Apple, feeling the mounting pressure from Adobe, has released its latest upgrade to Aperture. Now at 2.0, Apple says it has added many new features and addressed the well acknowledged sluggishness of its photography workflow software. The new features fall into several categories:
- 30 new features in the User Interface
- 10 in Raw Image Quality
- 4 in Compare and Select Tools
- 9 Workflow Enhancements
- 16 in Image Processing Tools
- 15 new Photo Management features
- 16 Web and Print Publishing enhancements
- 3 Applescript features
That’s 103 new features! Sounds good until you start looking at them. Many are not features at all but badly needed corrections to existing aspects of the program. Still more are “me too” features that Lightroom users have been using and enjoying since Lightroom Beta!
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Apple is trying to sneak in the back door here by dropping the price of Aperture to $199. (The upgrade price for existing users is $99.) That price undercuts Lightroom by $100 but is it enough to win back Mac users who have abandonded Aperture infavor of the more robust Lightroom? I don’t think so.
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Lightroom hasn’t even hit version 1.5 yet but Adobe has it on a fast track and is giving their users much more frequent updates and feature enhancements. This may be too little to late on Apple’s part.
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One glaring ommission from Aperture 2.0 (perhaps I missed it and it’s there) is the continued lack of presets! Lightroom came out of the starting gate with preset abilities and photographers use this feature extensively. Many Aperture users left the fold because of this flaw in Apple’s offering.
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Lastly, Aperture is still only available to the Mac crowd so Apple continues to ignore the large Lightroom user base over on the Windows side. I think Adove has got it right here and Apple needs to take notice!
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All that being said, Aperture is still a fine photography workflow program. Some of it’s unique (for now) features are loved by many photographers. If you’re a Mac user you have a choice.
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