Apple announces the long awaited Aperture 3 professional photo management application with 200 new features. You can read a nice overview on Macworld, then spend some time on the Apple site that does a good job of showing off the new feature set.
Over the coming weeks, we'll be delving into all the fun nooks and crannies here, including managing HD video, audio, new image editing presets, and much more. Stay tuned!
More Aperture Tips and Techniques
To learn more about Aperture 3, check out my Aperture 3 Essential Training on Lynda.com. Also, take a look at our Aperture 3 Focus Section. Tons of free content about how to get the most out of Aperture.
ABOUT TIME!!! and not disappointed. Looking forward to hear your take on the new Ap3 and if you will change your workflow.
Looks pretty cool. I'm quite happy about the "non pro" additions like Faces, Photobooks etc. - if I'm an Aperture user, why should I have to jump to iPhoto for anything? Multiple library management will be nice, since I won't have to think so much about photos I take for work versus those I take for myself. Localized adjustments are something everyone has been screaming for - I don't need them for the majority of my photos, but there's one less reason to ever open Photoshop.
I'll hold off a while to see if there are glaring bugs that come to light, but I pretty much guarantee I'll be upgrading.
Will you be doing a new segment for Lynda.com on Aperture 3 training?
Just getting into the demo...BRUSHES! Curves! Flagging! BRUSHES! Color coding! Faces...fine. BRUSHES! Presets! GPS+Maps! (Maperture Pro R.I.P.) BRUSHES! Video...meh. Full screen browsing! Facebook & Flickr! BRUSHES!
Maybe the biggest improvement: performance. As in, WAY better. The entire app is very noticeably faster and more responsive than v.2. I can actually use the clone/retouch tool and not get the spinning beach ball every time! In fact, I never get it now! Panning around an image at 100% is now smooth and fast, where before it was herky and slow. Every slider and adjustment is smoother and more responsive than before, this is a HUGE improvement in overall speed.
I'm not crazy about the tweaks to the visual interface though. Everything's chunkier and bigger and "iPhoto-ized", and the overall effect is that it *looks* like less of a professional grade app than before. The new toolbar icons in particular are childish, and there's no option for 'Small Size', so the toolbar takes up more space than before. But I suppose it's a worthwhile tradeoff given all the truly useful improvements.
AND it supports RAW files from Canon S90!
The new software looks like it is worth the wait. Does anyone know if it is possible to bring in keywords form a LR library into Aperture to retain them?
Thanks....
There's way more to v3 than meets the eye...ie, lots of stuff I wouldn't have immediately noticed just by looking around. I'd recommend going through the list of all 200 new features at http://www.apple.com/aperture/features/
Fantastic news Derrick!!!!!
(If you can) It would be nice to have Joe Schorr back to have a chat about the product...
And for all the recent hand wringing, Apple manages to ship Aperture 3 first - zing!
Been playing with the demo all afternoon - many, many welcome changes - a great time to be snowed in :)
The Canon sRaw and JPEG+RAW format support is worth the $99 upgrade alone...
That said, this is a HUGE update.
Christmas morning!! I've been playing with the trial all day. The new print features look awesome. Love the fact that the custom layouts do not need to be book pages anymore.
Please tell me, I'm still on Leopard OS, will Snow Leopard make Aperture 3 run faster? I haven't had any real reason to upgrade to SL.
Well, back to playing. I'll check out the MacWorld article. :)
Julianne...if you have at least a Core 2 Duo Mac, then yes, Snow Leopard will make a difference. Without SL, you miss the (very noticeable) performance boosts due to Ap3 being 64-bit, partially due to the fact that it will make better use of any extra RAM you have.
Thanks Nelson. That's what I thought. I've been waiting for something like this to push me over to SL. Great! I'll order Snow Leopard along with the Aperture upgrade.
Derrick, just heard your podcast predicting that they'd upgrade Aperture right before your Aperture Seminar. Looks like you got your wish! My mom used to bring on rain like that, by washing the windows. :)
I was teaching all day in my Aperture workshop at Macworld, which soon became an Aperture 3 workshop. We were flying by the seat of our pants, as you can image.
But that are many subtle but important improvements in this version. Be sure to take a close look at all of the options in the new Import dialog box. I especially like the ability to import certain file types.
I'll be working tonight on the video and image editing components, which appear very sexy on first viewing. Definitely more to report soon.
Oh, and yes, Lynda titles will be following as soon as we can produce them.
Hey Derrick, I think we all owe you a big THANK YOU. You'd mentioned in a recent podcast that your preparation for these Macworld trainings, being focused on Aperture 2, would probably trigger Apple to release Aperture 3 - and apparently you were right. So thanks! :-)
I was just about to switch to Lightroom because of Apple's silence on Aperture 3, Aperture's plummeting market share vs. Lightroom, lack of books and training on Aperture, absolutely no buzz about Aperture when I attend professional photography conferences and training, and Apple's general indifference to pro users except for Final Cut Pro. I may have to reconsider with these new Aperture 3 features. Decisions, decisions, ...
SInce Ap3 is 64bit and all of my plugins are not, (NIK, Topaz etc) the app wants to close and reopen as a 32 bit app. Now the plugin makers need to step up. Maybe they already have and I just haven't looked yet. Thoughts?
The Leica D-Lux 4 RAW format is now supported - Great - Uthanks so much to Apple - but it really took a long time