Apple's Aperture 3 brings 200 new features, including Faces, Places - Page 4

My email from Apple is faulty or my email server is destroying the attachment, I am only getting the trial code but no link.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE PM ME WITH THE LINK TO THE 30d TRIAL. I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE. THANK IN ADVANCE!

Like some others, I tried signing up to be able to download the trial version of Aperture 3 and received a blank email. Turns out it isn't necessarily blank. I used a gmail account and when viewed in a browser, the email from Apple appeared blank (no content). After trying four times, with four 'blank' replies, I switched to an old yahoo email for registration, with the same strange empty email reply. Just for fun, I started Apple's mail app, which happens to be configured to work with my gmail account, and it downloaded and immediately displayed the registration email.

Not sure what they're sending, but it isn't supported in Safari when looking at gmail's email page or yahoo's email page. Kinda silly and I hope they fix it. But glad I figured it out, so I can start messing with this interesting software upgrade.

I tried Aperture 2 and Lightroom beta and found they didn't really do enough for me given my modest needs. This new version seems to add some tweaks that might get me to keep using it...maybe.

-Kevin

Sent in PM.

I am off and downloading.

Projects sync across libraries - woot!

http://www.whereintheworldisfrance.c...-photographer/

Check out his very first point. Way cool - must go play now!

Haha, I think I am in almost the exact same situation. Bought a LUMIX GF1 in December, currently using iPhoto to organize (though ran out of hard drive space a long time ago), using CS2 to edit, which is painfully slow.

I am waiting for the i5 MacBook Pros to come out, then I will actually be able to run these programs, and not have to delete movies every time I edit photos

Personally, I'm psyched about the new version of aperture. I've yet to try it, but if it's faster, that's great. It's got curves, and that's great. New brushes, that's great too. I'm just glad Apple didn't kill Aperture after all...

The problem with that package is you can't browse it with other applications. Show package contents is just for the finder, not open windows. While I can appreciate the usability of managing the file structure via aperture, I don't want it to do that. I want my photos where I put them. Hence the references. But still not like Lightroom.

Another thing I really like about Lightroom is the back ups and integrity checks. Either way, both are cool programs and IMO drive innovation between the two. Competition is never a bad thing.

I don't think there is any need for Adobe vs. Apple bashing here. Photoshop was and is the king of what is does. I remember when Photoshop 1.0 was in beta back in 1990. It sparked a revolution and entire industries depend on it, many of them you'd never guess. They have 20 years of experience with the needs of their customers.

Aperture was created at first to address a specific need of the pro photographer community, Workflow. The concept has been around with Apple users since the Pagemaker days when the publishing community used to pay a lot of money for workflow solutions for the magazine and catalog businesses. But Apple has also seen that Aperture has a place for the prosumer who carries a nice camera and actually cares about their photography. To these people, Photoshop is too dense, daunting and way too expensive. Even Adobe came out with Lightroom to address these concerns.

Most pro photographers who are used to Photoshop and depend on it aren't going to walk away from it for this or any product. One friend of mine who's a pro photographer who has produced very famous album covers for music stars still uses two PowerMac 9600s with OS 8.6 running Photoshop 4(!) simply because they work and still interfaces to some elderly equipment he has. Not to mention he enjoys the simplicity of the old version of Photoshop. And yes, he has a Nehalem Mac Pro and Photoshop CS3 for things the geezers can't handle.

For the rest of us where Photoshop is simply an investment we can't justify, $199 for Aperture (or Lightroom) to do some simple editing every now and then is plenty. If you're really cheap, there's GIMP.

I agree, however, (there's always an 'however') I've stopped at CS3.
Starting, as I did with Photoshop 3.0, I was fortunate enough to luck out on a UMAX flatbed with PS3 thrown in.
8 upgrades later I still use Photoshop as Aperture just didn't cut it for me.
I now see Apple having the cojones to keep up the development on Aperture, and I'm excited as all get-out
I've ordered v3.0 and as I've said - I'm excited

I agree completely Sevenfeet. I think it's great there are two strong competitors going at it in this field though. It's going to make the other innovate (a lot of the reason adobe slowed down innovation on PS (but it seems PS9 will have some crazy algorithms built-in)). I know a lot of pro photographers tried aperture when it came out, and the code base was so horible they moved to Lightroom as soon as it came out (apple even moved the majority of the code base to a new team for 2.x). Either way, both are great. I can't wait to try Aperture 3.x, who knows I may go back.

200 new features (funny how they're always a really round number) seems to have added a lot to the weight of the app...about 400 Mb worth!!!

You has obviously not tried Aperture. I have used it for some time. I have my photos arranged in folders in the file system, and when I import them, I do that leaving them in their original location.

What aperture does for me, is that it allows me to do the post-processing, like adjusting exposure, color, hightlight/shadows, even the occasional red-eye from my pocket cam, and do so without disrupting the original. It keeps the original, and spends extra disk space only on the recipe to to transform the image.

After I adjust a picture, I can export it as JPEG or whatever, and I can always do that. At the same time I still have the original I can work on. It was never harmed.

In Photoshop, I would have to keep my original, and then make adjustments, and save as TIFF/PSD, and export from there. And since lots of the adjustment is taking place when I import the raw (using raw converter), I can not easily adjust my first steps further. I would have to continue from what I got into Photoshop in the first place. After that, adjustment layers is somewhat like Aperture can do.

New good things is auto-tagging with names of person, location etc. And help you find stuff beyond what Spotlight will do.

I have some thousands of photos, and for me Aperture is great, and even Aperture 2 has been very fast.

I am buying my very first Mac and I am excited to buy Aperture 3 with it. I am an amatuer photographer with a tiny side business. I try to take enough awesome photos that I do not need to edit the hell out of them to make people happy. However the more I get into this the more I know I need the right tools. Can you tell me if I should bother with Aperture 3 or just do Photoshop? Should get both? Does aperture have a tool to take shine off faces? (All my personal wedding photos need retouching.) Thanks for helping the newbie.

If you're going to be semi-serious about photography, I recommend both Photoshop and Aperture / Lightroom. Photoshop has a lot more power than Aperture / Lightroom that you'll tap into. If you're going to sell your photos, definitely consider getting Aperture / Lightroom for your photo management and light editing. I know this doesn't directly answer your shine off faces question, but that was too vague of a question. The new brushes in Aperture may allow you to do so. Until someone uses it directly I don't think anyone can directly answer it.

From what I hear, and my own personal experience is that Aperture should be able to do 90+% of the photo handling, and only need to go to Photoshop for specific needs on just a small percentage of photos. It looks like version 3 can do even better.

It's different if you're trying to put together an image from more than one image, I didn't see image compositing in the new feature list, you're probably going to need Photoshop for that.

You might not need the full Photoshop, you can probably try Elements and save a lot of money.

Thank you! I guess I will wait to hear, I am not ready to buy my mac unitl April anyway. I will likely get it no matter what, but am anxious to see if I can fix my wedding photos from 2004..my photographer sent me the unretouched cd's and skipped town. (even though we paid for a completely retouched album.) All his lighting choices were poor and they look awful...so sad...my face is shiny in almost all the church shots. :-(

I'd start with Aperture. Aperture is first and foremost a DAM - Digital Asset Management - tool. It will start you off and help you get and stay organized. Watch the tutorial videos and you may wish to pick up a few of these most excellent ebooks: http://photo.rwboyer.com/aperture-ebooks/ to get a jump start. Figuring out how you want to organize your photo's is pretty key, although with the new library management features in Aperture it's not as critical to get it "right" the first time as it was before.

Also, instead of just running to Photoshop because it's what "everyone" uses, Aperture 3 provides some significant enhancements to color correction and image adjustment. If you still need a layer based editor to make more substantial changes to a photo (say to remove a telephone pole from a picture or something along those lines where layers are essential) you might want to take a look a Photoshop Elements - it's pretty darn powerful and capable of many tasks, and a fraction of the price. Lots of people get Photoshop because it's "the" tool, and then end up not using 1/5 of what the program can do. Elements is pretty darn capable, as are other programs like Pixelmator, so take your time before just running out and purchasing Photoshop.

Aperture, for me anyway, is a no brainer Download the 30 day trial (it's free!) and see if you agree.

Ah, I missed this. If you just want to fix your wedding photo's, Photoshop Elements is probably all you will need.

Also one of my favorite books: The Photoshop Elements 5 Restoration and Retouching Book

I like this book because it's written in plain english - you will be able to "hit the ground running" and get some effective results pretty quickly. I highly recommend it - without something like it to guide you, you will get pretty frustrated, pretty quickly.

Good luck!

Thank you so much!!!!!

I agree. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have a very steep learning curve. Aperture is much easier to learn, not only because it's aimed specifically at photographers but also because Apple has made it so intuitive.

Can anyone tell me if I can load the Aperture 30-day trial on both my desktop and laptop?
Or am I locked into one or the other?

You can do both.....

I certainly hope Aperture is easier than Photoshop, my friend let me borrow her laptop yesterday to try out Photoshop and besides the easy tools I was so confused and had no idea how to use the brushes properly...it was a train wreck.

Downloaded the Aperture 3 trial. It unto itself is OK.

However: iMovie is rendered unusable. When launching iMovie, it pops up a screen that says it is searching for new Aperture videos. It gets about 95% done and then crashes.

This is frustrating. I'm going to delete Aperture and see if that returns iMovie to functionality. Dang, because it took over an hour for Aperture to process my photo collection.

This looks like a widespread issue so I'd expect an Aperture and/or iMovie fix fairly quickly.

The only workaround i can fine is starting Aperture with an empty library, then opening iMovie. You may then be able to add to the library and be in the clear. No need to delete A3 altogether.

Hope they come up with something fast. Will wait a while as I don't currently need iMovie.