Monday, December 5,2005 @ 10:50am
Ars reviews Aperture, cautions professionals
Ars Technica's review of Apple's Aperture offers a detailed look at the new appilcation as well as a word of caution. The review notes that the RAW conversion is sub-standard, lack of many professional-level tools/filters, slow performance, and several glaring bugs that plague the first release of Apple's software for professional photography. "It saddens me to say that Aperture's innovations are only skin deep. If it could deliver on the promise of being both fast and produce flawless results, it would be the dream package. At this point it is an expensive and questionable alternative to Camera Raw, a free extension to Photoshop, and Adobe's Bridge which can batch produce better quality images in arguably less time. For US$500 (Photoshop itself retails for US$750), there is no excuse not to be aware of professional needs like a high-quality sharpen tool, DNG exporting or more basic things like curves, a sampler tool for RGB pixel readings, or retention of EXIF data on output."