Anyone tried the new Aperture 3 yet?

[happypaddler]

I'm downloading the trial version, looks like its becoming much more like lightroom in some of its editing, retouching etc features. It also has stolen the face recognition and geotagging features from iPhoto (which I find really useful for friends and family photos).

Has anyone else had a play? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

[picsfor]

Yes. Apple sent me an e-mail inviting me to try it.

It struck me as being iPhoto on steroids. The only thing i found worth while was the ability to connect your iPhone when downloading pictures and let the GPS records from that enter in all the locational information.
Maybe i've just bought into the Adobe system too deeply but i can see it will appeal to many togs who have moved from "snap shotters" using a mac and iPhoto to serious togs ans trough to pro.
At this time, i'm sadly not one of them!

[Forseti]

The blog entry dated 24th Feb from John Beardsworth may be interesting reading to some as concerns Aperture v3 http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/news/

[picsfor]

Very worrying indeed. Pretty much what i said. Good for iPhoto fans wishing to take their DAM process to the next level!

I'll stick to my current goal and work plan based upon a certain DAM book.
Lightroom may not be perfect but it's doing what i need and whilst i am a fan of the Mac OS and my iMac i'm not an Apple devoutee. Not all that is  Apple is Gold.

[happypaddler]

Hmm, I followed the link within the linked site (if you get what I mean) and read the more in depth article. Most of it was over my head (mind you at the moment everything seems to be over my head...), I'm not a pro, so it does not bother me - and I would imagine a free update will correct the issues - providing Apple are told of them - which I am sure they will be. I read somewhere that there is also an issue when importing iPhoto collections to Aperture 3 in that there is suddenly a massive amount of HDD space used once this is completed. I took a quick trip over to the Apple forums to see what they are all saying - there has already been an update - not sure what it fixes. But a lot of people are saying you need to let the thing run for a very long time, generating the facial recognition etc, before the whole software behaves properly (that is if you importing a library from another source and are not starting from scratch).

After a very small time playing I like it - having had version 2 for some time, I can do more corrections without having to move photos to Photoshop. I really like the new slide shows, allowing movies to be added as well as pics. And I do find the face recognition useful. I use that feature in iPhoto for family pics, snap shots and the like, with the "proper" photography kept in Aperture. That said, would I upgrade. No, I think from reading the issues people are having on the Apple forums, and the issues mentioned in the article (thanks for the link Froseti), Apple need to go back to the coding room and send out some update fixes. I may be tempted in a few months, but I'm mostly happy with my workflow as it is at present.

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I've had a bit of a play with it.  It's quite nice but too different from LR for me to power use it for a test.

Like the book modul and the slideshow module is very gorgeous.  It's possible I'll upgrade just for that (I have an old press version of v2 kicking around - I don't use it but it's good for an u/g).

It's crashed on me more times than I like.

It's also ridiculously hard to do some fairly simple stuff.  Here's what I said on Flickr...

"Suppose I shoot a wedding and end up with a collection of 350 pics. After the client has gone "OMG how awesome" they use my super cool online cart to select 120 pics they want on their album. My cart can provide these in any reasonable format - CSV of the filenames is good.

Question: how can I find and select those 120 pictures in Aperture?

I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement for a RAW/DAM app. Until Apple can answer it then it doesn't matter how pretty, fast and integrated their s/w is. I'll stick to Lightroom."

There's a work round by using a custom Applescript but for v3 it's shocking that Apple don't get this.  2 secs work in LR.

BTW, LR is currently building a single catalogue of all my delivered wedding images for the past 3ish years.  It's likely to take all night.  there appear to be 32,175 of them....

[picsfor]

I take it you've been a bit busy then Jonathan?
A catalogue just for wedding pics "delivered"?

I could manage a catalogue on passengers delivered but that's about it 

[Oldboy]

I take it you've been a bit busy then Jonathan?
A catalogue just for wedding pics "delivered"?

I could manage a catalogue on passengers delivered but that's about it 

Yes, but for passengers delayed you would need a supercomputer running for a year! 

[picsfor]

you forget - under modern timing rules up to 10 minutes late is considered as on time 

So maybe that computer should be revised down to a ZX81 

[Oldboy]

you forget - under modern timing rules up to 10 minutes late is considered as on time 

Does that still apply if you are ten minutes late for booking on! 

[Jonathan]

I take it you've been a bit busy then Jonathan?
A catalogue just for wedding pics "delivered"?

Yeah busier than I thought.

"Delivered" is the opposite of "deleted".  Since I delete about 75% of my snaps and this is only weddings, yeah, I've been pretty busy.  I'll bet the D3 wants a service.

[picsfor]

Definitely a drop of TLC.
To use the old phrase - it clearly doesn't owe you anything if you've taken some 120k worth of pictures.
Give it that service and i'll bet it'll good for another 120k worth of images.

So the trip to Venice was not only well earned but well needed as well given how busy you've been.

[Jonathan]

it clearly doesn't owe you anything if you've taken some 120k worth of pictures.

That's a remarkably accurate guess.

I was all set to remind you that (1) I shoot lots of other stuff too not just weddings (2) there are some weddings not included in that number "for legal reasons" (really) (3) I have at least 5 cameras.

So 120K for the D3 is probably way way off.

In fact I took a test shot to find out exactly how many clicks it has on it.  Test shot was shot number 121,001.  You were exactly 1,000 out.  Which is a lot closer than I was

Rubber's coming loose but TBH it's been loose since about 50K clicks.  Shutter is hardly worn in yet....

[picsfor]

5 cameras?
I guessed 3 of which one was a newly acquired one (the 'Blad) but not 5 - so that makes it a lucky guess by a long way.
I think could be seen as a ringing endorsement for the D3 because we've seen some of the conditions it has had to work under.