Cheap Apple Aperture Post Production Tool for Photographers (Mac DVD) (Software) (Mac OS X) Price
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 Fine-tuned to maximize the advantages offered by Macintosh hardware and Mac OS X Tiger, Aperture offers breakthrough speed and quality -- whether you're working with RAW, JPEG, or TIFF images. |
Whether you're a fashion, wedding, sports, portrait, fine art, commercial, or editorial photographer, Aperture's color-managed workflow and flexible design tools will help you easily create stunning prints, customized contact sheets, elegant books, and web pages as beautiful as the images you capture.
Advanced RAW Workflow
As a photographer, you know all about the benefits of shooting RAW. With access to all the data your digital SLR can record, you're capturing images of startling quality, great dynamic range, and virtually no noise. And now, for the very first time, you have an application that provides you with more control of the final image than you've ever had before. One that actually makes working with RAW files as easy as working with JPEGs.
 The tools -- including Levels, White Balance, Exposure, Sharpening, Noise Reduction and more -- afford you the freedom to experiment without having to worry about damaging your valuable original images. View larger. |
Aperture provides you with the tools to do it all -- import, edit, catalog, organize, retouch, publish, and archive your photographs -- in a RAW-focused workflow that's the first of its kind. Rather than using another application to manage your images, Aperture offers built-in project management with robust and flexible tools that make it easy to handle thousands of projects.
They include a powerful suite of tools for editing a photo shoot. It's one of the most tedious jobs any photographer faces, and it's been particularly taxing when shooting RAW. But Aperture provides tools specifically designed to work with RAW files and to speed you through the process of sifting through thousands of images, culling the rejects, comparing the keepers, and identifying your absolutely finest photographs.
Nor do you have to convert your images in order to make needed adjustments. You can perfect them without having to leave Aperture, using a powerful suite of nondestructive image editing tools. The tools -- including Levels, White Balance, Exposure, Sharpening, Noise Reduction and more -- afford you the freedom to experiment without having to worry about damaging your valuable original images. That's because Aperture applies modifications only to "versions" of your images and never to the original "master" images themselves.
Professional Project Management
Aperture, the first all-in-one post-production tool for photographers, provides everything you need to manage your photo library: flexible organizational tools, comprehensive metadata support, and powerful search tools that let you find files instantly.
 For easy organization and searching, Aperture comes with collections of associated Keyword Sets (and lets you create your own). |
Organize a photo library with thousands of projects any way you want -- in Projects, Albums, Folders, or any combination thereof. Create multiple Albums of related images within a Project. Or nest folders inside a project to organize albums, books, web sites, and light tables. You can even have Aperture automatically group images together into Smart Albums based on defined criteria. With Aperture, you can work on multiple projects at once and freely copy or move photos among folders, projects, and albums.
Aperture lets you view, extract, and add metadata with unprecedented ease. On import, it automatically extracts all industry-standard EXIF and IPTC metadata. What's more, it lets you comprehensively add important metadata -- copyright, captions, keywords -- at the point of import.
As you work with images, you're never more than a keystroke away from seeing your metadata in, for example, the customizable Metadata Heads-Up Display, where you can customize the metadata to suit your needs. You can also choose what metadata Aperture displays with your images and what metadata to embed when you export images. And when it comes to keywords, Aperture significantly outshines other applications. It not only supports true, hierarchical keywording but also provides a number of intuitive ways to assign keywords to images.
For example, Aperture comes with collections of associated Keyword Sets (and lets you create your own). Call up the Wedding Set, for example, and you'll have a group of associated keywords -- bride, table shots, wedding party, vows, candids, limo, cake cutting -- any of which you can assign with a keystroke.
Using the Keyword Heads-Up Display, you can drag and drop keywords onto a single image or entire group of images at once. And, here's a real time-saver, once you've assigned a variety of keywords to an image, Aperture lets you "lift" them from one image and "stamp" them onto other images. Assigning and working with keywords has never been simpler or more rewarding.
Powerful Compare and Select Tools
 Open any of the Heads-Up Displays (HUDs) available in Aperture to adjust levels, increase brightness, modify color temperature, assign keywords, straighten horizons, or make any other adjustments you'd like. |
 Aperture lets you view multiple photos side by side, offering a great way to evaluate similar images or multiple versions of the same image. View larger. |
Of course, with that large, high-resolution screen right before your eyes, wouldn't it be great if you could take advantage of all that real estate and review your images full screen? With Aperture, you can. In fact, Aperture lets you view your images full screen as large as screen real estate permits. And if you have two displays, you can take advantage of Aperture's expansive full-screen mode on both of them to create an incomparable working environment.
Using the Filmstrip displayed along the bottom or side of your monitor, you can see thumbnails of all the images you're reviewing. You can navigate through them quickly and easily to find the images you want to see, even organizing them on the fly. Open any of the Heads-Up Displays (HUDs) available in Aperture to adjust levels, increase brightness, modify color temperature, assign keywords, straighten horizons, or make any other adjustments you'd like. Aperture also lets you view multiple photos side by side, offering a great way to evaluate similar images or multiple versions of the same image.
Nondestructive Image Processing
With Aperture, you never have to worry about retouching images or trying out different image adjustments because Aperture makes protecting your RAW images job one. Designed to protect your images from the moment they're imported, Aperture identifies your original images as digital "masters," and it has built-in safeguards to ensure that you can't accidentally overwrite or modify them. In fact, it's physically impossible to alter a single pixel of a digital master. Instead. Aperture takes a novel and completely nondestructive approach to image editing.
 Thanks to Aperture's no-regrets retouching policy, you can experiment freely without fear or concern, creating as many "versions" as you'd like with different exposure settings, image croppings, color temperature modifications, level adjustments, or any combination thereof. |
Unlike the duplicate files you need to create in other applications, image "versions" take up virtually no storage space, so you don't pay an overhead penalty. And Aperture automatically keeps track of all your image versions for you, sequentially numbering them on the fly and connecting them to the "master" image as part of a Stack.
Offering native RAW image editing and breakthrough speed, Aperture puts the most essential adjustment tools at your immediate disposal via either the Adjustments Inspector or the Adjustments Heads-Up Display (HUD). Using these tools, you can fine-tune exposure, use a Histogram to check and adjust levels, set white balance, or modify highlight and shadows. If you need to crop, straighten horizons, reduce noise, correct red-eye, or eliminate dust, you'll find intuitive tools available to you. In fact, if you use any of the adjustment tools to modify or retouch an image, you can use Aperture's unique "Lift and Stamp" tool to apply those modifications to any number of additional images.
Versatile Printing and Publishing
Using Aperture, you can produce high-quality prints and contact sheets, design customized books, and create impressive web sites as beautiful as the photographs you take. Best of all, you can do it all with drag-and-drop ease.
 Produce high-quality prints and contact sheets, design customized books, and create impressive web sites as beautiful as the photographs you take. |
If you've ever tried to print contact sheets using other photo applications, you're probably familiar with the expression, "there's gotta be a better way." Now there is. Aperture lets you print contact sheets more quickly and easily than you can using just about any other photo application available today.
There's more good Aperture printing news. In addition to helping you create your own color-correct prints, Aperture also provides an integrated print-ordering service that lets you order silver-halide prints directly from Kodak and Fuji at highly competitive pricing. Color managed for consistency, the prints assure predictable results and are available in standard sizes and large formats.
You can also depend on Aperture's built-in color management if you use a service bureau to print your photos. Aperture's Export Preset editor lets you simply select the ICC profile recommended by or obtained from your service bureau from a drop-down menu. Aperture embeds the profile in your files upon export, so you'll know what to expect when you get the photos in the mail. Beautiful, color-accurate prints.
Presenting prospective clients with a handsome, bound and printed Stock Book sends a powerful message. And Aperture makes the production of such high-quality bound books both simple and affordable. To help you put a unique stamp on them, Aperture includes a sophisticated book-layout engine that offers significant design flexibility.
 Need to publish your photos to the Web fast? Aperture's WYSIWYG Web publishing tools make it easy. View larger. |
Unlike other photo applications, Aperture templates aren't set in stone. Using the web gallery template, for example, you can decide how many rows and columns of images appear on each page, how large the thumbnails should be, and what metadata should accompany the images.
What's more -- and this is important -- Aperture's web-authoring environment is WYSIWYG. Any change you make happens on screen in real time, so you can see the effect right away. This offers a significant advantage over the many wizard-based applications that force you to step through one dialog after another. Cumbersome to use, they don't let you see the results of your changes until the very end. Aperture offers a welcome change, letting you see your site develop right before your eyes.
| PLATFORM: | Mac OS X |
| CATEGORY: | Software |
| MANUFACTURER: | Apple Computer |
| FEATURES: | DVD-ROM, All-in-one post-production tool for photographers, Featuring a RAW-focused workflow, Aperture makes RAW editing as easy as JPEG, Powerful organization and project management tools, Preview and compare photos in a variety of useful ways, Includes versatile Web and print output tools, All-in-one post-production tool for photographers, Featuring a RAW-focused workflow, Aperture makes RAW editing as easy as JPEG, Powerful organization and project management tools, Preview and compare photos in a variety of useful ways, Includes versatile Web and print output tools |
| MEDIA: | DVD-ROM |
| MPN: | MA154Z/A |
| ACCESSORIES: | |
| UPC: | 885909050482 |
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Customer Reviews of Apple Aperture Post Production Tool for Photographers (Mac DVD)
Workflow Management . . . Not a Photoshop Replacement . . . Aperture does not, nor did Apple advertise it to, be a replacement for Photoshop! Photoshop is the Emporor God of Pixel-oriented image editors (with a bit of object-oriented graphics thrown in). Giving the program a negative review for it not replacing Photoshop makes about as much sense as giving it a negative review for it not being a sports car! That being said, as a photographer, I end up opening all of my Canon Mark II ds 17 megabyte files in Photoshop to do minor tweeks and adjustments. You have to look at the whole, full resolution file in order to pick your good shots. So when deciding whether this is a good product (or for understanding the rather bizarre negative reviews that really miss the point) try opening 250 files from a photoshoot to do your first or second pass review using Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw . . . Not only does it take many hours, it takes hours of hands-on time. There is not a way to do this as batch processing because you have to make some minor decisions on how to open the files and it leaves 250 45 megabyte (or so) Photoshop files open at once. (Opening into Photoshop roughly triples the file size or so.) <
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>I have a Dual Processor G5 with a new graphics card (more on this later) and 6 (yes 6!) gigs of memory. No way . . . the program will always crash with that many files open of that size, and there really is not way to do the kind of comparisons you want to do in order to decide which images you want to go ahead and print (or get ready for on-line resizing and optiminzation (an Image Read/Photoshop job for sure), composite, or any number of other things. <
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>In addition, on a per file comparison, Aperture imports a single one of my large Canon Mark II files about 10 times faster than Adobe's camera raw. I don't know where the reviewers suggesting Aperture is slow are coming from, they cannot be comparing the import to Adobe's Camera Raw. And Camera Raw (like Aperture's Import function) is just plain wonderful! For example, it just about eliminates any White Balance issues . . . it just almost always "nails" a neutral whitebalance (or easily lets you leave it as is or warm it up, or cool it down as you open the file. Has saved me much time fussing with skin tones. <
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>Aperture makes makes opening and comparing 250 large files in an hour doable. Rather than thinking of it as iPhoto on steroids, it is closer to say it is CS 2's Adobe Brdige on steroids, plus a bunch of extras . . . The interface is related to Apple's other pro applications like Soundtrack or Final Cut. iPhoto is an application for consumer level digital photography. Adobe has another program (Light Table) in late stage beta testing that looks like it will go toe to toe with Aperture. Aperture is also not a full digital asset management program, but if you are only working in photography, with some tweaks to your work flow and archiving system, you probably won't need one. Bridge--for photography--also is not needed. <
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>About the file structure . . . The Aperture Library is the correlary to old-school negatives. This is one reason the file structure fixed and any adjustments are not made to the imported files. If you screw up your edits, you still have the original files. When I have a really good image (I am principally an art photographer), I may end up with five or six different Photoshop versions for different print sizes, printers, compositing and the like. Aperture (when I really get it integrated into my workflow) should greatly reduce the number of versions of files that I have, and imposes a structure helpful in keeping track and searching through files. When I have "lost" a file from a couple of years back, I have usually been able to find it with a couple of quick Boolean searches, without resorting to increasingly lengthy and bizarre file naming and path (folder) structures. Aperture really lived up to Apple's claims in this regards. Much better than Adobe's Bridge on this. Much, much, much better. <
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>Aperture not allowing changes to the raw image files is similar to using an "Adjustment Layer" you toggle on and off on a Photoshop file. Limiting the types of file structure in the Aperture Library allowed the programmer magicians to make the thing work. Frankly, when looking at the advertisements Apple had, I wondered how much of this was hype . . . by forcing a specifc file sturcture in the library (aka database of raw images) the Apple guys were able to come up with a way to rapidly push around lots of pixels in and out of memory and on to and around the screen, with incredible speeds. If you are not working with lots of big files (if for example, you can use iPhoto without the program crashing), Aperture is not for you, it would be a waste of your time to learn the program (not trivial) and money. <
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>About the system requirements: The program is hardware dependent. I did not imagine my one year old G5 dual processor tower with lots of memory, would have a problem running the program. However, I had to buy a new $300 graphics card, something I figured I didn't really need since I don't play lots of real time animated computer games. Or at least I thought I would be able to check the program out before I decided if it was worth it to buy a new graphics card. Forget it, you need one of the new graphics cards listed: the program will not even start up with an card that is two years old. Apple does not sell (or at least not many) graphics cards, except for the ones that come as original equipment with a Mac, so they have no vested interest in artificially pushing folks to buy new cards (from other manufacturers). Aperture apparently pushes lots and lots of tasks on to the graphics card in order to make all the magic work. Photoshop does not do this, so in that sense (in terms of managing your image files by inspecting them), Aperture makes much more efficient use of the latest and greatest equipment (than Adobe Bridge). <
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>I also have a Powerbook 17" G4 that is about six months old. Yes it runs Aperture, but not really well. Sometimes it freezes on the Powerbook. I imagine that won't happen on the new Macbook Pro's with the dual core processors, but I haven't checked that out yet (and won't be in the near future . . .). Aperture also makes good use of my dual display set-up. I have a 23 inch Cinema Display (the older ADC ones) with a second 19" digital Nec flat panel. I keep the images on the Cinema Display (has better color calibration), and the other stuff and program windows (so I can surf while waiting for the library to load) on the NEC panel. Same (like lots of folks) when running Photoshop--Image on the large good Cinema Display, Palets and Dock on the Nec.) <
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>Those are the good things, here are the things that are not quite there yet: <
>1) The Camera Raw importing function does not process quite as nicely as the Adobe Camera Raw. A really noisy low light image may not come out quite as nicely, so you might have to fix it a bit more using Photoshop. (It is only on the odd shots where this shows up, and they tend to be the kinds of shots where you almost always need to go use Photoshop anyway to clean up the noise or other oddities); <
>2) The basic set of Curves functions are pretty standard these days, Aperture should have 'em. <
>3) Photoshop's Camera Raw has a couple of additional importing function that Aperture does not have. There is only one I ever use though is the vignetting sliders. It is a quick way to "burn the corners" of your photographs and you can preview the effect before applying it. Burning the corners is often such an easy and good adjustment, this would be nice to have; and <
>4) Aperture should get with the standard for meta data. You might want to look at a file 20 years from now, with whatever program is around, so it will need to read the standard meta data (data about the image (time taken, date, size, photographer, equipment, etc. etc.) appropriately. <
>5) The integration with Photoshop (or some other standard editor) could be/should be, one key stroke. <
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>A minor comment about the interface. Yep, I agree, I am kind of tired of the titanum-esque colors and current fonts on all of the pro applications. The functionality is elegant and powerful though. That it is standard across Apple Pro applications is a basic Apple design requirement, and has been since the LISA. Some of you whipersnappers don't remember the old days where every single program had a different interface for everything (like saving or printing). Apple upped the ante and by controlling the basic hardware and software, forced design standards on third parties that allow everyone (now) to open just about any program on any computer or operating system, and be able to find your way around. With the Pro applications, Apple has another level of standardization on the interface that speeds up the learning curve. What it is not is a Photoshop interface. At first I was disappointed in this since I've spent so many years learning Photoshop, but Aperture interface works better for what Aperture does (than trying to make it look on the surface like Photoshop). <
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>Overall: I think this program will be stupendous for pros (or photo students) to work along with Photoshop, once a few fairly minor things are corrected. It is a professional program aimed at people who make their living with photography (or part of it), and is priced as such, not as a consumer product. (It is fun though, so I imagine many consumers will want to pay in learning curve time and money for it, but this will be the exception rather than the rule.) It will save me lots of time once I have fully integrated it into my work flow. It does have a significant learning curve. I only gave it four stars because of the minor issues I (and others) have identified; which I hope Apple will fix in the next major release (perhaps Aperture 1.5).
Good fast organizer, weak on editing, overpriced
I have been using Apple Aperture for a little bit, now -- still getting used to the interface and learning about it. It is installed on my PowerBook G4 with 17" screen, 2 Gb memory.
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>It seems to run fast enough, even before I installed the 1.01 update. I suspect that those who have been complaining about how slow it is have too little memory installed. You should have at least 1 Gb RAM. Flipping through raw files was instantaneous. It does take a long time to import a file; about half again as long as it takes to copy it.
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>The interface is filled with annoyances. Dark grey screen. Ugly menus. Someone at Apple appears to have a real titanium fetish. It can be adjusted lighter, but Apple recommends dark backgrounds as giving truer colors.
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>You can set in Preferences a single external photo editor. I set mine to CS II. It allows Photoshop to open a file as either a TIFF or PSD, no other format. Aperture completely bypasses Photoshop's RAW editor. If you want to use another editor for a project, then you will have to change your Preferences.
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>Aperture stores all files in a single file called the Aperture Library. Double clicking on this library will open Aperture. The files are accessible only through Aperture. You will have to export a file if you want to use it with another program. The raw files remain untouched in the Library; Aperture will not allow any access to them at all. You can import files from your camera or the computer, or it will import your iPhoto libraries and albums intact.
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>Files are organized in Projects, Albums, and Versions, basically. You can use any naming convention you want that is compatible with the file systems you use. The raw file is the only real file in the Library. The Library simply stores a summary of all the editing data to date to recreate the various versions of the original. It appears to even understand and keep a summary of Photoshop manipulations. If you export a file, manipulate it, and re-import it, Aperture will treat it as a new raw file.
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>Aperture will not keep track of off-disk files, but you can create an Aperture Library on any hard disk. Aperture will also create a Vault -- a place where you can back up your files -- on another disk. Deleting a file from the Library will also delete it from the Vault the next time you back up your Library to that Vault. You may have more than one Vault. I use SoftRAID with my PowerBook, but the Vault does seem to be a nice touch.
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>Rating your photos is very quick. Since most of mine are obvious rejects, Aperture may be a useful tool to get rid of a lot of the dead wood taking up disk space. Keepers can be quickly compared and rated on a five star scale.
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>I don't recommend trying to import a large number of photos at once. It can put your machine out of commission for hours. Instead, I would recommend importing old photos as needed for new projects.
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>Various views are available and are quickly reached with various hot keys. I like the filmstrip view and the light table the best, though I have a tough time seeing how they can call a dark, titanium gray background a light table. :-)
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>The basic editing tools in Aperture are adequate for most tasks, but Aperture's editor is not powerful enough to replace something like Photoshop. Since none of the changes are actually made to the original photo, you have unlimited Undo.
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>Additional features included in Aperture include books a la iPhoto's books. I haven't tried that yet, but I probably will try to develop a mission annual with it. It also includes several sample web pages and it will automate exporting those pages to your .mac account (how handy, provided you buy a .mac account). I have not had a chance to look at all the printing options yet.
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>I would rate Aperture to be iPhoto on steroids. The organizational tools are very good and, if I really need to work with Photoshop's raw reader or Nikon Capture, then I can quickly export a version of the photo for their use without fear of harming the original and re-import it without fear of over-writing the orginal with a photo of the same name. I did not like iPhoto at all; it kept too many copies of your pictures in too many locations and was a disk space hog. Aperture saves me disk space, and for that reason alone I like it.
Extremely disappointing
Aperture is a product with tremendous potential, but its current form disappoints on almost every level.
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>Right now, Aperture is iPhoto with delusions of grandeur - it is not suitable for a professional workflow for many reasons:
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>-files are locked away in a library which other workflow applications cannot access
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>-raw conversions are of low quality
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>-integrates very poorly with photoshop,
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>-offers limited design/printing/layout functionality,
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>-does not support industry-standard ITPC metadata,
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>-offers no offline archiving functionality,
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>-no curves
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>-does not properly handle white balance
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>-chokes on layered files
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>-slow on all but the fastest machines (far, far slower than Bridge when working with raw files)