero]

Impressive! All the pro photographers are going ga-ga over this piece of software. Thank god it's not anything like Pages.

 

[crazylb1]

I'm a photojouralism student and this software is sweet. Looks like it will be the best RAW/library management software out there.

That said, Arn and whoever else has access to change MR posts, Aperture will run on 17 or 20in iMacs and 15 0r 17in powerbooks with minimum proc speeds of 1.25Ghz

 

[Westside guy]

It seems like it might be a good tool for "serious amateurs" as well. I really want to know,though, how it'll run on the "minimum specs" system - which basically is my Powerbook.

Pricewise it is comparable to Photoshop, and fills the role that Photoshop does for a lot of users - and frankly looks like it does some of it better.

 

[quidire]

It looks great and from the promotional material, looks highly responsive, but I'm invested in Photoshop (been so for many years), and just upgraded my CS2 (Not cheap either). Come on, $500 is a tad hard to swallow no matter how slick the interface is. Throw us a bone and give us a competitive upgrade price! Is there even lens adjustment control? I don't see it in the features list.

This is much more a replacement for Extensis Portfolio or somesuch than it is a competitor for photoshop.

Photoshop is at its best in photo editing; dodging, cloning etc. It's image-wide clean up tools are actually not that amazing. Aperture's concept is that you'll use it to manage your photos (it is very aggressive in pushing tagging and using that and other metadata to do various things), and do whole-image clean up (exposure tweaking, colour balance changes etc). That's why you can launch photoshop from within it. Photoshop will get an image, you can edit it, play w/ layers etc, and it saves back into Aperture to leverage Aperture's versioning system.

Can photoshop do this on its own? Well everything save actually managing a library of photos, but these two products do complement each other. Where they overlap it appears that Apple has focused a lot of effort to ensuring it is better; that still leaves Photoshop its core competencies as its role in your workflow.

-RS

 

[quidire]

I'm at work so I can't do that much reasearch now, but how close is this to say Extensis Portfolio?

Well it's image-only, but from my experiences w/ Extensis Suitcase (not the same thing, but still) I can't imagine that it doesn't have a better interface and is more reliable.

Apple, surely you can improve font management to the point where extensis suitcase is unnecessary....

-RS

 

[atari1356]

- Requires a dual 2.0GHz or faster Power Mac G5.

Here are the system requirements as listed in the Apple Store:

Minimum system requirements

Power Mac G5 with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5; 17- or 20-inch iMac G5 with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5; or 15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4 with 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor
1GB of RAM
One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon X850 XT; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; ATI Radeon 9700 Pro; ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
5GB of disk space for application, templates and tutorial
DVD drive for installation



Recommended system

Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 or faster
2GB of RAM
One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
5GB of disk space for application, templates, and tutorial
DVD drive for installation

 

[rockman2023]

Off-Topic

Being a web designer, I've noticed that this is the first time Apple has used a significant amount of Flash on their site.

 

[Bern]

I love Photoshop, but I think it's about time a serious contender appeared as competition to it. Adobe have monopolised the market for too long and with their apparent favouritism towards windows since CS I'm happy to see Apple are the one to offer it.

Unfortunately though I don't meet the minimum system requirements for Aperture otherwise I'd flick Adobe right now and get it.

 

[macjunkie82]

Has anybody else noticed that Apple's using Flash on the page for Aperture? They use QuickTime too, but I don't think I've ever seen Apple use Flash on any page. Maybe I'm wrong...

EDIT: Looks like rockman2023 beat me to it while I was typing this.