Apple release Aperture 3 yesterday. http://www.apple.com/uk/aperture/ http://www.apple.com/uk/aperture/whats-new.html Thoughts? I like the idea of the iPhoto like faces, and the GPS tagging. The edge detect on brushes looks nice as well.
I have the trial version and have been putting it through some paces over the last 4 hours. It has some stability issues on my MBP. Sadly. The new brushes and import presets are nice, as is the new EXIF and IPTC info. What is lame though, is that the trial won't load my 2.1.4 libraries to compare. It will only allow a "trial library". That said, it does seem to allow you to change libraries without shutting down the app, which would be awesome for when I need to troll though old shoots looking for an image. Over all, I definitely see a speed increase in all aspects. But, TBH, the faces and gps tagging are the 2 things I doubt I'll ever use. You still can't save a custom crop to a preset, at least not that I was able to see before it started crashing.
Oh. Bad? Was going to download the trial tonight and have a look. If it's a case of wait for .1, I may not bother. I guess the GPS & Faces are shiny bits there for us rank amateurs, not Profs like you...
Well, I'm not sure. I had to extract the .NEFs from a recent shoot since I store all the masters in the libraries. When I first opened 3.0 it was ok, I imported my meager iPhoto library but it was all in .JPGs. That was ok, and I had a play with all the brushes and general peak around. I then preset my IPTC info and asked it to import my extracted .NEFs and it would import them, but crashed during preview builds and general processing that follows import. It was 2 sets of images, one 72 and one 36 frames. not a big deal. I did notice the MBP got really hot, but the fans didn't seem to be spinning up like they usually do in 2.1.4. So, I dropped the library in to the trash and created a new on on the Drobo (which is where all the big ones are anyway) figuring maybe the disk offload would stabilize it. No go. So now I have dumped the App into the trash, emptied it and re installed it. I'll start with the iPhoto library again, and then slowly add a .NEFs 2 at a time to see it is the bulk import that is wonky. All that aside, I'll be upgrading to 3.0 as soon as I'm convinced it's mission stable. I really like the brushes; the way they allow all modules to be used selectively by brush stroke, or globally on the image. I'm now going through it, menu by menu. And there are a few other small things I think will be nice. Like export project as a new library, and the tethered shooting HUD. Edit 1: imported 320 jpgs from iPhoto and now is processing them, so far so good. Edit 2: the fans are over 4K rpm, so they are kicking in, GPU at 78 and CPU at 73. 2/3rds done. Edit 3: it's interesting to see all my plugins listed as 32-bit. The trial won't allow me to restart in "32bit mode" which means it's natively 64bit. I like. I would be angry, but my most used plug in is a flickr exporter, and that seems to be native to the App now. Also FB -which is meh for me, and MobileMe -also meh for me. The email export presets are the same and sync nicely with mail. It would cool if there was a nice plugin for Livebooks, which hosts my website, but I'm not holding my breath. Edit 4: they added a sub menu under photo that lists all the modules, which have 2 new ones that I can see. Also there is a "re process Master" option that used to be a 2 or 3 key press option. There is an option for "batch change" under metadata, which is nice. and "show focus points" under view, also nice. Edit 5: I got 12 .NEFs imported, 2x6 images. Seems stable. Will play more, and then import more in larger quantities. I do like that when you adjust something, the new version appears to the left of the master, not to the right where you have to move it to the top of the stack. minor, but make the work flow that much faster. Edit 6: The dedicated dodge and burn tools work great, the 3 brush settings are good along with the color overlays. the selective sharpening tool will come in handy, but the concept of using all the modules selectively is awesome. But it will take a bit of time to use them all. Edit 7: Ok. 6, 12, 18, 24 batches of RAW file import and process normally. Time to stress test.
Well, after a few hours of stable editing I can say I like it. It has some consumer things thrown in that I could do with out, but overall it's an upgrade. The skin smoothing tool blasts the hell out of the CPU, and isn't as good as the repair and clone tools. Or is maybe more subtle. Scrolling around while zoomed in has vastly improved, and the previews that pop up with the preset adjustments are great. It still lacks one or 2 tools to make it perfect. One is the ability to save a custom crop as a preset. But I live without that in 2.1.4 and it worked fine. I have an email out to my Apple dealer asking for a quotation for a hard copy.
Interesting news, and thanks for the posts on it. Got to say, I'd be quite tempted by the geo-tagging and face-tagging stuff - geo in particular, as it's a feature I love in Flickr, but due to bandwidth (and the fact web apps are slow), I don't have all my stuff on Flickr.
I think if I had a GPS mated to my camera, it would be more interesting to me. Yeah, it works. The client version is in the POTD thread. Screen shot showing the upgraded EXIF and focus point indicator.
I've been quite happy with the Aperture 3 upgrade - it's faster than 2, and positively flies on my Mac Pro, even with an 80k plus image library. Positive things? - New tools, I hardly touch Photoshop now. The brushes are great - New preset adjustments - Faces is a bit amateur, but I keep all my family photos in Aperture as well, so it has its uses Not a fan of Places, as GPS in cameras is still rare.
The new presets system is worth the upgrade alone if you ask me, the old style per-adjustment presets were very frustrating. The improved full-screen view is much better too.
I was having another look at places. and it seems like you can geo tag the images even without having a GPS. I think once I have a hard copy of AP3, I'll give this a try with my vacation photos. And maybe, over time, start to tag my work ones.
3.0.1 The just bumped out an update to 3.0.1. We'll see if this corrects some of the resource issues.
Just got the retail hardcopy installed and verified. Converting AP2 libraries to AP3 take forever! I'm not sure what to do when I start in on the work libraries. Probably let them run overnight. Edit: like to the tune of 20min for 10gigs.
Ok, so I got the retail version installed and forgot to update to 3.0.1. Now that I have, I can say it's a ton faster and less hungry for memory. 3 big things that are standing out. One is the new RAW converter. BIG upgrade. Huge. Second, are the presets. Downloaded a few and they seem to be a nice way to play around with different looks. Thirdly, the brushes-being able to paint in all the adjustments opens up a whole new level of editing. For me, it's way more logical then layer masking.
