Is Aperture dead?

Nah...it's not dead.

I expect 2010 is when Apple will deliver Aperture 3

Schiller said recently that Apple's standard update to iLife happens around March.

Apple introduced Aperture 2 in February 2008 and iLife '09 in early 2009.

If Apple updates iPhoto again this winter as expected, it will have completely lapped its Pro counterpart.
That would make Apple's Pro Apps division look silly, not to mention completely incompetent given the importance of the Snow Leopard transition.

I think it has to be early 2010. Possibly a silent intro the week before the Tablet intro on the 26th.

I hope so too because i'm on the cusp of buying my first Camera that does RAW and I want to stick with an Apple (read Aperture) workflow. I'm just a guy that wants to do hobby photos but I want that integration.

I don't think they're neglecting them. I'm sure a huge volume of work is being done for the Final Cut rewrite.
Incorporating Grand Central and all that other Snow Leopard goodness was always going to take time.

The upcoming shifts to things like LightPeak and SDXC are probably making the next big thing in filmmaking a moving target.
Remember, the Pro apps exist solely to sell Pro hardware.

But Aperture is a different case. Adobe is breathing down their necks and Apple is giving out signals that they either can't (or won't) compete.
Will the Aperture team do things that make the program much easier and better even though it might harm Photoshop?

No one really knows.

Yes the problem is when Apple delivers an OS update with shiny new features Apple really needs to wait until they've quashed some bugs and the new OS has obtained some marketshare.

I didn't see Core Animation used in iWork until almost a year after Leopard shipped. My guess is that the 2010 updates will be delivered with much better support for Snow Leopard and we'll end up learning about 10.7 come WWDC.

I don't necessarily think thats a bad thing. Do I need geo location in Aperture? Do I need facial recognition in Aperature? Probly not. So, iPhoto is in a different category than Aperature. Same with Photoshop. Sure, you can edit photos with Photoshop but Photoshop is a design tool first, photo editor second. Hence, the need and market space for Lightroom. If you're going to switch just ensure you're using the right tool for the job

Having said that, with OpenCL now a part of SL I think they will update Aperature this year

Definitely not. Photoshop was never designed as a "design tool." That's what Illustrator and InDesign are for. Photoshop is the original "photo editor."

Lightroom is something else all together - it's a workflow tool. Both Aperture and LR are workflow solutions that also have robust image correction and processing tools built in them.

There have certainly been hints that Aperture 3 will come before March - and Apple really needs to bring something soon. If not, Aperture really will die - as hard as it is for me to say.

The Final Cut Studio update seemed to be bug fixes and stabilization rather than new features mostly. I think as said above, a complete rewrite is in the works for not only the Final Cut Studio, but perhaps something of that nature with Aperture 3 too. Utilizing Grand Central etc. My guess is the Jan. 26 announcement has been tying up resources; and bringing in other people would complicate the vision the Aperture team has for the product. At any rate, I too believe something great will be announced soon. There is a big photography conference early in the year I think, as well as CES, so I would keep an eye out early in the year for any updates.

If Apple dropped Aperture then what would happen if Adobe threatened to drop their apps for OS X? That damage would be catastrophic. Apple cannot afford to be held hostage by Adobe.

Think Adobe would never do that? Maybe not, but what happens if Microsoft bought Adobe? Adobe might not have a choice. Or maybe Microsoft would not have Adobe embrace the new Apple OS Core libraries and drag the Adobe apps a few generations behind the PC versions. Heck, Adobe does this already it seems.

It is not whether Aperture is even making money. All they have to do is break even. This keeps Adobe in check. Apple cannot sell Pro hardware unless there is pro software to run on it. That is why Apple has pro video, photo, and audio apps. Steve Jobs learned this the hard way at NeXt.

I would love to see Apple expand their line of apps to include Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, and Dreamweaver apps. Pixelmator would make a good start. Apple does not even have to create or own these pro apps themselves. All they need to do is make sure there are good alternatives to the Adobe apps. But the best position is to own apps themselves that they control.

So I don't think Aperture is going anywhere.

Visionary makes a good point. I don't think the apps are going away, but it is high time we got Snow Leopard optimized high performance apps that set the industry standard. Maybe thats in the next event. /crosses fingers

The threat to Adobe didn't start with Aperture. It's been known for a long time that ColorSync and the Core Image libraries provided Apple with the capability to build a Photoshop-killer within a year if necessary. If Aperture is discontinued, that won't change.

I seriously doubt Apple sees print publishing as a growth market. So Photoshop and InDesign competitors are out. Lineform and others are maturing fast, so I doubt Apple will take on Illustrator either.

Dreamweaver is the only app I can see Apple going after.

The iPhone, iPod Touch, Tablet/iSlate thing and Safari on Mac all cry out for an easy-to-use web authoring environment for consumers and prosumers. And Apple seems to hate Flash and embraces HTML5, so there's one more reason to run over Dreamweaver with an Apple-built solution.

The key thing is simplicity. No one has really come up with a professional level easy-to-use web site builder. You still have to know programming to build a decent website (forget about a database driven site without specialized knowledge.)

Can Apple take the iWeb philosophy upmarket? I have no idea.

As I've said many, many times before: Serious photographers need either Aperture or Lightroom -- or something very much like them -- plus just a fraction of what Photoshop CS does.

Adding non-destructive image editing features (layers, channel masks, etc.) that photographers need while leaving out the bulk of Ps would be a game changer for the Aperture/Lightroom space and would put Apple out ahead on a tangent where Adobe couldn't follow (because Adobe would be too fearful of cannibalizing Ps market share).

FWIW, Dutch website OneMoreThing.nl has found a wide release of a Dutch Aperture 3 book with ISBNs, cover photo, etc.: http://translate.google.com/translat...6art_id%3D4987 (Google translation) via a story on TUAW. Maybe we'll get a new version of Aperture after all?

Apple had to keep Final Cut Studio support for PowerPC, but Aperture is small enough that they can make it Intel-only. I expect the new version to be available sometime between the tablet's unveiling and the new versions of the iLife and iWork suites.

I'm not sure "between Wednesday and the next iLife/iWork releases" is going to cut it, nor is Tim Cook saying they are seeing a "small year over year increase" in pro apps like Aperture. "Economically challenged area", indeed.

MacWorld doesn't seem to do much rumor-mongering, so it's surprising nothing happened there. Maybe an Aperture announcement was delayed? We can only hope.

This is the most astute comment I have heard in ages about the dearth of a high level, user-friendly program for web design. Thumbs up.

The fact is that in terms of simplicity wed to sophistication, a program like Adobe InDesign roundly destroys its web layout counterpart Adobe Dreamweaver. Adobe has not managed to make its acquired Macromedia apps particularly elegant or user-friendly. This is indeed a gap that Apple has begun to exploit with iWeb. iWeb on steroids would be fascinating.

Well, we got Aperture 3, but it's about half of what I hoped it would be.


What Aperture needed to be a real game changer was masks/layers.

Faces and places isn't going to cut it. Instead of real competition for Lr/Ps, at first glance it looks like instead we got iPhoto on steroids.

Worse yet, because nobody is kicking Adobe's proverbial arse, we'll continue to get Flash-based "features" in the next versions of Ps and Lr instead of real enhancements... <sigh>

Oh, and Intel only, as we all guessed it would be.

Masks and layers are the last thing on Earth I'd want for Aperture. Are you crazy?

That's what makes Photoshop so hard to use. If you want them, use Photoshop. Please.

Leave them out of Aperture.

Aperture 3 is everything I always thought it could be. Much bigger upgrade than I was expecting.

I'm guessing we still can't convert RGB photos to CMYK, right?

But would you have to use layers and masks? Or could you ignore them? Did it occur to you that those features don't have to be hard to use? That Adobe alone is responsible for the lack of usability in Photoshop?

Some of us would like a chance to get away from the expensive parade of Adobe upgrades.

Every feature you add to software adds to the complexity of the user interface. That balance is what Apple is so good at.

It seems to me that layers and masks go beyond photography to image manipulation. Apple has been very clear what Aperture is: a tool for photographers, not a tool for designers or graphic artists.

I think Apple would create a new product aimed at designers (and/or Photoshop users) before they'd add layers and masks to Aperture. But I could be wrong.

If Apple built Aperture mainly as a photographer's database, they would have been better off just fixing the finder.

Aperture is like iTunes. You don't even think about Finder when you use them. The location of files is irrelevant to the user.

You just concentrate on the task at hand.

It's sorta like iPhone/Touch/iPad apps: there is no file system that the end-user deals with. In fact there was an interesting article recently about just that: Apple more-or-less dealing away with the file system (for end-users) on iPhones and iPads. Really, they've already done that with iTunes and Aperture.

It's not just Photoshopping Oprah's head onto Ann Margaret's body.

Layers and masks are the tools used to selectively apply corrections so, for example, adjustments like noise reduction can easily be applied differently to separate sections of an image.

It wouldn't need to be every feature of Ps (and would be far better if it didn't). Just the stuff that photographers use.

Have you looked at the Aperture How To video on using Brushes? http://www.apple.com/aperture/how-to/

You can have multiple "layers" of each tool (the demo shows two different color adjustments), plus the brush you draw with is essentially a "mask" that applies the current adjustment, isn't it? And it can detect edges on top of that. There's even an eraser and feather tools for modifying the "mask"/brush.

Seriously, if you need more than that... *shrugs* ... I think we're talking Photoshop.

I need to get home (to my Mac) where I can spend some quality time with the 30-day trial.

So now Aperture 3 is released, and a part of the slogan says "iPhoto simplicity". It seems Aperture 3 is a much more powerful photo management tool, but I am afraid I won't be able to understand the user interface. Should I switch from iPhoto anyway?

Download the 30-day trial and try it for yourself for free.

http://www.apple.com/aperture/trial/

I recommend anyone considering the 30-day trial or buying Aperture 3 as an upgrade their previous version, to check out Apple's discussion board for Aperture beforehand.

There have been some significant issues ran into by many who installed version 3.

I tried the trial, pointed to my iPhoto library without converting/copying, and had the problems you'll read about on that forum; memory leaks, dramatic computer slowdown, lockups. Even trying things like stopping the Faces and Places setup, I still have a barely usable program, and don't trust it. For me, the initial release trial version has been a disappointment and waste of time. I'll be waiting for one or two updates before trying again. I definitely would LIKE to get the newest Aperture and use it rather than iPhoto, but for now, I'm not motivated enough to endure the hassles and risks with the current build. As always, your mileage may vary.

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.j...D=1092&start=0

I think anyone who pointed Aperture 3 at an entire iPhoto library and expected the new Faces feature to work on thousands and thousands of photos probably didn't completely think through what they were doing.

Seems like most that have used it at Ars are giving it a rather luke warm reception.

In have been considering moving from iPhoto to Aperture as well but I think I'll just keep iPhoto a while longer. Photography is just a hobby for me. No need to make it painful.

I love it when people who take pictures of cats, running shoes, and street signs do evaluations of software for creative people.

Yes, it was probably naive of me (and all the other trial users and new owners of Aperture 3) to 'expect' this.

The thing is, there is NO indication there would be any sort of problem with this. Check out the video tutorial for importing from iPhoto, where the suggestion is you import from iPhoto EASILY (they use the usual Apple editing to reduce the time needed, it would appear).

http://www.apple.com/aperture/how-to/#video-moving

The decision to have or not have Faces in the import is just a little check box. In the webpages of info on the new version, it says that previous info one has put into iPhoto (identifying sets of faces) would be copied over. Without checking the box, does this happen? Seems more naive to think it'll be faster by doing it after importing (and losing all identification effort one has already done). I've already done scans of my library for missing faces in iPhoto and had certain expectations for how long it would take, and hours was NOT my expectation.

Besides, although there was commentary in the forums about turning off the feature, it didn't really resolve the other horrible processing hangs and problems I had, it just moved from one problem to another. I think it was recreating preview thumbnails that were causing lots of problems for others with larger libraries of imported data.

Certainly many people worked their way through all this and have a working program, but it appears that nobody imported an Aperture 2 or iPhoto library without hours of processing of the data, and that was not well indicated by Apple as being necessary or expected. And this is without the faces feature... And since it's still not working for me, I'm remain disappointed.

But again, others should try for themselves, just understand the possible time commitment, either in researching issues in the forums or just installing and hoping.

That's a pretty dick head response.

Its not like condemed the damn thing. If you think I'm full of shit why don't you post something of substance.

PS I guess this guy doesn't know what he talking about either.