Ars reviews Aperture, cautions professionals

If all the above is true, Apple has some serious work to do!!!

This guy doesn't understand the purpose of the application. It does not attempt to do what Photoshop does. It is an organization application and has tons of organization and photo management features that Photoshop will never have. You cannot compare the two applications. You would need to compare the Finder + Photoshop to Aperture.

Aperture positions itself as a RAW workflow tool, not an organization and management tool which would comprise a smaller subset. Given the major aspects of that workflow, import, organization/management, basic filtering, and RAW conversion, the author finds Aperture, ultimately, signifcantly lacking in each area. The concepts and potential introduced, I think, are intriguing but it seems as though the implementation has some work yet to do. Given how long it's taken others (Adobe, PhaseOne, Canon, Nikon, etc.) to come out with high quality RAW converters, it shouldn't be entirely unexpected. Consider early versions of the other Pro apps. Great ideas, and concepts but all needed to address some significant deficiencies before they were considered serious alternatives to existing products. This is 1.0, I'm sure come 5.0 it will be THE preferred app for pro-photographers... if Apple's track record is any indication of it's success in tackling the creative app market.

Hey "waffffffle"... you should RTFA before posting. If you had done so, you would have realized that the author is NOT comparing Aperture to Photoshop. Far from it. He raises some important issues with Aperture's ability to do the job Apple claims it can do, and highlights quality and performance issues with the RAW import, export and image manipulation algorithms.

Don't get your undies in a bunch just because someone decides to criticize Apple's work. Every once in a while, even Apple releases a turd. Only through acknowledging it will Apple be forced to improve Aperture.

Also, bear in mind that Aperture is still a 1.0 release, and Apple's first releases have been lackluster in the past: Mac OS X, Final Cut Pro, iCal, Keynote and others were all seriously panned in the press on their initial release. They got better over time, sometimes dramatically so. It will probably be the same with Aperture, but defending a buggy release only makes you look zealous.

You are correct wafffffle. He does not get it.

Easy to explain. Aperture is a digital darkroom. Photoshop is a digital creation tool.

If you are looking to batch processor pictures, plug-ins and extensions. If you are looking to turn a picture of a red car blue. Or make a picture of your little brother look like an alien complete with green skin and antini. Then you need Photoshop.

If, however you are looking to process those pictures you need because you are photojournalist. Then you would use Aperture.

Lastly if you just want to correct the color of your girlfriends red eye in the pictures you took with your 5 meg Nikon coolpix you would use iPhoto or maybe get fancy with Photoshop Elements.

Comparing Aperture to Photoshop would be like comparing the Fritz the Cat movie to The Incredibles. Just because they are both animated feature films.

What you're not getting is the reviewer is saying that the features that Aperture *does* have, Photoshop can do better (at least in regards to RAW conversion, and other basic image editing tools). If Photoshop's RAW conversion (with the Camera RAW plugin) produces better images than Aperture, then the comparison between the two applications is valid. And photography professionals do need basic tools for image correction like curves adjustment and sharpen tools. Aperture already has color correction tools and whatnot, so why not?

And Aperture is not just an organization application. Look at the Aperture page on Apple's web site if you don't believe that.

This is indeed disappointing, if it is true. I just may wait for v1.5-2.0 before I drop the cash on it (plus, I get more time to save up).

No surprise here. When I first saw Aperture, I posted that it was a dubious solution in search of a problem and overpriced to boot. I'm delighted that Arstechnica, who have no particular axe to grind, support my initial supposition although my determination was made purely on the feature set and promotional blurb, rather than having to suffer the pain of paying for, installing and then testing the application. Does it come as any surprise that the dot-zero version is as bad as every other Apple dot-zero release. That's not to say, and I stress this, that everyone else's dot-zeroes are not equally bad!!! Pity!

Well, it's obvious who read the article and who didn't.

MacNN poster "waffffffle": "This guy doesn't understand the purpose of the application. It does not attempt to do what Photoshop does."

From the article: "Let's get this out of the way early: Aperture is not a competitor to Photoshop. Unless you bought Photoshop exclusively for the Camera RAW plug-in or the Bridge program, Aperture cannot replace Photoshop. It doesn't work well with CMYK source images (it outputs back to RGB), it doesn't composite images..."

Could waffffffle be any more clueless?

Ars Technica is one of the best review sites on the Web. I first learned of them through their OS X reviews, which are long and thorough.

Is Aperture really a Photoshop wannabe? I think the answer is more complex. A new market space exists that Adobe and Apple are competing for, and at this time each app has strengths and weaknesses.

Photoshop evolved as the killer app for editing digitized commercial images, and Adobe with good reason owns that market space.

However, in the last few years a multiple-segment new market space has evolved: the manipulating/organizing/editing of high end and low end digicam-captured images. The growing new market space is truly huge and is a different space than the one Adobe owns.

Adobe lately has moved to address the new space by evolving Photoshop and Elements (e.g. tacking on File Browser, then creating Bridge, etc.). Firms like Apple (and others for sure, the emerging market for serving digicams will grow explosively and no end is in sight) OTOH most likely will simply go after the evolving new portion of the overall market rather than directly attacking Adobe's home turf (the pre-2002 part of the overall space).

So it is not at all about Aperture being a Photoshop wannabe. It is about Adobe, Apple and others competing for a truly huge fast growing new market space that did not exist in any meaningful size a few years ago. Adobe has engineers' experience and the full respect of the graphics community as a head start, but also as a limiting inertia; competitors lack Adobe's experience but may be able to act/react/proact more quickly.

Note that most of the customers in various segments of the new space will be new to digital manipulating/organizing/editing. That means that in spite of Adobe Photoshop's excellent brand recognition, those new customers will not necessarily be awestruck by the Adobe brand or the Photoshop app like folks like those of us who have been digitally editing for years are. There is in fact a real risk that customers new to the space may be intimidated by Photoshop's reputation for complexity.

New competitors will of course also step into Photoshop's existing market as they address the new space, but the old space, the one we were all using PS v6 and previous on, is in no way what this is all about. What matters today is the new, explosively growing digicam capture space. IMO.

Nice to see some unbiased comments from readers of this board. Usually there way too many sycophants (wafffle) who would literally worship Steve's beard clippings if they only had a chance.