Apple’s $499 Aperture. iPhoto For Pros? Yes. And No.

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Aperture has tools galore. If you’ve worked with Photoshop, you’ll appreciate that Apple has all the basic image processing tools in Aperture’s first version.

Except filters. That’s a little thin, depending on your requirements and experience with Photoshop which has so many filters it’s hard to keep track.

Other tools are worthy and have a similar look to the sparse processing tools found in the latest version of iPhoto.

Highlight and shadow adjustments are a favorite and the extent of control beyond iPhoto is pleasing. Fixing underexposed photos has never been easier.

There’s the standard red-eye tool; a requirement on any application dealing with photos. Aperture gives you more control.

Another favorite is the Aperture sharpen tool, though the control I was hoping for isn’t there. Yet. Since noise reduction is always a problem with some RAW images, noise also gets transferred when sharpening an image selection.

Looing good so far? Mostly. What’s not in Aperture?

That depends on your level of experience and requirements. The ‘everyone else has it just fine’ eyedropper tool doesn’t do RGB pixel info.

Aperture relies on Mac OS X Tiger’s built-in Core Image to manipulate some image elements. The hardware requirement shows when you begin stacking filters on a large image.

The slower the Mac, the slower the process on large images.

As to early version problems, there aren’t many but there are some. Pro-level photographers will have thousands of photos and a similar number of thumbnails.

There’s no ‘rebuild thumbnails’ to keep everything in sync.

I’m not a professional photographer who slaves over a hot keyboard and dreams Photoshop image manipulation late at night.

Really, really real pro photographers likely will stick with Photoshop CS and Adobe’s Bridge for management. The extensive library of Photoshop plugins alone make work at the high end easier and better than Aperture.

Aperture fits better with those of us who need photo management, photo manipulation, a built-in light table, and RAW, and love Apple’s pro applications, but don’t want the expense and time required to master the Photoshop family of tools.

In summary, Aperture is pleasing to work in because of a great layout and a basic array of tools. On the back end, pro users won’t like the RAW image conversion, lack of DNG support, and limited tools.

Is Aperture worth $499? That depends. If you don’t want to delve deeply into the Photoshop world, spend a few thousand dollars (and hours), then it’s a good start toward professional level photographic image manipulation.

Final Cut Pro wasn’t ready for prime time at version 1.0. Aperture isn’t either. But will be.

Ronnie Mac
I like what I see but I feel the same as I did with the first version of Final Cut Pro. Almost there. Version 2.0 should be great.

Jack D. Miller
Apple is clearly positioning this below the Photoshop crowd and there’s plenty of us there.