Apple releases Aperture 2.0!

[Raist3d]

Finally. About time. They also dropped the price to $199

Apple - Aperture

They improved the DNG support, still no E-3 support for now. We'll see if I can finally open an E-3 through DNG. Looks *vastly* improved, looks like it has a major speedup. I am going to try to get it today. Also added a bunch of stuff including dedicated highlight recovery.

- Raist

[Mr. Pickles]

Maybe it is as good as Lightroom now?

Don't know why they can't get E-3 support in there yet. Sounds like a crappo deal to me on that regard.

[Raist3d]

Actually Aperture has been better than LightRoom in some areas for a while, particularly managing the photos. The DAM of Aperture has been always better than LightRoom's. This version just distances that even more.

I am sure the E-3 support will come, but I agree they need to update support faster. It does support the latest Canon/Nikons though, and you can shoot tethered directly with some key Canons/Nikons.

- Raist

[PhotoGuy74]

I'm a BIG fan of Aperture... looks like I'll have to go & check it out, Thanks!

[Kosherpaparazzi]

WHOOHOO!! Finally we get an upgrade.
Now i just need to get a new computer to run it properly.

p.s. you can try it out at your local Apple store if you don't want to download the demo.

[Raist3d]

I tried the demo briefly.

I can't really judge the speed ups until I use my full library, and didn't want to import it. You have to rename the old Aperture if you want to runt he trial and you can't upgrade the library anyway until you get a license (your library of photos).

- Loupe seemed about the same speed
- Opening previews, importing seemed faster
- highlight recovery works, though its effect its less than I thought, probably because Aperture already had good highlight recovery by extreme under expose with the exposure raw converter attribute
- blemishes/brush/scratches- works great, and nice
- interface definitively trimmed and better.

- Raist

[Kosherpaparazzi]

is importing/exporting faster? if so, how much?

[Raist3d]

Can't say until I get home :-\ I am back at work.

But importing is faster because the previews seem faster as it uses the embedded jpegs from the raws now (new feature).

- Raist

[Raist3d]

How much faster? I still won't know until I upgrade my older library. But wow, does it work.. and it's so nice. I just made some super easy changes to a Fuji F810 jpeg shot I got and it was easy, fast and the results are great.

- Raist

[Raist3d]

Irony of ironies, through Adobe's DNG free converter. Aperture 1.5 had some issues there, but 2.0 finally corrects them. I was able to open a RAW converted to DNG with the defaults, into Aperture with no problems from the E-3. So at least there's some solution.

So the workflow would be-> run from compact flash through the DNG converter to -> folder -> import to Aperture. You can treat the DNG as an ORF at that point pretty much.

- Raist

(not that I normally shoot raw anyway, but just who do, there's a way for now)

[Raist3d]

Ok, bought the full thing through a license key option (you can do that from the trial). Aperture 2.0 is SO VASTLY FASTER than 1.5 is not even funny. I don't know what the hell Apple did, but a library that took a while to show up is now showing easily anywhere from 5 to like 15 times as fast. I updated my entire library and now it all zips zips zips. It's just ridiculous. I wonder if they are taking advantage of 64 bit code under Leopard and the Intel Core 2 duos...

This is indeed a MUCH needed upgrade.


- Raist

[Mr. Pickles]

If you are referring to RAW files in the library, I think all they did on the speed is use the embedded JPG thumbnail of the RAW to display, rather than "convert" on the fly. This is one area that Lightroom is behind on as well (for now? - version 2.0 is rumored soon).

I'm sure there are some other things they sped up...

[Raist3d]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pickles

If you are referring to RAW files in the library, I think all they did on the speed is use the embedded JPG thumbnail of the RAW to display, rather than "convert" on the fly. This is one area that Lightroom is behind on as well (for now? - version 2.0 is rumored soon).

I'm sure there are some other things they sped up...

The speedup I am referring to is in managing a vast collection of images (around 18,000-20,000). Most of these images are jpegs. I converted all my snapshots from a long time to be put in my Aperture lib, there's some good shots in there I need to pick but the vast majority are snapshots. I still haven't gotten around to do it. 1.5 could open this but it chugged often on it. 2.0 is just hyper fast on it.. which is mindblowing.

And yeah, Aperture 2.0 also added reading the embedded jpegs so importing/previewing the images is very very fast too.

Apple made a point that their database is now overall much much faster and I can say that yes, it is, definitively.

Another thing to keep in mind- Aperture 2.0 is most likely using 64 bit code as Leopard is full 64 bit all the way through. At least the libraries it uses form the OS will show this improvement. I remember when I upgraded to Leopard, World of Warcraft (game) increased in speed by about 10-15 fps from 30 in some resolutions. That was nice


- Raist

[Paul Shields]

OK I succumbed and installed the trial. I still find it extremely intensive on the iMac that I have when importing my library (around 20K images). This is on an Intel Core 2 Duo 24" with 3GB of RAM. Images are stored on a hardware RAID Linux server accessed via gigabit Ethernet, so shouldn't be that much of a bottleneck. I'll treat this as a one time hit and see how it improves over time. As a Lightroom user I've always found it very quick, and I quite like having separate windows to do separate things so it'll take a while to get used to the 'everything in one place' paradigm.

The lack of native E-3 RAW support still rankles though. Although I convert my images to DNG anyway via the Lightroom import function I'm curious as to how well Apple would handle E-3 ORF files. At least they've removed the frankly bizarre DNG limitations. It's still processing the images that I've imported (been running for quite a while so far) and it's still hogging the box, but when (if?) it settles down I'll post some more considered comments .

[Raist3d]

#1. Scroll once you have the library up. It's vastly much faster
#2. Select the icon that says "quick preview". That would be on the browser-viewer-adjust configuration view- the icon to the rightmost on top of the "slides" at the bottom, on the viewer area.

Make sure it's on and watch the scrolling of images/browsing fly.

Exporting now happens in the background, though there's an initial "getting ready to export" block.

- Raist

[Kosherpaparazzi]

and I quite like having separate windows to do separate things so it'll take a while to get used to the 'everything in one place' paradigm.

hold down the option or command key while opening a new project...

[Paul Shields]

How long does it take to create thumbnails? I left it running overnight and it's still going!