Three hours with Aperture

[Marc Rochkind]

Apple came to Boulder today--within 10 mi. of Boulder, anyway--to run some 3-hour introductory sessions with Aperture at, of all places, the Butterfly Pavilion, which, in addition to having lots of butterflies, is full of bugs. I didn't see any bugs in Aperture, however.

One reason why I went is that it was the only practical way for me to check out Aperture without buying it. There's no test drive, as there is with all of the Adobe apps, with iView Media Pro, and with lots of other apps.

There were 3 or 4 people from Apple there, including one excellent trainer who did most of the talking, and a few people from a local camera retailer, Mike's Camera. There were 30 or so high-end MacBook Pros on tables, each in front of an invited guest. I was invited just last week by an email from Mike's that was indistinguishable from spam, except that it offered no mortgage, no porn, and no enlargement of anything aside from photos. (As a measure of where I rank, Peter got invited to Iceland.)

Anyway, here are some thoughts on Aperture, based on just 3 hours with it:

When talking about Aperture, you have to separate inside Aperture from outside. Inside, it's very slick, really well designed, and full of wonderful things that just work the way you hope they would. For example, you can add photos to a light table, move them around, resize them, etc., using an interface very similar to the one you use for laying out photo books and other display pages. Having laid them out, you can print the light table if you want. No artificial difference between "light table mode" and "photo book mode."

Another example: At ingestion time, if you move a time-interval slider to set the interval that determines which photos stack together, you can watch then stack and unstack in real time as you move the slider.

Another one: If you prepare a web album and then need to go back to adjust an image, you can just select the image on the album preview and go right from there to the editing tools. You don't go back to the browser, select the photo, edit it, and regenerate the web album. The album is integrated into a seamless whole, just as everything else seems to be. Any time you see an image, it's equivalent to seeing it in the browser.

In short, the user interface design and smoothness of the tools are outstanding. It's Apple at their very best. And, because there's only one platform to deal with and because they're Apple, the interface is very highly tuned to the Mac, especially the video cards.

(Apple's FinalCut Pro is so highly thought of that it's used for big-budget Hollywood movies, and so it sells Macs. I think that's their idea for Aperture. A long time ago, some of you remember that it was PageMaker that gave the almost stillborn Mac a heartbeat. But Apple knows that PageMaker wasn't theirs and they can't count on getting lucky like that again. They have to do it themselves.)

Imaging speed was extremely fast, because the MacBook Pros are fast, and because a lot of processing is done in the video card. (You can think of the MacBook Pro as having 3 processors, not 2.) Only recent, high-end cards are supported. My iMac G5 is just over a year old, but it's not on the recommended-hardware list. All Intel iMacs are, however. (The Compatibility Checker app you can download to test your hardware said Aperture could be installed on my G5. How well it would run I don't know. Couldn't try it, alas.)

My favorite feature was the way it handles stacks (based on shooting time, as I mentioned earlier, or on any other criteria you like) and versions, which are multiple XML modifiers (Adobe calls them sidecars) for the same image. (All editing is with sidecars, as it is with Adobe Camera Raw, although Aperture never stores the XML inside the raw, not even if it's a DNG.) You can completely control what's stacked or unstacked and which is the primary image.

The interface to Photoshop is very well done. If you want to go to Photoshop, Aperture makes you a PSD or TIFF file (your choice), and then knows about it after you come back from Photoshop. No need to re-import. You can even edit the PSD in Aperture later on if you want, although, of course, that will result only in another XML version, not in modifying the PSD.

I couldn't judge the quality of the raw conversion or of any of the other image editing tools, because I didn't process my own images, and, mostly, because I'm not qualified to make such a judgement. I understand from what I've read that Aperture 1.0 had problems with raw conversion, but 1.1 is much better.

At one point I asked the speaker why Apple kept saying that Aperture did nondestructive editing of raws, since that was the way I always work. I explained that when I open a raw from Bridge in Adobe Camera Raw and then edit it, I can reopen it in ACR later and even the cropping is still soft. Another attendee disagreed with me, saying the once you crop in ACR, your cropping is cast in concrete. He's wrong, of course, but I didn't press the point. I think Apple and this gentleman are confusing what I said with the workflow that takes you from ACR to Photoshop when you open a raw with Photoshop. In that case, what you do in Photoshop is indeed cast in concrete (the cropping, anyway... the other stuff can be in a layer). The Bridge/ACR workflow without the involvement of Photoshop is something I think they're not familiar with.

As for outside of Aperture--that is, its suitability in a DAM workflow--the news is not so good, because Aperture can't bring in any metadata from a sidecar when it ingests; it doesn't export the metadata when you export an image; it never writes metadata into the image file; and its XML is different from the XMP standard that Adobe supports, even for common data items like those for IPTC fields.

Contrary to what you might have heard, image files are not inserted into any database. They retain their identity as distinct files, untouched by Aperture except for possible renaming. They do look like they're hidden away, but that's because the folder they're in is inside what Apple calls a package. However, even the Finder lets you go right into the package as though it's a folder, which it in fact is.

The XML is kept in a separate file, too, in addition to being in a database. I understand (from reading about Aperture, not from today's session) that it's an SQLite database, which is what Lightroom and ImageIngesterPro both use.

For a programmer, it's extremely easy to access the image files from inside the Aperture packages, to access the XML files, and even to access the database tables, so, even if the utilities to pull it all out aren't around today, they will very easily show up when and if they're needed. (I could write one in a day or so myself.) One such utility is already around, called Annoture, which moves metadata between Aperture and iView Media Pro. (I haven't tested it. It's shareware for something like $15.)

So, I wouldn't worry at all about your Aperture images and metadata being locked up tight in some wacko proprietary format. It's all very simple and open.

However, that's not to say that Aperture is integrated with anything other than Photoshop as it comes out of the box. It's impractical to use it with iView; ImageIngesterPro can't get metadata, Camera Raw settings, keyword, or catalog sets in; and you can't substitute your own raw converter. Nor can you make Aperture deal with files in your preferred physical structure. No buckets.

Aperture processes DNGs, but only as just another raw format, not as anything special. It can't store metadata inside a DNG, doesn't update the JPEG preview (or even know it's there), or embed the original raw. (However, if you stay inside Aperture, you don't need the JPEG preview.)

One obvious superficial difference between Lightroom and Aperture is that Lightroom is divided into Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web, whereas with Aperture everything is integrated with everything else. If you see an image, you can take it right into the editor. But, beneath that thin external layer, I expect the differences, especially in image editing, are vast.

As for iView Media Pro vs. Aperture, Aperture has no concept of a catalog file. It just has the images and metadata. So, an Aperture image database can't span drives, you can't offload images, and you can't create anything with thumbnails to send off to a client. (But, don't forget, Aperture is a complete system, whereas iView is a cataloging app. It does have a rudimentary, incredibly clunky, editor, but most of us have probably never even looked at it.)

Oh yeah... one more thing: Aperture will never run on Windows. iTunes runs on Windows because Apple's business model is to make money on iPods, not songs, and that way they sell more iPods. No such business model would apply to Aperture on Windows; if anything, they would sell fewer Macs.

--Marc

[peterkrogh]

Marc,
Thanks for the thorough and well-considered review.  THat squares pretty much with what I understood to be the case, but you addressed some issues I had not heard about before, such as the nature of the database.
Peter

[Rick McCleary]

Marc -

Thanks for this wonderful summary of Aperture. 

I continue to struggle with the idea of using all these programs (Bridge/ACR/iVIew) to do what should feel like one continuous task.  As such, the entire concept of Aperture is very seductive.  However, based on what you're saying, Aperture does NOT replace iVIew, i.e. it does not have cataloging functions.  Is that a correct assumption?  What is the future of this?  Surely, Apple must know that serious photographers have to have robust cataloging capabilities.  What is Apple's solution?

You mention some shareware - Annoture - that will transfer metadata back and forth betweeen iVIew and Aperture.  Assuming it works (... a big assumption), how would that chanage your view of the usefulness of Aperture?

There are three main areas of concern in the digital workflow:
  1) Editing
  2) Metadata
  3) Cataloging
For me, the clunkiness the current Bridge/ACR/iView workflow is in #1 - Editing.  This seems to be the area where Aperture shines.  It would be wonderful if an Aperture/iView workflow were viable.

Just some musings from the field...

Thanks again for the time you're putting into this.

Rick

[Marc Rochkind]

Rick--

Aperture definitely has cataloging, and it's one of its strengths. What is doesn't have is the iView concept of a "catalog file" that is completely self-contained, to the point of being sent to someone for viewing, perhaps with iView's free viewer (analogous to Adobe's PDF reader). Also, there are the other limitations I mentioned, such as that the Aperture image library must be contained on a single volume.

There are no catalog sets in Aperture, but there are hierarchical keywords, and perhaps these are the same thing. Didn't get a chance to test to see. (Note that catalogs and catalog sets in the iView lexicon are completely unrelated concepts.)

I can't say anything at all about how smooth an Aperture/iView workflow would be with Annoture, since I've never tried it. However, my thinking is that if you want to combine Aperture and iView, you should not be using Aperture, since its integration of cataloging, editing, and production (printing, web sites, photo books, PDFs, etc.) is its strength. If all you are using is the editing component, then Bridge/Camera Raw/iView is probably what you want, especially because you'll probably want Photoshop in all cases, and you get Bridge/Camera Raw with every copy of Photoshop.

To sum up: If you can stay with Aperture for everything, then it's a great way to go, because it's such a splendid app. But, if you're considering Aperture as a component, then you'll probably be unhappy, because Aperture wasn't designed to be a component. It was designed to be your whole world.

Here's another way to look at these new apps -- Lightroom and Aperture (and iPhoto, for that matter) -- that helps me sort them out: Some people want to completely control their image files, and they look for apps to operate on files. That's the traditional way that Bridge, Camera Raw, Photoshop, iView, and other apps work. It's the way Peter's DAM Workflow works (think of buckets--very physical). ImageIngester, too. Other people want a comprehensive system that sucks in all your images, takes care of them (including even backup, which Aperture has built-in), so you never have to think about files. (This is something like the evolution in the 1960s and 1970s from "indexed sequential files" to "database management systems," although it's too early to know if in the case of digital imaging the new approach will prevail.)

--Marc

[peterkrogh]

Rick,
I think you will like what I expect my own next phase will be - Lightroom-iView workflow.  It should smooth out a number of the kinks that are in the Bridge/ACR/iView workflow (like the need for C1).

Unfortunately, it looks like Lightroom v1 is not going to have everything I will need to make it my cataloging app, although it's clearly headed down that path.  Maybe v2 or v3. 

For that matter, maybe Apple will iron out the problems with Aperture by then as well (but I'm not holding my breath). Proprietary systems and inexcusably "not smart" asset management seem to be in Apple's DNA. Take a look at iPhoto and iTunes for examples of mature apps (v6 or so)  and how they handle asset management. 

I recently had to straighten out a mess that iTunes and a problem system software upgrade made of my iTunes libraries.  iView let me sort out the problems easily, while iTunes did not.  (Yes, buckets can be quite useful for audio files as well).

Peter

[Rick McCleary]

Thanks Marc and Peter.

Peter - I'm curious about your allusion to C1.  What is it about Lightroom that will negate the need for C1?  I thought the LR conversion engine was basically ACR.

[Michael_S]

Rick,
I'll wade in uninvited on this one.  In recent posts Peter has talked about how the upcoming Lightroom Beta 4 has some new converting tools.  I think the buzz has been around Vibrance (localized saturation) and some form of Fill Light.

Based on earlier Lightroom podcasts it seems clear that the Pixmantec acquisition is causing changes/improvements in the ACR codebase.  Putting all these references together it seems that Adobe may be using the Lightroom betas as a way to test-drive some ACR changes before baking them into the shipping version.  Adobe staff were clear in the podcasts that they want a common ACR codebase that can be used across multiple applications. So if any application would need to render raw files it would be consistent across all Adobe platforms.

I apologize for butting into the conversation.  I think Peter's enthusiasm has become infectious!!  His confirmation of what I gleaned from the Lightroom podcasts is exciting.

Best Regards to All,
Michael S.

[peterkrogh]

Michael is right.  And to be more specific, Michael Jonsson, who was lead engineer on C1 before started Pixmantec is now on the team. THe quality of the conversion is really stunning.  as a matter of facty, I think the term "conversion" is lacking in its ability to describe what can be done with Lightroom.   

Rick, I think you will be very happy.

Although you can start playing with the current public beta, I'd suggest busier photographers holding off experimentation until B4.
Peter

[Rick McCleary]

Thanks, Peter. 

I'm looking forward to trying B4 of Lightroom.  It certainly bode well for all of us that the former lead engineer of C1 is now on the Lightroom team.  I listened to the podcast where Thomas, Mark and Michael discussed the intergration of the best of RSP and ACR.  Michael made the point that, while he felt that RSP made better conversions, he wasn't sure when that would be integrated into the Lightroom/ACR engine.  Mark was of course concerned with backwards compatability of Lightroom with legacy ACR files.

BTW, what is your best guess on when Lightroom will be a v1 release?  According to their press releases, C1 is supposed to be releasing their DNG-compatible software sometime before the end of the year.  Exciting times ahead.

[peterkrogh]

I'm afraid I can't offer a guess as to when the software should be available in final form.
Exciting times indeed...
Peter

[Mike Guilbault]

Any updates of comments with Aperture 1.5 and Lightroom Beta 4 now out?  I'm still searching for a new solution to include DAM into my workflow... and Aperture looks quite promising as a total package.  Some of the comments Marc made about version 1.0 make me hesitant, but has version 1.5 answered those concerns?

[Steve Fines]

Mike -

I've just checked (Thursday am) and not been able to find any posted versions of Aperture 1.5. I am also curious about this vs. Lightroom - and as well would like to just have a solution and stop "figuring out"  a solution and just use it.

So I don't think anyone really knows yet.

On the "spec sheet" Apple released with it the new 1.5 could write metadata to xmp files. However, it could not import a file with an xmp sidecar into its metadata system.

It seems to me that if they are recognizing the importance of xmp they would write a program that could go both ways. The fact that they haven't yet makes me think that they needed a big announcement for Photokina and decided to release the program where it was.

However, the fact that we're on Thursday  (Photokina is essentially over now in Germany) and it still isn't released kind of backs this up in my mind - they needed a press release and now the programmers can say "its not ready yet" and we'll see it posted when a few more bugs are worked out. I have no inside info - just a guess - however there is a lot of pressure to make a splash at Photokina, but just because there is a trade show doesn't mean the code suddenly gets finished.

[anthony]

I'm curious to see how the 1.5 update looks/performs. There is much discussion on this forum of piecing together many programs because there is no program offering a total DAM workflow. With the opening of the photo storage location and the iptc/xmp support, Apple might have provided a solid solution. It's kind of surprising that Aperture is not discussed more here.

[peterkrogh]

I'm hoping to get as good look at Aperture in the next day or so.  I'll post a review if I get a change to see it.
Peter

[Mike Guilbault]

I hadn't considered Aperture before, but taking a closer look at it, especially with the release of 1.5, it's looking more and more like a very integrated application.... at least for Mac users.  If the RAW processing is as good as ACR and it offers DAM, it could replace everything except PhotoShop.  I'll be very interested in what Peter discovers.