Aperture (1 Viewer)

anyone use Aperture on the Mac and have any opinions on it?

Hi Graham,

I'm using Aperture and really like it; I use it mainly for its 'digital assets management' side of things - as a 'library' for storing my photos. I find the search, smart album and keywording functionalities really useful when I want to see all my shots of one particular species of bird, for example. I generally use it to do quick tweaks to shots but will export to CS3 for more 'advanced' tweaking.

I haven't compared it to Adobe's Lightroom, which I guess is its direct competitor, so can't comment which is the better application but I think Aperture helps me organise my photos really effectively. On a minor negative point Apple do seem a bit slower than Adobe in implementing support for new camera raw formats eg Aperture can't yet deal with D300s or 7D raw files but I'm sure it won't be long.
If there's anything specific you're interested in finding out about let me know.
FYI I think you can download a 30 day trial of Aperture (and Lightroom).
Cheers,
Rob

PS
Nice blog by the way!

thanks Rob

I am still looking for the best way to save time and get things filed and RAWs converted at their best -- at present I back up onto 3 external hard drives which takes a fair bit of time but I have a basic filing system, by bird species mainly so at least things are easy to find -- will try the trial version but would like to see how it converts 7D RAWs so may wait until it has that support

Hi Graham,

I've tried using both Aperture and Lightroom, and being rather a diehard Apple fan, I'm surprised to have to admit that I prefer the Adobe software to Apple's own. Maybe it's previous experience of using Photoshop which makes the interface more intuitive, not sure, but I've stayed with Adobe, certainly for now rather than switching.

Both as you may be aware, are available as trial downloads, so suggest you have a play.

Mark