PS user with Aperture questions

[Bkxmnr]

Hello everyone, I am a Photoshop CS2 user with some Aperture questions. I recently purchased a Mac Mini and am thinking about purchasing Aperture for it.

1. Does Aperture have a function similar to "Curves" for improving contrast?
2. How well does the noise reduction feature work?
3. Does the EULA allow installation of Aperture on more than one machine? Is there a family pack for Aperture? Adobe allows PS to be installed on 2 machines.

Thanks.

 

[anubis]

Hello everyone, I am a Photoshop CS2 user with some Aperture questions. I recently purchased a Mac Mini and am thinking about purchasing Aperture for it.

1. Does Aperture have a function similar to "Curves" for improving contrast?
2. How well does the noise reduction feature work?
3. Does the EULA allow installation of Aperture on more than one machine? Is there a family pack for Aperture? Adobe allows PS to be installed on 2 machines.

Thanks.

1. No
2. It's pretty much crap (similar to Adobe Lightroom). 3rd party solutions such as Noise Ninja are vastly superior
3. I think Aperture can be installed on 2 computers

I used Aperture 2 extensively for about half a year without trying Adobe Lightroom 2. I downloaded the trial for Lightroom 2 and pretty much sh*t a 10-bedroom brick house the first time I used it. The difference was jaw-dropping. I've been using Lightroom 2 for almost a year and haven't looked back. Of course, I don't necessarily want to start another Aperture vs. Lightroom thread (you'll find thousands on the internet). Most people will tell you it's a user preference thing. Luckily, both have 30 day free trails, so it's somewhat of a moot point; download both, try them out, and see which one you like best.

 

[Bkxmnr]

Thanks for the quick reply. Not having curves might be a deal killer for me. May have to consider the bootcamp w/XP route.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Thanks for the quick reply. Not having curves might be a deal killer for me. May have to consider the bootcamp w/XP route.

1. Yes it does. It's a little different from curves, and will have a bit of a learning, ehhh, curve.
2. It works alright, but I installed the noise ninja plugin and it is vastly superior (it's the same as the PS plugin).
3. I believe you're allowed to install it on two personal computers.

 

[anubis]

Thanks for the quick reply. Not having curves might be a deal killer for me. May have to consider the bootcamp w/XP route.

Why is that? Everything is available for Mac (Lightroom, Noise Ninja, Nik Viveza, Nik Color Efex, Nik Silver Efex, etc.)

 

[soLoredd]

There are no curve adjustments out of the box (it is done via sliders, which people used to the curve do not like but that's another topic). Aperture has a great plug-in module so you can use Noise Ninja and Nik's components or a multitude of other plug-ins in-app.

Just curious, why not use PS CS2 on your Mac Mini (or is it Windows version, you didn't specify)? You can use Aperture and PS hand-in-hand. Right now I use Photoshop Elements 6 in this way.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Hello everyone, I am a Photoshop CS2 user with some Aperture questions. I recently purchased a Mac Mini and am thinking about purchasing Aperture for it.

1. Does Aperture have a function similar to "Curves" for improving contrast?
2. How well does the noise reduction feature work?
3. Does the EULA allow installation of Aperture on more than one machine? Is there a family pack for Aperture? Adobe allows PS to be installed on 2 machines.

Thanks.

Aperture is NOT a replacement for Photoshop.

You can use both of them on the same Mac Mini, or use Elements 6 (the image tab in Photoshop as a stand alone application) on the Mac Mini.

 

[ChrisA]

Hello everyone, I am a Photoshop CS2 user with some Aperture questions. I recently purchased a Mac Mini and am thinking about purchasing Aperture for it.

1. Does Aperture have a function similar to "Curves" for improving contrast?
2. How well does the noise reduction feature work?
3. Does the EULA allow installation of Aperture on more than one machine? Is there a family pack for Aperture? Adobe allows PS to be installed on 2 machines.

Thanks.

1) Not "curves" but you can adjust contract, recover highlights set blacks and white points and "stuf like that" Same effect but different user interface

2) I think it does OK but there are better, there are some plug ins that work very well. But mostly when you re-size the image the noise goes away.

3) It may be installed on one notebook and one desktop at the same time. They have a way to move projects between machines that allows you to keep the full library on the desktop and the projects you are working on in the notebook

You can download a free 30 day trail for the apple.com website. included with it is the user manual. All this is andmore in the manual.

You can specify Photoshop is the "default editor" so images are handed off the PS transparently and then passed back to Aperture. Aperture and PS can be made to work together.