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danieldk
02-14-2010, 11:52 AM
I was a happy Aperture (http://www.apple.com/apperture) 2 user. I am not a professional photographer, but I like to make short but nice photo impressions of holidays and trips. Before, I used iPhoto, but after seeing my brother in action with Aperture 2, I was absolutely convinced that I wanted it too ;). So, I bought a new copy of eBay for roughly half the price.

Last week Aperture 3 was released. On the list of features I saw two recent iPhoto features that I absolutely wanted:


Support for geocoding
Face recognition


And as an additional nicety, it now has integrated support for Flickr, MobileMe, and Facebook (I previously used a third-pary Flickr plugin).

Of course, there are better filters, better brushes, etc., but I guess I will discover them slowly, since I am not a professional photographer, and changes that I most often make are to correct for over/under-exposure and making colors more vivid when necessary.

The new features got me hooked very quickly. I have been geocoding some of the photo albums. This screenshot (http://www.danieldk.dds.nl/screenshots/aperture/aperture3-locations.png) nicely shows the map, where I can select locations to see pictures associated with that location. My iPhone has GPS, so geoinformation will be used there automatically, but for my normal camera I enter the locations manually (which is really easy with the search function). You can also make GPS tracks, etc. so that you can plot walking/cycling/driving routes and attach photos to locations along the path.

The faces feature works as expected, and recognizes and suggests names for faces in newly imported pictures. I didn't try Flickr export or any other new features yet.

All in all I liked faces/geocoding so much that I already bought the update. But I will keep you posted on my experiences with Aperture 3 as I use it :). In the meanwhile: you can download a thirty-day trail from the Apple website. Use one of the manuals or video tutorials, since in the beginning the interface can be a bit overwhelming (since it is oriented at professional photographers), but I think most people will quickly like it.

lurch
02-15-2010, 05:10 AM
Thank you Daniel for your helpful Aperture review. How do you rate it compared to say, Digikam, Showfoto, Picasa, Gimp?

By the way, roaming around the Apple site I have noticed lots of free apps for Download including cross platform ones I use on Linux: Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Handbrake, Picasa, Audacity. I also noticed a multi-format audio ripper - Musicman. I am not sure if I should be looking for other Mac software instead? I have been using Safari on Windows 7 and it also looks good.

Phillip

danieldk
02-15-2010, 12:32 PM
Thank you Daniel for your helpful Aperture review. How do you rate it compared to say, Digikam, Showfoto, Picasa, Gimp?

It is not comparable. The Gimp does no photo management (just editing). The others are not nearly as broad and effective as Aperture, and their user interfaces frankly suck. I can not compare it to showfoto, since I never used it.

To get an idea of the workflow, it may be best to look at the tutorials.
http://www.apple.com/nl/aperture/how-to/

The primary contender for Aperture is Adobe Lightroom, but while Adobes RAW support is pretty extensive, I heavily dislike Lightroom's user interface.

By the way, roaming around the Apple site I have noticed lots of free apps for Download including cross platform ones I use on Linux: Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Handbrake, Picasa, Audacity. I also noticed a multi-format audio ripper - Musicman. I am not sure if I should be looking for other Mac software instead?

They usually work as in Linux, but Cocoa applications generally have a nicer and more consistent interface. I would suggest the following alternatives for each application:

- Firefox -> Safari or Chrome, at least if you do not use too many Firefox plugins. Chrome/Safari with an adblocker works well for me, and both browsers are usually faster (both in UI response and rendering).
- Thunderbird: Mail.app any day (included with OS X). Or mutt of course ;).
- Gimp: Aperture, Photoshop, and Pixelmator all beat the Gimp with hands down.
- Handbrake: excellent application, and I think it uses Cocoa on OS X.
- Picasa: see Gimp
- Audacity: I do not use audio editors.
- Musicman: I do not know it, but use Max (http://sbooth.org/Max/) (open source).

lurch
02-16-2010, 07:32 AM
Daniel, thank you for the helpful list of applications. I look forward to trying them out and giving some feedback to this forum.

I do remember Mutt and did have it running some years ago.

Phillip

stafio
02-16-2010, 10:48 PM
Has anyone tried LightZone (http://www.lightcrafts.com/lightzone/)? I came across it recently looking for photo management software for Linux. I have downloaded the trial version, but have not really spent any time using it as of yet.

danieldk
02-17-2010, 02:07 AM
Before I bought Aperture I tried it a tiny bit. I remember it being to crashy, limited, and as most of these programs I do not like the user interface.

YMMV