Aperture 3.0 Alert (and a bit of shameless self promotion)

If you didn't already know I'm a big fan of Apple's Aperture. This powerhouse imaging program gets heavy use everyday at the Small World picture ranch. 

So I'm juiced that the new upgrade, Aperture 3.0 has been announced with a host of new features and a huge increase in functionality in virtually every area that working photographers need. I've been using the beta version for several months now and I can tell you the program is loaded with some great stuff. Besides all the things photographers have been asking for, the guys at Apple have thrown in a whole raft of features no one expected.

The Aperture site has a good page on what's new, with a raft of nice videos. Check out Bill Frakes video from the Hold County Fair in Nebraska.

One of those additions was really robust support for GPS geotagged images. When they first showed me what Aperture could do with geotagged images I was just blown away. I remember telling them "This is going to change everything."  I had a really good chance to put Aperture to the test and see what it could do when we went up to Nova Scotia for a shoot.  And now you can see the excellent video the Apple folks produced on this outing on the Aperture web site.  Take a look here: http://www.apple.com/aperture/

Besides the GPS integration there are several other standout features that working photographers will find welcome.  

• Brushes allow you to paint in virtually any adjustment. And then you can fine tune the adjustment as well.
• Slide Shows has become a really, really powerful tool. Video, sound, music, audio, movement, all integrated seamlessly inside Aperture for stunningly beautiful slide shows that can be export in a whole range of formats. Wow!
• Adjustment Presets give you great power to make your pictures suit your style. I'm making custom presets for each of my cameras so my pictures look just the way I want them to on import, automatically. 

And (as they say) there's more. If you really want a full rundown I'd take a look at David Schloss' excellent roundup of whats new and improved.  Go to the Aperture page on MacCreate, here:  http://aperture.maccreate.com/2010/02/09/aperture-3-overview/

So I probably sound like a fanboy, but I like the software and what it does for my workflow. But what really impresses me is that the guys at Apple really spend a lot of time listening to working photographers. And the results show it. 

Posted via email from jimrichardson's posterous

Comments

[Bob Krist]

Jim: Great piece on the Apple site. Lovely work, as usual. You gonna run any Aperture workshops in the future???? Bob

[Jim Richardson]

Bob, no Aperture workshop planned, but if you'd sign up, I'd put one together! Thanks for the kind words. The Apple guys really did a job of making me look good.

Jim

[Michel]

Jim, I must confess I was unaware of your work until yesterday morning when I opened up a National Geo from a few months back and saw your beautiful pictures from the Hebrides islands. Then later in the day I saw the Aperture announcement and the video featuring you. I lived in Nova Scotia for several years. It's a place that will always be special to me. When, where will be be able to see more of that shoot?

Cheers,

Michel Corbin
Brooklyn, NY

[Jim Richardson]

Michel,
Thanks! And I loved Nova Scotia as well. Most of our time in Lunenburg and an evening in Peggy's Cove. Got up on the mast of the Bluenose II, which was a feat for me. Now that Aperture is live I think I can get some of those images out. Let me get past duties of the next few days and I'll see what I can do.

Jim

[Anton]

Hello, Jim!
The last Aperture is a great software, I enjoy it very much.
I have one general comment about your website, though (I could not find contact info, so I post it here).
I find it hard to find a blog sometimes, because there are quite a few of them. I get lost in your site easily, because many pages show the same address (jimrichardsonphotography.com), it is sometimes hard to find the real home page because it looks like there are several websites together. Then if I enter the site, there is one blog; this one I am writing in is another blog. But there also a link to a blog which is the same as the blog I see when I enter the site!(well, links to "enter" and "new blog" lead to the same page) you are probably confused trying to understand what I am saying, but I am also confused trying to explain it, since I am lost...

[waku]

Jim,

It looks like a large part of your work is done in front of the computer. You mention brushes, and that makes me think about local adjustments, as opposed to merely boosting the contrast etc. globally.

So here's the question: I've been recently warned by an emerging photographer that in Photography (the scary 'P' meaning real, professional photography) there is no place for Photoshop-alikes -- advanced image hackery left aside, even such simple modifications as color enhancement or desaturation and toning do not belong. I guess NG has pretty strong rules wrt. manipulation (actually changing the content), how about digital sepia? What's you own view?

[Carrie Dodd]

Hi Jim,
It was very nice having lunch with you at the recent NG Travel workshop at NW Univ in Evanston. I'm planning my pyraymid and safari pix now.

I would also sign up for an Aperature workshop. I ordered 3.0 last night. I am totally stoked about shooting in RAW, but I'm concerned about running about of memory cards...ordered 5 additional 8GB cards for the trip.

Thanks again,
Carrie

[Jim Richardson]

Waku,

You're right that National Geographic has pretty strong rules on manipulation. Basically we're in the reality business, or put an another way, we do non-fiction photography. In parallel with the divide in literature between fiction and non-fiction that doesn't denigrate "fiction" photography but it does mean that anything that would alter the reality of our pictures would be destructive to your mission. So while we can do basic photographic stuff like correcting color balance and adjusting contrast, we can't take out telephone poles or put in clouds. I don't know exactly what kind of "toning" you are talking about but I would guess that you are talking about is more than we can legitimately do.

[Jim Richardson]

Carrie,

Glad to see you in Evanston. That was a great audience. Even laughed at my jokes.

Hope you enjoy Aperture. It is powerful software so be prepared to find more than you can take in all at once. But just like Photoshop you don't have to know everything to make it work for you. The Aperture workshop should sort a lot of that out pretty quickly.

I find that I am several times more productive now that I have centralized everything in Aperture.

Jim