Aperture 3

[Valtteri]

Hi!

Aperture 3 is out. Has anyone tested it yet? Info says that is has support for H3D 31 and H3D 31 II ,does it not support for example H3D 39 II, which would be the case for me?

br V.

[Gerard]

I'm currently using it with an H2d39. It seems fine.

[alexkent]

Hi, i'm also looking at Aperture 3.
I've just thrown a whole bunch of hasselblad files at it and found:

Filetypes .fff / .3fr / .dng all work.
Cameras I use H1D22, H2D39 both work fine.
H3DII-50MS definitely doesn't work, even after the just released 'RAW Camera Update 3'. Presumably no 50MP shots work yet.
H3D39 / H3DII-39 seem to work fine, but the only files i have from those cameras right now are the Sample four images you can download from Hasselblad.com
I will try to some things on a H3DII-39 tomorrow so i can try those files then.

I have found slightly inconsistent behaviour with files produced when shooting tethered (.fff), some don't work and i can't really figure out why (converting to .dng might fix this ?). This applies to files i have from both H1D and H2D cameras tethered into Phocus, all my older Flexcolor tethered stuff seems to work.

There also appears to be a bug in the camera identification metadata reading, as in, Aperture can't always figure out which camera made the shot. I can't see when this would be a real problem though.

On the plus side, once you've imported your shots Aperture is incredibly fast.
I'm using a MacPro (current model 8core with Radeon HD 4870) and Phocus is also very fast on this machine but Aperture is so fast it feels 'fluid'. Plus Aperture has many more features. The new brush tools in v3 are excellent. Extremely fast and responsive dodging/burning, skin smoothing (that isn't awful), etc.

Maybe the next thing i shoot i'll process through Aperture and see how it goes. Obviously i would miss the DAC stuff but the speed alone might make it worthwhile.

I would recommend that anyone who needs to process and finish a lot of pictures quickly should definitely give Aperture 3 a look. You'll loose some of the Hasselblad special sauce, but it will save you a lot of trips to Photoshop.

alex.

[Valtteri]

Hi.

Thanks! I'll give it a try

br V.

[studiohjelm]

Thanks.

This was just what I needed. I just bought a H3d-39. But I dont like hasselbads own software.
Often we shoot with hasselblad and cannon in the same sessions. We would like to develop the different files in  the same program.

I understand you recomend Apperture for this. We have always used Capture One, but it does not support H3d-39.

What about lightroom?

Anyone that have tryed??   Lightroom vs. Apperture

[Hywel]

I previously used Aperture 2, I switched over to Lightroom 2 briefly because Apeture 2 was having a lot of problem dealing with large files from my H3DII-31 and EOS 5D Mk2. (It crashed a lot, especially when exporting to the portraiture plugin, which is useful, especially in the absence of skin soften brush).

I then moved to Lightroom 3 Beta when that became available, specifically because it addressed a particularly dumb shortcoming of LR2 (overlay of a PNG on export to watermark my files with my logo). I've been using LR3b for production for a couple of months in conjunction with Phocus, doing a first pass of the export in Phocus then tweaking the resulting TIFFs in LR3b.

I've just installed Aperture 3 and am trying to figure out the best workflow to use with it. It has a number of very nice features which address the shortcomings of Aperture 2 and catch up with more or less everything that's in LR3 beta. The killer function for me is the ability to read fff files, which Lightroom doesn't currently do. This should allow me to use Aperture for cataloguing and digitial assest management in a way which LR3 won't support.

For example, if I continue to use Phocus to export TIFF's, I can import both the fff's and the TIIF's and Aperture can autostack them, so each FFF file is stacked with the corresponding TIFF. Once I've processed all the shots I usually delete the TIFFs to save disk space, but that's OK- if I need to, I can always find the image in Aperture and go directly back to the FFF files to regenerate the TIFFs in Phocus. This workflow is impossible in Lightroom right now as Lightroom can't see the fff's... and I really don't want to proliferate the versions of 58 MB RAW files or 180 MB TIFFs on my system! fff's plus final rendering seemed like a good mix of things to store- although I would like to move to DNG, I still like using Phocus for optimum image quality at this point.  

Aperture 3's adjust brushes look super, although I've not used them in anger for production yet. (LR3's are OK too).

So I think the main thing is to try both and see which you prefer. Both are currently available for free download I think (LR3 as a beta, but the beta seems very stable. Aperture 3 as a 30 day trial). Download, and set aside a day to do some real work in each and see which you get on with better.

Personally I think Aperture has a MUCH MUCH MUCH nicer design, interface and workflow- something which really matters when processing thousands of images each month. Lightroom is modal- the program has different modes, and you have to be in the right one to do a certain thing. What's more, the program's controls change in each mode and are inconsistent in how they do so. So "N" selects the retouch brush- but only if you are already in the develop module. If you are in the library module, it does something completely different. But "R" selects the crop tool in the develop module wherever you are in the program. Holding the space bar and click-drag drags you around the photo at 100% zoom, unless you don't have a tool selected, in which case the spacebar push zooms out. Despite using LR3b for two months solidly this one still annoys me and catches me out on a daily basis. I think the capabilities of the program are impressive, but the design of the interface is bad, and the program imposes a workflow on you rather than letting you move from task to task in the order you prefer to do it.

In Aperture you can notice a dust spot when preparing your book output or when keywording and just quickly pop up the relevant tool and fix it- without needing to first ascertain which mode the program is in so you can use the right keyboard shortcuts. It is just a much nicer place to work, for me.

So whilst I have grown to respect LR3b, I have not grown to love it. So I am really hoping Aperture 3 has delivered on its promises... a few weeks of processing should show if it has or not. And actually Phocus is a really nice place to work, it does what it does well, but doesn't have any sort of DAM or local adjustments which rules out using it as the one-stop shop for Hasselblad files... and like you we still shoot on Canons sometimes too and need a unified work flow.

 Cheers, Hywel.

[studiohjelm]

THANK YOU!!!
This helped a lot.

[NickT]

This should allow me to use Aperture for cataloguing and digitial assest management in a way which LR3 won't support.

Hywel
Thank you for such an excellent informative post! I'm in much the same boat as you having flip flopped between Aperture and lightroom, I really want aperture to work for me especially with it's integration with mobile me. Couple of questions if I may.
Will aperture keep a catalogue of off line volumes? I'd really like to locate an image and have aperture tell me "it's on drive 23" (O.K it doesn't have to say it out loud but you get the idea..)

Second does aperture see CMYK files?

Thanks again
Nick-T

[Hywel]

Hywel
Thank you for such an excellent informative post! I'm in much the same boat as you having flip flopped between Aperture and lightroom, I really want aperture to work for me especially with it's integration with mobile me. Couple of questions if I may.
Will aperture keep a catalogue of off line volumes? I'd really like to locate an image and have aperture tell me "it's on drive 23" (O.K it doesn't have to say it out loud but you get the idea..)

Yes. Aperture keeps all the images in their projects even if the storage goes offline (and warns you about it with a little icon). It doesn't prompt you to reinsert the missing volume if you start trying to do anything to the image, but if you do "Reveal in finder" to show the image, it'll tell you the Volume it was on.

If you do File -> Relocate Referenced Files... it will tell you the complete pathname it is looking for (top right panel) which is even more useful.

Second does aperture see CMYK files?

I've got no experience of CMYK files, but I exported a TIFF from Phocus using the CMYK TIFF preset, and Aperture 3 was able to read and catalogue it fine. The display colours were not very faithful at all to the original (especially the black point) but I don't know if that is something one would just expect with the changed colour model??

Anyway, it means that you can use Aperture to catalogue/asset manage CMYK TIFF files at least (and stack with the RGB oirignal, for example).

You can in theory use it to asset manage videos, in some formats at least, but I've not even begun to look at that side of its capabilities yet. It doesn't import Panasonic P2 video from my HVX200's but it can cope with 5D Mk2 video files and the edited quicktime movies from the HVX200.

I'm currently managing my video footage entirely separately from my photos, as we usually shoot either stills or videos on any one day, and our video footage is all intended for fairly intricate editing. So I'm not sure asset managing the unedited raw footage will be useful; asset managing the edited videos might be a lot more so, though. Looks like you can attach metadata to MOV files, which would be good for managing them.

But for photo management it is looking like a pretty good one stop shop right now.

Hope that helps.

 Cheers, Hywel.

[NickT]

Hope that helps.

 Cheers, Hywel.

It most certainly does thank you. I too am starting to shoot video with the 5D2 so Apertures capabilities in that area are very useful.
Thanks again.
Nick-T

[Dustbak]

Darn, reading this it seems I have to start taking another look at Aperture as well.

One, maybe foolish question, I use LR a lot to generate webpages from collection. Is that an easy process with Aperture3.0?

[Hywel]

Darn, reading this it seems I have to start taking another look at Aperture as well.

One, maybe foolish question, I use LR a lot to generate webpages from collection. Is that an easy process with Aperture3.0?

Yes- select a bunch of images and click "New Webpage". The range of supplied templates is limited, but reasonably pretty, and you can get add-on packs with more or delve into the package, duplicate a template and customise it (though that's hackery rather than nicely offered as options in the program). LR3b has a wider range of templates, including all-singing-all-dancing Flash ones so it depends what you want- I prefer static quick-to-load pages that don't faff around with dancing polaroids and whirling frames, myself ;-)

  Cheers, Hywel

(who seems to be turning into the Aperture sales rep around here... I happen to prefer it to LR3 but given both are free to download right now it seems a good time to evaluate and compare).