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Edit Quickly While Exporting
It has been a long time coming and I am thrilled that I can now bring my D300 files into their Aperture Home, and a newly renovated home it is.
With all the new stuff in Aperture 2.0, I figure for the next few posts I would look at some of the freshly minted features from a practical user’s point of view.
The first thing i wanted to see was how much faster it would work on my G5 (non-Intel) and MacBook Pro 2GHz.
A2.0 promises much better performance compared to the old Aperture. In recent weeks, when I had to process D300 images, I called upon Photo Mechanic which I have always found to be the fastest way to breeze through a pile of files.
But the landscape has changed because in my initial playing around, the new Aperture is as fast for me or faster, particularly in Quick View mode. Quick View works with an Aperture generated preview, or, if it has yet to be generated, the JPEG embedded within most RAW files. It doesn’t even try to load the RAW data, so for rating, adding metadata and just plain taking a look--it’s fast and easy. Just hit the P key to toggle back and forth from Quick View.
Even during import, I found it much faster moving through images.
Photo Mechanic is fast for editing and adding metadata.
The new Aperture is also speedy and you can use Quick View Mode in Full Screen.
The new found speed has prompted engineers to up the project limit to 100,000 RAW files and endless versions, from 10,000 in 1.5. The old 100,000 thumbnail limit for the browser (anyone near capacity?) is now unlimited. Seems like big numbers now, but maybe not so much in the not-so-distant future.
There’s much more to love in Aperture 2.0, including the fact that exporting images is now a background function, which is huge. But it’s love-hate. A big time-saver that lets you get on with your workflow, during export you can now continue working in Aperture instead of taking a nap.
Much more to come.
Comments (9)
Photo Mechanic is the ultimate speed comparison test. If aperture can compete with pm, then that's more than incredible. I'm still surprised that we're still subjected to the import sheet animation. It wastes precious time when importing.
For fun I installed aperture 2.0 on my powerbook g4 1.25ghz. I wanted to see how well it could run before upgrading my aperture install on my macbook pro. I was shocked by the fact that it was actually responsive!
Aperture 1.5 on the powerbook was unusable. I'm anxiously waiting to finish my current project, so that I can upgrade my macbook pro.
I think they did some serious rebuilding from the inside out. Looking forward to putting it through more thorough testing. I suspect that many who couldn't wait for this version and went elsewhere might be back.
Believe it or not, Makea, I used Aperture 1.5 on my PowerBook for more than a year because I loved the application's capabilities. I just quit every other open app first and brought a good book to read during any significant photo adjustments. Aperture 2.0--and my new MacBook Pro--offer very impressive speed improvements, but alas, it looks like I'll be reading a lot less now and enjoying photo editing much more.
Speaking of cropping...
It appears that the dreaded lack of crop presets and erratic behavior of the crop tool has NOT been fixed in 2.0! This has been the cause of much gnashing of teeth as of course in web work (and print too) maintaining accurate crop percentages is essential, especially with multiple images to fit a format.
After much discussion, it seemed clear to everyone that this would be fixed and I've already posted feedback to apple (note: the feedback form doesn't even list 2.0 as a version option)...I urge others to do so as well.
Does anyone know what's going on?
Does anyone else find Aperture's tiny caption window unusable? Compared to PhotoMechanic's large IPTC window, Aperture's makes my eyes hurt, especially on a 30" monitor.
It has never been a problem for me, but now that you bring it up...
Funny you mention PhotoMechanic. One of PM's best feature for me is ability to write IPTC straight into the original file (very much LR gives you the same option).
What keeps the Aperture engineers from doing the same? (except for the lame reason ... "we don't touch the master file!") Just wondering.
Regards,
Marek
Switching back to Photo Mechanic for now. Too slow and nonintuitive -- weary of "well you can set up your workflow however you like!" When I buy a car I want the co. to decide where the figgin wheels go I just want to drive.
Sampson, not sure what the problem is you're describing.