Filed under: Media, Photography | Tags: Aperture, Apple, Camera, Photography
A recent Twitter post summed things up when the writer said, “Apple Aperture is like your dead-beat dad who shows up late on Christmas day. But he has EVERY present you ever wanted.”
There’s some truth in this because Apple are kind of slow at releasing updates – and they struggle to keep up with RAW formats for new cameras – much to the frustration of many a new camera owner.
I had decided that failing anything new from Apple, I would switch to Lightroom 3 when it come out of Beta in April. Aperture 3 therefore surprised with it’s “200 new features” so Apple delivered, and big time. This is really quite an impressive upgrade.
Sadly actual upgrade process was incredibly painful – there is some suspicion on web forums that there’s a memory leak – and as a result there are many posts about the amount of time it takes to complete an upgrade (and the fact that computer resources are so heavily drawn on that the computer is useless for many hours). Hopefully a fix will come soon, but if you persevere with the upgrade and cycle through a series of re-starts, things seem to come right. And that’s when all is forgiven (new users probably won’t have this upgrade hurdle of importing and converting their old files)
It’s clear that Apple have been listening – and while this is still not quite the DAM manager I’d like it to be, it’s much improved on many fronts.
While Aperture was down for me, I used Lightroom 2 to finish a project I was working on. Granted it is a while since I used LR, but it proved to me just how much more I prefer Aperture. Lightroom’s “module” based approach is frustrating – chopping and changing my workflow to suit the software is not how I want things to work. Also, the cluttered interface was annoying – urgh, you have to click so many things to get the panels out of the way. By contrast, Apertures F key (for full-screen) is sweet, and now on A3 you simply hold the shift key while making your Adjustment and 99% of the HUD vanishes (it just keeps the slider you are using). This is very cool.
There are many great new features in Aperture 3 – thanks Apple (and perhaps thanks to Adobe too, as some of the new ideas appear to have been inspired by Lightroom). It’s a pity the upgrade path is so onerous, and that updates to the RAW engine seem to take so long to be released, but all in all this is an outstanding application.
UPDATE
Hmm maybe I spoke to soon. Things slowed down again – had to crash out of an export session that A2 would have done easily (seemed the CPU creep thing was happening again). And brushes, woah those things are slow and clunky on me.
Oh well, I await a fix – am sure they’re working on it at Apple land. Just hope it’s soon as this is frustrating (and damaging for them too)
UPDATE 2
Well it is a week later as I write this and I have just had A3 crash three or four times in a row as I try to work on a clients shoot. I guess the fine print says I can’t sue for lost income and time, but professional quality this is not. C’mon, where’s some info on patch/fix please???
UPDATE 3
A major patch came out today (taking Version 3 to 3.0.1), about two weeks after my problems started. I think this is a good fast response from Apple – hopefully it addresses the issues, I’ll give it a good workout over coming days…
UPDATE 4
MUCH improved in many area (thanks!), but Faces is frozen and won’t re-start (after initially working for about 10 minutes), brushes still too clunky to be of any use, random crashes continue – and there are other “issues.” As twitter message said, “Aperture 3 was Alpha and 3.0.1 was Beta” – so hopefully we get a release candidate soon…
UPDATE 5
Another patch duly applied – this time to Apple Pro Apps (to address a “memory leakage”) so hopefully the cumulative effect of these fixes is helping. I still find the bushes too slow to be useful, and faces has given up on me – but the main features I relied on with Aperture 2 seem to be going OK. So far anyway.
UPDATE 6
A patch that upgrades Aperture to 3.0.2 came out today. According to Apple’s release notes it appears to address quite a list of bugs – and even adds a new feature (iPad support). So, kudos to Apple for continuing to address their screw-up’s – they’re making an effort to get this right and I imagine there will be more of these yet. Shame it wasn’t right when it shipped – but they’ll learn from it and someone will be updating their resume I guess. Meantime, I’m running Faces again overnight to see how it performs this time around…
Later: Well after two nights and all-day in between, Aperture picked six more faces out. As a result, I’ve once again disabled this feature…
UPDATE 7
After downloading an OS (non-Aperture) update I decided to re-activate Faces. Woah, looks like all that processing the other night did something. It seems to have located most faces, and correctly named a decent chunk too. OK, so this is progress. The only footnote to add is that I am testing this feature on a small library – hate to think how long it might have taken on my main Aperture library, but hey Faces is finally starting to make me smile.
Filed under: Media, Photography | Tags: Aperture, Apple, Camera, DAM, ExpressionMedia, IDImager, iViewMediaPro, Lightroom, Phase 1, Phase One, Photography
A few years ago, iViewMediaPro was the preferred choice for those handling large catalogs of media files – it proved especially handy for managing digital photo files. It was quick, stable, and easy enough to use. There were numerous ways to find photos in a hurry, and ample options to customize things. This was in the “early days” of DAM (Digital Asset Management), and with it’s ability to handle over 100 different media types, iViewMediaPro proved a winner.
In fact the application was so good that Microsoft acquired iView in what appeared to be an astute move at the time. They made some tweaks, re-badged it as Microsoft Expression Media 2, and life for Mac and PC users went on quite happily.
Well that was then and this is now. MS have now abandoned the product – most likely due to low sales (it is a niche product after all). While it’s still possible to download a 30-day demo, you cannot buy a license key or full version off MS. It is possible to find boxed product at online stores like Amazon, but for all intents and purposes the product has ceased to be.
I don’t mind that MS have had a change of heart – that’s their free choice – but in the absence of any word of a replacement from them, it seems criminal that they acquired iView and in subsequently abandoning it have stranded users like me from any future with the product. I wish they’d give the software code back to the original owners, or put it out as shareware or something.
Meantime, photo applications like Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom offer pretty good DAM functionality, but neither are close to what even the old iView could do – let alone the newer Expression Media. Both Aperture and Lightroom are a great start, but they struggle when your library gets into the tens of thousands of images – something pro-photographers get to in short order. Expression Media also had many other options and tools that these later offerings do not have (e.g. you can’t burn to DVD from within Aperture).
There is a Windows offering called IDImager but as a Mac user I’m hoping Adobe up the ante and make Lightroom 3 the industrial grade DAM product that Lightroom 2 is not. Or maybe someone like PhotoMechanic or IDImager for Mac will come to my rescue?
UPDATE – May 2010
Good news all round. Microsoft has sold Expression Media to Phase One. Totally brilliant move on P1′s part as clearly Microsoft had put this in the too-hard basket, and P1 have a strong track record with software – witness Capture One as a class-leading application. Talk about a win!
Read the press release here
