Finding a place for Aperture in our workflow

Question

Hi All.
I've used it since Sunday. I've attended the demo in San Francisco and I've had discussions with other photographers who would like nothing better than to incorporate Aperture into their lives. I share that desire. This is where I am personally in my relationship with the application:
There are two distinct targets for which my images may be purposed, depending upon the kind of project and the stage of that project. Those processes are of course Proofing and Publication.
For Proofing, wether for a commercial client, corporate PR or a wedding, Apertures RAW engine is perfectly adequate. It's editing tools are brilliant. It's correction tools are crude, but convenient, and again, for the purpose of presenting proofs for selection (but not final publication) adequate.
But in terms of preparing images for publication Apertures RAW engine is not as refined as ACR's and it's color and tonality correction tools are crude by comparison with Adobe Camera RAW.
So the work flows might look like this:
Product Photography:
-Shoot.
-Review in Bridge as versions are created
-Process with color correction in ACR
-Refine for publication in Photoshop
-Deliver
In my opinion, putting these images through Aperture is bad policy because:
1) The RAW engine is going to create artifacts, sharpening, color and contrast problems resulting in an inferior file.
2) Color/tonality, noise reduction, sharpening tools available in Aperture are too crude for reproduction-quality images. Those available in ACR by comparison are more precise, consistent and trustworthy.
3) Layered files are treated and flattened on the fly in a cavalier fashion within Aperture.
4) File management in Aperture is confusing when trying to deal with a number of versions of the same image. I can't tell at a glance which version is which, either by name or other obvious tag.
Event, Wedding, Portrait, Editorial, Journalism:
-Shoot
-Review entire take in Aperture
-Edit and make preliminary selections in Aperture
-Make proof-quality color and tonality corrections in Aperture
-Process out to proofs for print, disk or web delivery to client
-Client makes selections
-Export uncorrected masters of selections to hard drive
APERTURE ENDS
Remainder of processing takes place in Bridge/ACR/Photoshop for preparation and delivery of final images.
Because Aperture should not, in my opinion, be used to produce Reproduction-Quality RAW conversions and because it is confusing, inconvenient and dangerous to use to manage layered PSD versions of files, it is currently not suitable as a one-stop Digital Asset Management application for all of my images.
I Soooo don't want to sound like I'm knocking Apple here. This is an application with amazing potential and when it's risen to the needs, standards and expectations of the professional community it may become indispensable.
Regards,
Frank
G5 2.3   Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

Answer 1

In either process, you could do the sorting and
picking in aperture. You could possible produce web
or paper contact sheets for clients. Export the
master files (these are the original RAWS) to
Photoshop and deliver. You can always reimport the
finished files to Aperture in the same project, where
they would remain as Masters, and therefore unedited.
Richard,
I could use Aperture to sort product work, but there is no reason to.
My clients don't want proofs of product shots. I sort between only a handful of brackets to choose the frames I'm going to work on for each image at each stage. Bridge is more than adequate for this task, ports right to the superior RAW converter of ACR, maintains the file names I choose when I save versions of the file back to the working folder, behaves predictably, allows me to view multiple windows and their previews easily and (are you listening Apple?) respects the way I work.
At this point Aperture is only useful for editing and sorting large projects and creating proof-quality output. At this it is brilliant. BUT It's organizational fascism, inferior output, marginal control and capricious behavior with layered files makes it far, far more trouble than it is worth to incorporate into any part of a product photography workflow at present.
And in any case I would not want to keep finished files in Aperture anyway. If I need recourse to a file it is usually to a Layered version of that file because my client has asked me to make some change to it. If I import a layered PSD into Aperture I have to export it back out of Aperture before I can open it up again in Photoshop. Aperture will only send a flattened version of a file to Photoshop if that file was not originally saved in Aperture in the first place. Aperture only allows me access to layered files that have been savedinto Aperture, not files that were imported into Aperture.
-Import RAW into Aperture
-From Aperture, open that RAW into Photoshop, create layers and do a straight save, NOT a save as,
-Under these circumstances Aperture will allow you to then open that file into Photoshop again with it's layers.
(NOTE that it must be a straight Save. Save As will not let you save into the Aperture Library. You cannot create distinct and useful version names as you save the file.)
But if you
-Import a Layered PSD into Aperture, Aperture will ONLY send a flattened version of that file back out to Photoshop.
So I can see no advantage and very many pitfalls in allowing Aperture to touch any of my product photography at any stage. Its severe limitations mean that it can function only as a sorting table for my event, editorial and portrait work. Import Project, sort, export selects, proof, delete Project.
Like you, I desperately hope that Apple will take these concerns seriously.
Cheers,
Frank