Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iLife, Software, Apple Professional, Surveys and Polls
...where's my iPhoto update? I was really hoping to see one today, and it just didn't happen. Aperture looks to be a great and powerful pro digital photography application, but there's the rub: it's pro. And it's $499. I'm a step above a To get an instant map to any address, just go to your Address Book and right click on the address field of any one of your contacts and select "Map Of." The address will then be revealed in Google Maps on Safari. You can do the same if a data detector determines there is an address in an e-mail in Mail.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Stankyfish said 5:17PM on 11-21-2005
Phos: The hobbiest hobbier that ever hobbied a hobby, eh?
Don't forget your weak lemon drink.
I want Aperture Express. There's definitely a market for it and I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I'd invest $500 in a new lens before I'd drop it on Aperture -- as much as I was drooling over the demos.
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Brian Beazely said 12:23AM on 11-29-2005
Does anyone know of a install workaround for machines that don't have all the requirements. I have a rev A IMAC G5 and I find it very unfair that I cannot install aperture. I also could not get it to install on my dual 1ghz G4 or 1.25 ghz G4 powerbook. This is getting out of hand.
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JL984 said 4:35PM on 10-19-2005
Where's iPhoto update, wait for January and Macworld San Francisco for iLife '06.
Honestly, I think the only reason iTunes was bumped up to 6 is to be inline with the other iLife apps when iLife '06 rolls out at Macworld.
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kc! said 10:14PM on 10-19-2005
Apple has a bit of a problem on their hands here... quite a sticky situation. They do need to release a middlemad between apature and iPhoto. However if they do, they will start cutting into Adobe's marketshare. And since it is clear that Adobe won't think twice about ditching the Mac platform in a heartbeat, and since one of the segements of Apple's core user base is graphic designers who use Photoshop on a daily basis, they need to walk this fine line very delicately.
Therefore, I think it will be a long time before Apple releases a breakthrough mid-range photo-manipulation application. Unless of course they can do it in co-operation with Adobe.
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Rahul Sinha said 4:50PM on 10-19-2005
I certainly am going to buy Aperture after seeing the Quick Tour videos, but you are right about iPhoto. It needs help; my suggestions for iPhoto 6 follow:
Better/easier tagging (not having to go to the pref pane just to create a new tag option)
STABILITY? Especially during import from a camera
better Automator actions, so that Flickr upload can be automated easier
a greater ability to organise the photos more easily - just look at what they did in Aperture! iPhoto users could use some of that!
-RS
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fra said 5:04PM on 10-19-2005
Anyone watch the demo and does anyone recognize the menu sound EFX?
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error said 1:03AM on 10-20-2005
I think Aperture is a great app... I guess this is a iView MediaPro / Portfolio killer on the Mac platform...
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Rated N said 5:53PM on 10-19-2005
Photo Mechanic is an alternative you could try. It's widely used by publications to process photos before editing them in Photoshop. It allows you to browse and tag photos very quickly. I used it daily while working for a newspaper and continue to do so as a freelancer. Aperture certainly looks much more usable, and I may consider switching once I get a chance to try it ($500 is a bit steep), but Photo Mechanic is a good middle place above iPhoto. Photo Mechanic runs about $150: http://www.camerabits.com/pages/PM4.html
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Brian said 6:38PM on 10-19-2005
I really like iPhoto except one thing, no D50 RAW support! I hardly think for a slightly-better-than-your-average-joe person like myself there is any need to spend $500 on Apature. But don't get me wrong, if I ever find the $2,500 laying around (need a new 15" powerbook too, my iBook won't run it)it will be mine!!!
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Mikataur said 8:05PM on 10-19-2005
Also waiting patiently for January for the iPhoto upgrade in iLife '06.
I really hope they bump the 25,000 limit.
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Andrew said 8:39PM on 10-19-2005
I really like iPhoto except that 5 got *incredibly buggy* and was the only reason I bought iLife '05. It seems that they gleaned what they could from a free iPhoto '04, and made people pay for iPhoto 5. Now they learned from that, and are releasing Aperture. Good business sense, it just leaves your users hurting (in either usability or the wallet).
I also fail to see how they can charge $500 for what looks like a souped-up Adobe Bridge, which comes *included* with the similarly priced Photoshop CS2 which has any/every feature a photographer/editor could want (and more). Aperture seems overpriced.
I have been holding out from moving out of iPhoto 5 wishing for a bug fix that resolves the continual lock-ups due to iPhoto mishandling the Pentax EXIF data. Until that happens, I can't use iPhoto - but I also don't want to lose my toolchain/scripts & categorization moving to a new app.
le sigh - here's to hoping more RADAR bug reports gets the devs moving.
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akatsuki said 10:03PM on 10-20-2005
What about iView Media Pro. It seems to be about in the middle of iPhoto and Aperture?
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Kesey said 11:13PM on 10-19-2005
I realize this is targeted at the pro market, but it shouldn't mean that programmers should have a blatent disregaurd for coding efficiencies. These specs are ridiculous.
Minimum system requirements
Power Mac G5 with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5; 17- or 20-inch iMac G5 with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5; or 15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4 with 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor
1GB of RAM
One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon X850 XT; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; ATI Radeon 9700 Pro; ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
5GB of disk space for application, templates and tutorial
DVD drive for installation
Recommended system
Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 or faster
2GB of RAM
One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
5GB of disk space for application, templates, and tutorial
DVD drive for installation
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Steve Mason said 3:26AM on 10-20-2005
Took the full Aperture tour online. Professional photographers have been waiting for this day since the dawn of the first digital sensor. As a CS2/Extensis/Photo Mechanic professional photographer it appears to meet the rub all these current programs lack.
A smooth,intelligent, and intuitive workflow at last. Did I mention slick. Most pro's use only a fraction of CS2 capablities and Extensis is a PC driven learning curve nightmare. Please Apple live up to the press release and deliever us from our editing hell.
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Phosphor said 10:51AM on 10-20-2005
The hobbiest hobbier that ever hobbied a hobby, eh?
Sorry to be a spelling hornet, but I've been seeing this gaffe all over the place lately, and it's time to <BarneyFife>NIP...IT...IN...THE...BUD!!!</BarneyFife>.
It's spelled "hobbyist, not "hobbiest."
Cheers!
Carry on, as you were.
:o)
Phos....
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Chris said 7:59AM on 10-20-2005
Kesey - the min/recommended specs are so high because there's so much going on, to such a huge amount of data, in realtime. And so much screen real estate is needed to fit it all in (hence no PB15" support).
Watch the online tours and see the loupe in action.
And don't forget all the edits you do use the original RAW as their starting point.
By (unfair) comparison, iPhoto only does very approximate realtime previews of adjustments (at least on a mini - machines with better GPUs may do true previews), and does edits in a destructive way (keeping a copy of the original).
Aperture's ability to have multiple saved view settings (e.g. a cropped version, a sharpened version, a B&W version) for a single image (but only actually storing ONE image) looks very useful.
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jake said 8:57AM on 10-20-2005
It's a great looking app, and the demos show Apple's workmanship at its best, like all their apps it's simple yet very powerful. First I thought this was going to be a Photoshop killer, but it's aimed at photographers and lacks all the graphic design stuff, I've been told over and over it's a competitor to Photoshop Elements instead. Ok, fine.
What I don't get is why must it cost $500 and require such high-end hardware (recommended configuration is a dual 2 GHz G5, fortunately that's only a recommendation and not a requirement) when Photoshop Elements costs $89 ($149 for a Photoshop El. + Premiere El. bundle) and runs on anything (granted, there is no Mac version anymore). So it's a pro app, it's priced like a pro app, and it demands a pro machine to run smoothly, but it does nothing -the- pro app (Photoshop) cannot already handle (and has done so for a very long time) and that is already installed on every pro machine I know.
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Brian Howell said 2:27PM on 10-20-2005
There already exists an application for those desperately wanting something better than iPhoto, but cheaper than something like Aperture.
iView-Multimedia ($199)
It's got a polished UI, massive file format support, customizeable html templates, file management tools, meta data support, slideshows, etc...
Check it out: http://www.iview-multimedia.com/
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Chris K said 9:37AM on 10-20-2005
So Apple gives us iPhoto for free, claiming it "does RAW". In fact, all it does is convert RAW to JPEG, which our CAMERAS can do (and with more customizability!).
Now, instead of giving us the feature they baited us into in the first place (I converted to Mac largely because I thought iPhoto would be a great photo manager with RAW conversion), they want to charge us FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!?
Is THIS app even going to do anything more than my camera can do, or should I stick with Photoshop? Oh wait, Photoshop does TONS more than this app.
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Chris said 11:27AM on 10-20-2005
Chris K - surely your camera only does RAW->JPEG _once_, at whatever settings were in force at the time you pressed the shutter release. This (and any other post-processing tool) lets you try variations at your leisure.
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