APERTURE SUPPORT

Question

as a new apple user,G5,2.3,and as a aperture user I am both surprized and troubled by the lack of support and the dead quiet of apple concerning aperture.the members of this forem are some of the most gifted computer users I have found on any form,my fear is that you are so gifted because apple gives very little support and you must find all the answers yourselves.Adobe has vidios to show how to use Lightroom and that program is only weeks old,I have been stuggling with aperture since it came out and I still cannot find any answers to when the program problems will be fixed.is apple always so separated from the people who buy their products?? thank you all for the answers you have tried to give in the absence of apples quiet..Michael

Answer 1

Hey, hey,
Thanks for the links to the Aperture review sites
I found this tidbit to be enlightening from Luminous-Landscape at the bottom:
Howdy,
I just read the review by Michael Reichmann titled "Apple's Aperture a non-review"
"in light of this generally negative commentary, that I provide full disclosure. I have been, and still am a beta tester for some Adobe products, including Camera Raw. Furthermore, Thomas Knoll, the original author of Photoshop, and creator of Camera Raw, is a friend, has attended several of my workshops, and we have been shooting together on several occasions. I also have a friendship with Kevin Raber, the US VP of Sales and Marketing for Phase One, the publishers of Capture One software."
That said, I found many falsehoods for example:
"Firstly, it appears to be designed for future Macs. If you have a typical 2004 / 2005 generation Mac you will find running Aperture to be an exercise in waiting."
Not true and misleading.
It runs super fast using an October 2004 2.5 GHz mac with a nVidia6800 card. Faster than anything Photoshop could ever do.
"Firstly, it appears to be designed for future Macs. If you have a typical 2004 / 2005 generation Mac you will find running Aperture to be an exercise in waiting."
Again, not true. See answer to first statement.
"another problem is font size. Maybe its me and my middle-aged eyes, but a couple of hours with Aperture makes me want to visit my optometrist to see if I need better glasses."
Doing a side by side comparison of both Photoshop & Aperture the palette fonts appear to be exactly the same size as Aperture project fonts and sometimes Photoshop fonts are smaller still. Again another misleading statement by Luminous-Landscape.
"One of the major complaints against Aperture, which I resoundingly echo, is that it is a unitary database program. By this I mean that it keeps all of its files and data in one huge database. This has several implications. The first is that your entire collection of raw files, completed files, versions etc, can not be larger than a single hard drive. This is simply unacceptable for a professional application."
I'm using the same size hard drive that I was using for my Photoshop files 400 GB HD but now with Aperture I am saving many many gigabytes of storage that Photoshop was using with it's multiple versions of the same image file. So in fact by using Aperture a user can save on hard drive space.
"Yes, I know that you can change to a different database, but what if you want to search for, compare and re-catalog files that reside on different disks? Can't do it. Bad. Really bad. Can you say "dumb design"?"
Aperture not only lets a user search multiple databases it does it much faster than Photoshop. The same exact databases or hard drives used for photoshop files can be indexed and searched in Aperture.
"I am very uncomfortable having my files living inside a large unitary database."
"Consequently Aperture really has little utility for cataloging images. Without the ability to catalog files outside of its own limited environment, photographers are forced to use other cataloging programs, and these are incapable of reaching inside Aperture to index its files. All in all a bad situation."
Another flat out lie. Aperture can access any metadata and has presets from IPTC & EXIf protocol which is an industry standard. It has very robust metadata & cataloging features.
"I've left the question of raw editing till last. I have to say that I'm not overly impressed. Both Camera Raw and Capture One do a much better job in almost every regard, and faster to. It will also be unusual for any photographer to be happy with the overall level and variety of image control offered by Aperture, and therefore a trip to Photoshop will be necessary."
No data is given to back this statement up. We are left with believing Mr. Reichmann's already misleading statements.
"Apple makes this fairly easy on the way out, but problematic on the way back because Aperture doesn't understand Photoshop's layers."
Again, another fabricated lie.
Aperture can manage photoshop layers very well and maintains their stucture. All one has to do is select External Editor from Aperture and make the edits in Photoshop, the layers are preserved for future edits.
"(Layers on files coming back into Aperture from Photoshop are flattened, though if you re-export they are still there)."
Not true at all. See answer above.
"the Photoshoped file needs to reside inside the Aperture database for the whole system to make any sense without large numbers of multiple copies of files ending up all over the place."
Not true. Aperture makes 1 file that is edited in Photoshop, just 1 and it is placed in the Library not all over the place as Mr. Reichmann would have us to believe.
"Metadata and IPTC support is not very good, with no IPTC templates"
Not true.
"and also the inability to export complete metadata to other applications or import it properly."
Again, Mr. Reichmann does not know what he is talking about. All metadata is preserved on Aperture and is exportable.
"There are other flaws and gotcha's, almost too numerous to mention."
Name them. I'll be waiting.
In light of Mr. Reichmanns comments Luminous-Landscape has gone down several notches in my book.
love & peace,
victor