Aperture 3

dlplumer

Just received the new Apple Aperture, and I started playing with it. Some of it's new features

1. Selective non-destructive brushes with edge detection (no masks necessary)

2. Geo-tagging is very cool

3. Face detection and smoothing

4. Lots of cool presets

5. 64 bits (optional 32 bits)

5. and lots lots more.

Here's is one I just played with (and yes I am aware of the halo ):

TINY

Iuqom

I saw Ap3 was out but am unsure of getting it or not.

Can you post an original version of this shot so I can see the difference of what you did using Ap3?

hawkeye978

Hi Dan..

It would be interesting to see the before and after comparison.

Oh...and there's a halo

dustin32

Iuqom wrote:

I saw Ap3 was out but am unsure of getting it or not.

Can you post an original version of this shot so I can see the difference of what you did using Ap3?

I believe there is a 30-day trial available from Apple's website. So you can get it and then decide if you'd like to pay.

thapamd

I love Mac, but I've always preferred Lightroom over Aperture. Maybe version 3 will make me change my mind. I'll have to download it and take it for a test drive.

RuiMLopes

What halo? Ican´t see any halo... what I can see is a beautiful image!
Apparently it seems that some of the Aperture 3 features are similar to NX2 from Nikon...
Great shot!

dlplumer

thapamd wrote:

I love Mac, but I've always preferred Lightroom over Aperture. Maybe version 3 will make me change my mind. I'll have to download it and take it for a test drive.

Selective non-destructive brushes with edge detection is awesome imo Mahesh. Anything I can do to avoid PS layering and masking is a very good thing.

dlplumer

RuiMLopes wrote:

What halo? Ican´t see any halo... what I can see is a beautiful image!
Apparently it seems that some of the Aperture 3 features are similar to NX2 from Nikon...
Great shot!

Thanks Rui

dlplumer

hawkeye978 wrote:

Hi Dan..

It would be interesting to see the before and after comparison.

Oh...and there's a halo

Rui doesn't see a halo

Rhuarc

Now if only Apple would play nice with others and make a Windows version! I love some of the features in AP3 (face detection!) but I can't justify paying the premium cost for a Mac just to get that. Hmmm, maybe it is time to seriously look into making my PC into a dual-boot Windows 7/Hackintosh machine!

Snowgirl

Mine is on its way. Yay!!!!

Eia

dlplumer wrote:

Anything I can do to avoid PS layering and masking is a very good thing.

dlplumer

hawkeye978 wrote:

Hi Dan..

It would be interesting to see the before and after comparison.

Oh...and there's a halo

OK, I got rid of the halo

bfjr

I see two Halo's Now !!

Hey I'm using AP3 and so far so good, always dug NX for it's control points

dlplumer

Snowgirl wrote:

Mine is on its way. Yay!!!!

Congrats. When are we going Puffin shooting?

W.W. Webster

thapamd wrote: »

I love Mac, but I've always preferred Lightroom over Aperture. Maybe version 3 will make me change my mind. I'll have to download it and take it for a test drive.

I know the feeling!

With no sign yet of the release of Lightroom 3.0, I thought I would spend time reacquainting myself with Aperture. I had not wanted to start the 30 day trial period running until there was a version available which had the initial problems (ostensibly) solved. The current version, 3.0.3, seemed to meet this criterion and be a reliable basis for evaluation.

I bought and used A1.5 some years back when the option for Aperture to manage images in the user's chosen location first became available. However I gave up on it when performance issues became untenable and I moved to Lightroom which I had been testing since the very first beta. A quick sniff later at A2.0 (rumoured to have a completely rewritten code base) didn't convince me my LR decision was misplaced.

I've been very happy with LR2.7 and the image quality and performance of LR3b2 look even better. However, having now invested several days of intensive use of A3 for Aperture to become intuitive again so I can objectively compare and contrast actual use of the two applications, (as Maccers would say) I'm lovin' it!

I miss LR's grad filter, cropping and straightening in the same function, the exporting and watermarking functionality of the LR plugin Mogrify, and the ability to accurately place both the source and target when using the spot correction tool in 'clone' mode. I'm also uneasy about a spinning 'processing' wheel I experience whenever I even slightly move the sharpen or 'denoise' sliders - meaning, I can't see the result as I move the respective sliders for these functions, even though the functions themselves work well. I have imported 22,000 images into my A3 trial to create a (hopefully) realistically-sized image database.

While the A3 UI is very different to LR, as with all things-Apple it's a thing of beauty and a joy to use. The quick brushes are a great feature, particularly the dodge and burn brushes which work very well indeed, and the skin smoothing brush is also a treat. Overall, to my eye, A3 IQ and its image manipulation functions are extremely good, appearing to be just as good as those of LR3b2.

Now I've got some serious thinking ahead, but not until LR 3.0 is released and the full extent of its functionality is revealed. In the meantime I'm still using Aperture whenever I have the time, as I can't develop the same level of expertise as I have with LR in just a few days.

I moved to LR expecting never to move back, so it would be a major decision to revert to Aperture, not the least considering I have nearly 60,000 extensively-keyworded images in LR. This could end up being the ultimate decision point, but if I could find a way to transfer/preserve my keywording, an A3 decision might be a lot easier!

Doug Solis

Very nice composition. I love the repeating patterns of arch and window. Great idea to have a person in the shot as this looks like it could be just a few feet high.