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Aperture 3 from Apple is a complete photo management and editing suite for Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. Designed with enthusiasts and professionals in mind, Aperture is built around a nondestructive editing philosophy. Rather than make changes to your original digital images themselves, Aperture leaves them untouched. Any adjustments or edits made are stored on a database and applied to an image on the fly, so that you'll always be able to access your original capture. This allows you to post-process a photograph in as many ways as you'd like, without the danger of making irrevocable changes to your original image.
Aperture serves as an organizational tool for your photographs. You'll be able to organize your pictures to suit your needs. Hobbyists and enthusiasts may prefer to keep all of their images online at once in a single master library -- creating individual projects and albums within to group photos by event, location, subject, or any other criteria that is desired. You'll even be able to create "Smart Albums," which are automatically populated with images that meet a custom set of criteria that you define.
Professionals who need to keep different jobs for different clients segregated for the sake of their sanity will learn to adore the ability to create multiple projects. Simply create a different project for each job or client, and you'll find it much easier to locate and keep track of images. When you are finished with a job, you'll be able to export the project as its own Aperture library. This is perfect for archiving a project to optical disc or to a backup hard drive. If you ever need to go back and access photos for reprints or a gallery show, you can easily load the Aperture library containing the archived project. For further peace of mind, you can even make a copy of your library as a "vault" -- essentially, a copy of your library that can be stored on an external drive for backup purposes.
Of course, you may not always remember in which project or album an image is located. This is where Aperture's powerful metadata and search tools come into play. You'll be able to manually add keywords to images, locate an image by its timestamp, the camera used, the lens used, and other criteria. This is further enhanced by Aperture's Faces and Places modules.
Faces is a powerful facial recognition algorithm. It can scan through you entire photo library, identifying subjects in a photo and automatically adding their name as a keyword. Of course, the software isn't omniscient -- you'll have to identify a few photos of each person before it can start to recognize folks. The more instances that people appear in photos, the better the software will be at recognizing them.
Places allows you to assign a location to your photos. If your camera supports GPS, it will read the recorded coordinates and place the images on a map. This allows you to easily go back and locate a picture based on where it was taken. Those of us still sans GPS (or even using film!) can manually assign a photo to a location on a map.
Aperture now features localized adjustment brushes, allowing you to make adjustments to specific areas of an image. You'll no longer be limited to making adjustments that affect the entire image. You'll have precise control over the size, softness, and strength of each brush. You can even use a Wacom tablet to control the brushes for intuitive editing.
Interested in sharing your work, via a print, photo album, slideshow, or web gallery? Aperture has you covered. You can send an image to your printer with ease -- with full support for calibrated devices and custom color profiles. You'll be able to design a custom photo album and have it printed professionally by Apple, or exported as a PDF so you can have it printed by whomever you'd like. You'll be able to create detailed slideshows, complete with transitions and music. Aperture can export the slideshow as a video optimized for an iPod, an iPhone, YouTube, or an HDTV. You'll also be able to upload photos to the web using Apple's MobileMe service, or as a standard web page for use with the hosting service of your choice. Of course, you'll also be able to upload photos to Facebook and Flickr.
Aperture is an excellent option for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and professionals alike. It even provides an easy upgrade path for users who currently use iPhoto to manage their photo collection. You'll be able to import your iPhoto library in five easy steps -- with all of your keywords and adjustments intact.
| System Requirements |
Computer: Intel-based Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, iMac, or Mac mini (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU or better recommended) Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2, or later Memory: 1GB (2GB for Mac Pro) Hard Drive: 1GB for application and documentation, 7GB for Sample Library Hardware: Combo Drive or SuperDrive The Aperture 3 upgrade requires one of the following: a commercial version of Aperture 1.0 or later; or an academic version of Aperture 2.0 or later. Not-For-Resale (NFR) versions are not eligible for the upgrade. |
| Languages | English, French, German, Japanese |
| Supported Formats |
RAW: .ARW, .CR2, .CRW, .MOS, .NEF, .RAF, .RAW, .SRW, .TIF, .OLY, .FFF, .3FR, .DNG Still: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, PDF, PSD |
| Input and Output Formats |
Import images directly from cameras and storage devices
Drag files in from any volume (preserves Finder folder hierarchy) Browse and import directly from iPhoto library Capture images directly from tethered Nikon or Canon cameras |
REVIEW SNAPSHOT®
by PowerReviewsPros
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Most Liked Positive Review
Aperture 3 upgrade
i use this program to sort and edit photos and the upgrade from aperture 2 was great. You get more control over editing with the use of brushes and the overall speed of the software...Read complete review
i use this program to sort and edit photos and the upgrade from aperture 2 was great. You get more control over editing with the use of brushes and the overall speed of the software is better.
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Most Liked Negative Review
not bad, not great.
Aperture does what it does, and its pretty simple to use,but there isn't anything special about. Perhaps worth its price tag, however i feel that this software isn't very "professional&...Read complete review
Aperture does what it does, and its pretty simple to use,but there isn't anything special about. Perhaps worth its price tag, however i feel that this software isn't very "professional". if you need to do MINIMAL color correcting and image tweaking, Aperture is fine. Anything including more i would look into alternative software.
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Reviewed by 15 customers
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Lots of new features. Too bad you can't use it on a PowerPC.
Pros
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Aperture does what it does, and its pretty simple to use,but there isn't anything special about. Perhaps worth its price tag, however i feel that this software isn't very "professional". if you need to do MINIMAL color correcting and image tweaking, Aperture is fine. Anything including more i would look into alternative software.
Pros
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Those who need places will love this update. Also the RAW converter in Aperture 2 rendered most pictures too bright. Fast enough even on a MacBook.
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
I bought Aperture 1, upgraded to 2, and now to 3. If only other software I use were as good...!
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Aperture 3 is part of my photo editing process. I also use Capture NX2. There are things one does better than the other. I'm not interested in Adobe solutions since they are not intuitive and I don't process photos on a regular basis. One of these days, one or both of these programs will do it all. In the meantime, I can't live without both simultaneously.
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
As a fine art photographer I use Aperture to process my RAW files and to create multiple exposures for HDR processing. Workflow made easier in 3.0!!
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
I'm a portrait photographer, use Aperture more than any other program on my computer. I like the addition of the brushes and that I can create more than one library. My biggest gripe is it's slow.
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
use of the product - improving the quality of photographs easily, if needed. what i'm not happy with - there seems to be a problem with my library in that mobile me galleries are difficult to set up and export. having said that, apple help has been very good about walking me thru the problem, and while the problem is not yet solved, we are almost there. aperture is, as you know, an apple product.
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Lots of improvements to Aperture, you won't recognize it, but the work flow has improved a great deal, Apple is probably the best I know of for updating the raw formats it accepts. I have owned it a week, and they have updated them twice! I love the new option that allows you to use multiple libraries. I often use three, one directly on my laptop, and one on an external hard drive that I can move between my lap top and my desktop as well as one on my desktop itself.
It's definitely worth checking out!
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Great program. Aperture 3 allows for much more adjustment and processing capabilities than previous versions. I can now do most of my post processing with Aperture alone. I am using Photoshop much less since I upgraded to Aperture 3, and the results are outstanding. Printing is much better and more flexible than previous versions. I especially like that the interface is what I was used to with previous versions, with many more features. As far as computer speed, it hasn't had much effect at all, and I have an iMac Core 2 duo with 2gb of ram.
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
A significant upgrade with brush on/off features and instant enhancements a plus. Aperture, however, still lags way behind other products, like Lightroom, in support of newer cameras and raw.
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
I use Aperture for sorting and categorizing photo projects, and A3 is a much more powerful and a lot faster than A2, which had trouble handling RAW files. It takes a little more practice to use, but the speed and results are worth it. It has more editing capabilities and allows me to work much faster than before. Well worth the money!
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
Ive had it for about a week now on my Macbook pro 17" and have loved it. the new brushes make editing easier and i can do a lot more than i could with 2.1. The addition of Faces and Places from Iphoto is a amazing addition that is great for organization. thus far i am in love with this software and wonder why i waited so long for it!
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Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
I've used Aperture since the first version. I was about ready to give up on the program. Version 2 ran slow on my computer and didn't have the functions I needed. I am VERY happy with Aperture 3. Speed has significantly improved and the non-destructive local editing is exactly what I needed.
The only downside that I hadn't expected was the long time it takes to convert all your older pictures into the new format. But once that was done everything has been fine.
Pros
Cons
Best Uses
Comments about Apple Aperture 3 Software (Upgrade):
i use this program to sort and edit photos and the upgrade from aperture 2 was great. You get more control over editing with the use of brushes and the overall speed of the software is better.
Displaying reviews 1-15