I agree on both counts. Sounds like Apple decided it was too restrictive to get plug-in vendors who are doing just fine selling product for Photoshop to learn Core Image...
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Apple releases Aperture 2.1
- Thread starter sblasl
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Agreed. I bought it when it first came out since it wasn't a beta but soon after Lightroom debuted I jumped ship, then jumped back to Aperture after about a month but never really had a strong liking of either.
Now that I am about two - three weeks into Ap 2.0 I can say that using anything else (Lightroom, Photo Mechanic, Bridge, etc.) would just be making it harder for myself. I don't find myself going into PS as much as I used to and I find myself opening the application up for just about everything.
I used to not put every image in Aperture because I didn't want to have to open the app up to grab it or look at it or convert it, now I am pissed when it's not there, and have begun sticking every image I have ever shot into the library. Now.... if only I can get Time Machine to backup my Aperture Library with no faults... not that the Vaults aren't very welcomed though.
I agree with this one too, especially since there are plugins for many features that used to be PS specific, and have features that we editors use all the time (Dodge/Burn) in Aperture. I was a heavy DB user which kept me in PS all the time. If the Aperture DB tool works just as good or better then I may not need PS for anything but curves and more selective toning of my really jacked up images.
I still think LR has its place among the masses, and I am sure LR will catch up and surpass Aperture in the future, but as of now Ap is the choice for anyone who owns a Mac and an extensive photo library.
Wow, I was rather pissed at Apple regarding the forced transition to 2.0 if one wanted support for many several-months-old cameras; but this is pretty much exactly what I'd hoped they'd eventually do with the product. This sounds way cool.
D*mn you Apple for shaking my resolve!
D*mn you Apple for shaking my resolve!
Photoshop doesn't come with these plugins like Noise Ninja either so the cost is the same wether you add them to Aperture or Photoshop. People are not buying Aperture to replace Photoshop...they are buying it to manage their photo workflow which Photoshop is not designed to do.
Non-Destructive Destructive
Re: Destructive Editing
It seems you guys are using the word "destructive" in a way that I don't understand. That is, reading about the aperture plug-ins, they make a copy of of the image(s) and pass it to the plug-in. The plug-in does its stuff and passes it pack and Aperture saves it and the original. Aperture when editing internally saves a list of commands applied and the original so you have to make sure to force it to apply them before calling a plug-in. Where is the "destructive" in all this? The original image is always there and so is the image before each plug-in, so you could always step back - unless the plug-in itself does something bad like destroying those. You can even get the raw data itself for the plug-ins.
Are you using "destructive" to mean "applied to the input image passed back as output"? As opposed to transformations kept as list of functions to apply, like internal Aperture effects? I would rather not see that - your plug-ins would then not only be dependent on the image format passed to them but also the current way Aperture kept its function application meta-data list which would certainly change in each release and probably every mini-release. Reading the one good review it does sound like there is a step to ensure that Apertures changes are applied to the picture before it is passed, but I don't see the relevance to what you are discussing.
Re: Destructive Editing
It seems you guys are using the word "destructive" in a way that I don't understand. That is, reading about the aperture plug-ins, they make a copy of of the image(s) and pass it to the plug-in. The plug-in does its stuff and passes it pack and Aperture saves it and the original. Aperture when editing internally saves a list of commands applied and the original so you have to make sure to force it to apply them before calling a plug-in. Where is the "destructive" in all this? The original image is always there and so is the image before each plug-in, so you could always step back - unless the plug-in itself does something bad like destroying those. You can even get the raw data itself for the plug-ins.
Are you using "destructive" to mean "applied to the input image passed back as output"? As opposed to transformations kept as list of functions to apply, like internal Aperture effects? I would rather not see that - your plug-ins would then not only be dependent on the image format passed to them but also the current way Aperture kept its function application meta-data list which would certainly change in each release and probably every mini-release. Reading the one good review it does sound like there is a step to ensure that Apertures changes are applied to the picture before it is passed, but I don't see the relevance to what you are discussing.
have they fixed the sorting problem?
the biggest issue i;ve had with aperture is their are no controls to sort the projects by date. iphoto does have this. all my events are organized by date and they are easy to find. aperture for editing is great but needs more organization control.
the biggest issue i;ve had with aperture is their are no controls to sort the projects by date. iphoto does have this. all my events are organized by date and they are easy to find. aperture for editing is great but needs more organization control.
Great...STILL?!? no love for the 450D....thanks a lot Apple. And the first person who says well its not even out yet gets a virtual boot to the head...as if Canon wouldn't outright give them one if they asked for it at this point. All I know is as of next month whenever I get get my hands on the 450D if Aperture isn't supporting it I go Light Room....screw Aperture at that point.
If its making changes to the actual image, its destructive, even if Aperture does make a backup copy to revert to its still destructive.
I was thinking the same thing yo
I'm not sure how. If it makes a copy then its not destroying anything, as long as I have the original to fall back on I don't care.
AGREED! However....would you rather bolt on plugins to something less than a full featured editor like Aperture or to a full featured editor like PS?
Why do you need Noise Ninja or a dodge and burn tool for something you yourself said, "People are not buying Aperture to replace Photoshop...they are buying it to manage their photo workflow which Photoshop is not designed to do."
My fear is that Aperture becomes a schizophrenic program - it can't decide if it's a photo mamanger or photo editor.
Call me a purist but Aperture should stick to what it does best, be a superior photo management tool and leave the editing to a tool best designed for it like Photoshop thereby giving the user the best of both worlds.
Why do you need Noise Ninja or a dodge and burn tool for something you yourself said, "People are not buying Aperture to replace Photoshop...they are buying it to manage their photo workflow which Photoshop is not designed to do."
My fear is that Aperture becomes a schizophrenic program - it can't decide if it's a photo mamanger or photo editor.
Call me a purist but Aperture should stick to what it does best, be a superior photo management tool and leave the editing to a tool best designed for it like Photoshop thereby giving the user the best of both worlds.
Wow! This is a great update!! The future Plug -ins like Vivenza and others mean that my trips to Photoshop will be much less frequent. Don't get me wrong. I love Photoshop, but for just doing tweaks and adjustments to lot's of images it's nice and fast to simply use Aperture. 
now if there was only an easy way to add a frame or border and "identity plate" as Adobe LR calls it, to the file itself, not on print or web publishing...
I love how easy it is in Adobe LR...the problem is it is only for slideshows! Whats up with that. Anyone else have a solution?
I love how easy it is in Adobe LR...the problem is it is only for slideshows! Whats up with that. Anyone else have a solution?
I see where you are going and I do agree... so I am glad that Aperture isn't including too many of the features that PS has for photo editing, or trying to copy those features in an Apple assumed "User friendly" manor. For example, the history brush.
I do like the addition of some of the PS plugins like Noise Ninja and hopefully more from Nik. Dodge burn is a very welcomed addition as well. The main reason for the joy, is that I don't have to go to PS as much, saving me time, battery life if I am on the go, and RAM if I have multiple apps running or if the image I am editing is large.
Aperture is the best photo management tool by far, but now the editing side is catching up and surpassing the competition, and using more tools from PS, that toners/editors actually use.
p.s. Non-destructive image editing only applies to the original. So making a copy is NON-destructive, as long as it's not the original.
It's the same with video editing. If you are applying effects to the original image all at once then it's non destructive. Some video editors can keep adding effects, using the result of the the first set of effects (rendered video) as a source for the new filter. That's destructive. Extremely destructive. Every time you would add a filter and render, a new inbetween (and more processed) state exists that is the source for the next filter.
Since Aperture is now rendering the current state of the non-destructive raw editing out to a lesser quality tiff or whatnot, and then passing that to another plugin filter, which then has to at some point output another lesser quality tiff or jpeg or whatever, it is degrading the image with each pass. That is what destructive is all about.
It's only non destructive when all the filters are always applied at once to the original image. And if that image is RAW format, it's even more true.
Great
YAY i'm so happy now
_________________________________________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxbkM_HtsHc
YAY i'm so happy now_________________________________________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxbkM_HtsHc
But you see,that's the problem. You have to fall back to the original.
Here is the problem. I adjust an image using (say) highlites and shadows and then I do a doge and burn session using a plugin. Dodging and burning is long and exacting hand work with a brush tool. Now I'm hapy with the image except I notice I'd like to change the white balance slightly. Oh, well I have to go back to the original, adjust it and then redo all the dodge and burn stuff by hand. If the dodge/burn tool were non-destructive and acted like an adjustment brick then all you'd need to do is move a white balance slider.
I haven't tried it yet (still getting my new system set up), but according to this Time Machine only does an incremental update.
http://www.apertureprofessional.com/showthread.php?t=12015
"I just did a test. I created a new Time Machine backup on an external hard drive and with everything closed I let it backup my laptop's hard drive including about 45 gigs of data. After it was done I opened Aperture and changed the star rating of one image. I then closed Aperture and in Time Machine did a "Backup Now." It proceeded to do a backup of about 730 megabytes, which happens to be the same size as the Aperture.aplib folder within my Aperture Library package file."
Perhaps Time Machine backups that were first created before the 10.5.2 update work differently that this new backup the person created???
The term "destructive" is referring to information being destroyed, not the image. With Aperture's current adjustment strategy, we have all of the original pixels and all of the information about all of the modifications you've made to it. Then that information is processed and displayed as an output image, but the system retains all of the information used to create that output. As described above, this is useful because you can manipulate this information independently to adjust the output image.
With the plug-in scheme, the information from the adjustment steps and the original pixel data is being destroyed before passing to the plug-in. You can revert to a backup taken before the plug-in, but that really is just a backup.
So far, I think Aperture has done a good job of walking that line. I saw this announcement and started to worry about the schizophrenia you're worried about too, but if it's relegated to plug-ins then I can just choose not to install them and Apple can focus on the management part.
I have to say that I really appreciate the adjustment capabilities in Aperture2. I can very quickly and easily improve a picture. I'm not much of a Photoshop jockey myself, so I'm happy to avoid the complexity where I can. Most of the Aperture adjustments are full image adjustments-- there's no selection capability. The exception is red-eye and spot/patch. I spent last weekend restoring a bunch of images I scanned from negative and I'm glad the spot/patch was there.
Noise Ninja strikes me as a full image adjustment. I wouldn't mind something better than the current noise reduction in Aperture.
I don't think I want a paint brush in Aperture though...
It is incremental, but in kind of a brain dead way... While Aperture is open, Time Machine drops the library from the backup list. Any backups created while the application is open don't contain the library, and the whole library is flagged as "dirty". Then, when you close the application, TM has to scan the entire library looking for changes.
Disk space numbers seem to indicate that an incremental amount of data is being written to the TM disk, but it still takes a long time for TM to scan that whole library so disk access remains slow for a couple hours after I quit Aperture.
The other thing that worries me is that I think the free space on my TM drive goes up while Aperture is open-- I think at least the most recent backup of the library, if not all backups of it, are taken off the TM disk.
Sorting Projects now available in 2.1
This overlooked issue has been fixed in 2.1 You can now sort your Projects in either ascending or descending order and designate a key photo in the project by pressing the space bar when the photo is on top in the All Projects view. Aperture 2.1 works just like iPhoto in this regard now. YEA!!!
This overlooked issue has been fixed in 2.1 You can now sort your Projects in either ascending or descending order and designate a key photo in the project by pressing the space bar when the photo is on top in the All Projects view. Aperture 2.1 works just like iPhoto in this regard now. YEA!!!
But I can go back and edit a photo over and over and over again, and the image quality never degrades. The changes done using these plug-ins will be done to a copy of the original file, but those changes are permanent. If I wanted to go and tweak something else in the new TIFF file, I'd have to open up that TIFF file, make the additional changes I want to make, and resave it. It's this process that's destructive. A non-destructive edit just sits on top of an image, and is never actually applied to the photo until I export.
I wonder how much these plug-ins will cost? If several of them are free, then I may jump ship. I always wanted to get into Aperture, but I just couldn't do it. I haven't tried version 2.0, so maybe I should start.
Aperture 2.1 gets me back looking at it...
It's great to see Aperture getting updated so soon! It's nice to see the competition swinging on both sides!
Personally I've just recently downloaded both the evaluation copies of Aperture and Lightroom. For an amateur like me, Lightroom has the killer feature for me - before/after. Having the split screen effect seeing what it looked like before while working is deadly. I can't seem to do it in Aperture and I really miss it when trying out 2.0/2.1. Missing that feature alone pushes me to Lightroom side.
But I really like Aperture simple interface and it's superior integration into Mac OS X. It doesn't trump the power i get from the split screen.
Both are amazing programs I'm pretty damn impressed at what I can do with either. I just wished Aperture had that feature so I won't be plunking an extra $100 for lightroom.
It's great to see Aperture getting updated so soon! It's nice to see the competition swinging on both sides!
Personally I've just recently downloaded both the evaluation copies of Aperture and Lightroom. For an amateur like me, Lightroom has the killer feature for me - before/after. Having the split screen effect seeing what it looked like before while working is deadly. I can't seem to do it in Aperture and I really miss it when trying out 2.0/2.1. Missing that feature alone pushes me to Lightroom side.
But I really like Aperture simple interface and it's superior integration into Mac OS X. It doesn't trump the power i get from the split screen.
Both are amazing programs I'm pretty damn impressed at what I can do with either. I just wished Aperture had that feature so I won't be plunking an extra $100 for lightroom.