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To be really truthful it was more like getting out of prison. Fresh air was about to fill my lungs. Could freedom of image editing finally be this close? Please Lord let it be so.
Anybody who actually purchased Aperture 1.0 knows what I mean in reference to prison, as they undoubtedly would have spent time in an institution for their error of judgment/leap of faith.
Be it an asylum or zoo you should of been locked up for plonking down $450 for the privilege of becoming a Beta tester (at least Adobe gave their product a Beta label during it's "tested on humans" phase of development.)
But wait did someone say code-monkey? What monkey in their right minds wrote those awful lines? (no reference to cricket btw). Anyhow the Big Job tossed their jobs so justice was done in the end.
Aperture 1.5 was of course one massive band-aid to stem the flow of Apple embarrassment. And it was about here that Aperture won my image editing workflow.
There is just something about Apple applications that just make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside - and Aperture finally gave me that feeling with 1.5.
I liked the way it looked, the way it thought and the way it had cute little quirks. Such as really slow performance, so that I could procrastinate all day long. Or really poor Nikon RAW support so I didn't lust over new gear purchases.
But was it what I wanted forever in my work? Yes - kinda.
You see after a while, a very long overdue while, little cute quirks turn into really annoying frustrations. These at times turn into red faced rages especially when there's a deadline about.
So now with Aperture 2's release have my frustrations be set aside?
Well of course they have - YES!
Read no more if you don't feel inclined, but know this - upgrade to Aperture 2 right now.
Yup - this baby rocks and I for one would of spent far more for this kind of speed in editing.
Here's the first look review in pictures.
Note - test machine is a MBP 17" core duoe 2.16, 2 gig RAM, 7200rpm HD with the Aperture library on an external Raid 0 arrangement. Cinema display 30"
Beautiful packaging as per usual.
What's this/ A new list of Keyboard shortcuts.
That means changing old habits as some of these are new.
That means changing old habits as some of these are new.
note: installation time says less than a minute? Make that 9min 30sec
Success!
Let's have a quick look at the old 1.5 interface. Good.
And now the much improved cleaner interface. Great!
Preferences now include .Mac upload support. Yay - online proofing in one touch ahoy!
Let me wrap it up really quickly with a need to know list;
- Faster? Yes, light years ahead infact. I opened 'normal RAW files and the app just flies. Hmmm... a sturdier test. I opened a series of 200mb files and we didn't fly, but there was no beach balling in sight.
- Cleaner? Yes. Much easier on the eye.
- Dumbed down? No. Just smarter use of what is really important.
- Ease of editing? Oh yes. This is so slick hours will be saved per day.
- Worth the coin? Yup - buy it now.
- Improved retouching, RAW profiles and noise reduction? Don't know yet. Will wait for real World testing.
Well that's it folks, my first impressions.
In case you were wondering - I love Aperture 2 already!
