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21 Oct 2005
I was very interested by Apple's announcement of Aperture---a Pro workflow, cataloging, editing and output application for digital images (specifically RAW files, but it will also work with other image formats). I'm certainly not a Pro photographer, nor do I have a camera that generates RAW files, but I'd really love something like this. I use mainly iView MediaPro to organise and view my images, and it's generally excellent. However, it does lack some of the tight integration with the system and intuitive interface that iPhoto has. For example, I particularly like the new feature in Tiger in images attached to emails in Mail can be viewed as a slideshow and individually sucked into iPhoto while you are viewing them---it's very slick. However, iPhoto has a really awful interface for adding keywords and other metadata to images (iView MediaPro is much better in this respect).
It would be nice to try it out in person, but looking at the screenshots and video tours Aperture appears to be a nice combination of the strengths of both iPhoto and iView MediaPro, with some unique features on top. I particularly like the virtual 'Light Table', and the ability to compare two images side-by-side at a reasonable resolution. Why has no-one thought of that before? The archiving facility also looks excellent and very easy to use. The editing and retouching features look like they are more advanced than those in iPhoto, and would probably be perfectly adequate for my needs, though I'm sure that the real professionals would still need Photoshop for editing and retouching. It's quite pricey, but as a lecturer in Higher Education, I can get an almost 50% discount on it. Which is nice.
There's one big disappointment though; the system requirements are very demanding, and it appears that my 12-inch PowerBook wouldn't be able to run it (I suspect the problem is the graphics card, even though it is capable of rendering CoreGraphics applications). I wonder if they'll bring out an 'Express' version of Aperture, like Final Cut Express. It would be nice to have a version that doesn't have the ability to work with RAW files, but has much lower system requirements and is cheaper---I'm sure that there would be a lot of demand for it.
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Hmm, Aperture!
Pretty well every idea I've had for photographic workflow improvement seems to have turned up in this app, along with rather a lot of others. Already pre-ordered a copy, and when I showed the videos to a staunchly Windows-centric photographer friend he immediately started speccing a PowerMac he was so impressed!
Price - make sure that you go to the HE store and not the FE store, as it's only £130 for HE staff/students.
Specs - as the current iBooks support Core Image and >1.25GHz, I think it might be a screen resolution issue as much as processor/graphics cards. Although doing on-the-fly image manipulation for big images on 32MB VRAM might get interesting... My 1GHz tiBook is not getting a look-in either, plenty of VRAM, but no Core Image.
Side-by-side viewing is in several of the high-end cataloguing programs, and as of yesterday it's in iView 3. Unfortunately that's going to be a paid upgrade, and the implementation is rather lacking compared to Aperture. And compared to the lightbox on a couple of biggish screens? Don't get me started on the loupe - near-live previewing at 100% of any part of any image on screen, even the thumbnails. Drool.
Ian----- Oops, any chance you could edit that URL tag?
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ooooooo: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/webcams/astronomypictureoftheday.html
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ijw: I get the vague impression that you're rather keen on Aperture 
. Yes, the loupe is amazing, and the non-destructive editing is also very cool and rather clever (I particularly like the way that the versions are stacked up so that you can see what you've done in a nicely organised way. I was checking the HE store which, as you say, does have some very impressive discounts on it.
Saltation: Nice!
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How did you guess? I'm a pro photographer, so it has the potential to change my workflow as much as FCP affected the video world. Aperture is causing more posts on the various photography forums than any announcement form the last few years, and it's not even released yet...
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bsag, I was wondering if you'd consider adding a bit more detail to your post regarding iViewMedia Pro and your use of it?
Flickr's 'intereresting' pages have been sucking me into improving my skills, I've been trying to learn to take better pictures. Just last week I also purchased the upgrade to iLife '05 to get better built-in slideshow (and movie exporting).
I hadn't heard of iViewMedia Pro before you mentioned it, but would be keen to hear exactly how you use it for workflow and productivity improvements over iPhoto?
One of the things that concerns me is Gamma correction between mac and PC. Concert pictures and darkened images could look a lot darker to most of my family and friends once they're posted to Flickr - I don't know enough about the subject to know if I'm getting close (or close enough)
Hope you know what I mean - was just interested in the iView angle - resources etc - My flickr feed is here if you want to review a few pics before commenting?
Regards
Kev
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ijw: I'm hoping to see it in action at MacExpo on Friday---can't wait!
Kev: Nice pictures! I might post something separate about it later, but my history with iView MediaPro (IVMP) is a long and complicated one. I got a copy free with Toast years ago, and have then be lucky with free or very cheap upgrades. The price has gone up a lot recently, so I'm not sure that I would buy it today if I had to pay full whack. The 'Pro' is just a more fully featured version of iView Media (which is a much more reasonable price). In the meantime, iPhoto has also improved in leaps and bounds, so iPhoto and iView have converged to a certain extent. I don't use IVMP much for image manipulation, (although it does have some simple tools, equivalent to iPhoto 5, though less intuitive), but it's great for sorting, cataloguing and viewing images, and adding metadata to them. So I tend to use it at the start of my workflow to see which images are worth using, and to find older images which might be related. I did use Photoshop for any manipulation (I've never really worried about gamma, as it happens), but it has broken on me at the moment, so I'm trying to find an alternative.
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Hi,
I switched from iPhoto to iView Media Pro as soon as I found out that all the keywords etc. I gave to my pictures are not exported and of course because of the very bad (no very very bad) file structure iPhoto is creating.
I would like to see some information about how you are organizing your photos in iView Media Pro, especially what kind of metatags (what keywords..) you use in order to organize your pictures.
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bsag: Thanks for your reply, it gave me food for thought.
As luck would have it, I wandered into WH Smith today and noticed the latest edition of Mac Creative magazine (no decent URL link) has an iPhoto vs iViewMedia Prod feature, including a tutorial about how to make the switch with tips and tricks.
I didn't purchase a copy - I have a job interview in Brum on Wednesday, and really need to stop procrastinating about it! I need to concentrate on the answers to tough questions... I'll buy a copy of the mag (and maybe an item or two from the Apple store) to read on the train home ;o)
I can't help feeling we'll all just plumb for Aperture in the end anyway!
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http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7887-8063
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(sits in the corner with a hand up and jumping for attention) I almost forgot - the other BIG thing with Aperture is non-destructive image processing - rather than making ANY changes to the original file (whether it's RAW, TIFF, JPEG etc.), Aperture instead stores the instructions for the manipulation in a database - you can have half a dozen different versions of an image without having to use the HD space all those files would take up. And you can copy and paste these manipulations onto any other image. Slightly neat, and one of the reasons for hefty specs.
Ian
by ijw @ 21/10/2005 9:10 pm • Permalink •