|
Search this group's discussions
|
Stay away from aperture!!!!!
|
The program is the biggest piece of crap to ever be released. the quality of the photos is HORRENDOUS. And that's just the start.
Read the Apperture forum on Apple's site or the other places reviews are popping up.
I am in deep buyers remorse.
Posted at 11:32PM, 7 December 2005 PDT
(permalink)
|
|
Do you have any examples you can post? I see that some users are complaining. As with any new product, it might take an update or two to get the issues worked out. I know Apple doesn't put out beta-ware like microsoft.
discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1092
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
|
Here are side by side 100% shots of an image from Aperture and Photoshop CS2.
Shot with Canon 1Ds Mark II.
The crappy one on the right is Aperture.
Look at the fur in the jacket, the fringing on the headphone cord, the jacket itself, etc.
www.visualreserve.com/ap/aperture.jpg
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
Although I'm a PC user and therefore this is something I'm unlikely to buy, it does surprise me as Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack are such excellent programs and I was expecting Aperture to be the same.
Unusual.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
Well I like it, runs a little slow but its better than iphoto and the pictures are clear as day on mine
www.flickr.com/photos/digital_rebel_xt/71281552/
www.flickr.com/photos/digital_rebel_xt/71256306/
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
As I said on the thread in the Mac group:
On the face of it, the Aperture photo looks bad but it's hard to make a meaningful comparison without knowing whether the picture was RAW to start with and what work was done on each photo. Not suggesting that Visual Reserve is doing this deliberately but for all we know, the Aperture picture might look bad just through the fact of going through a learning curve in how to use it. (Just as I had initial trouble with using anything after using the simple controls on iPhoto.) I think a better comparison might be made if a Photoshop expert and an Aperture expert were given the same RAW file and told to work it up.
I'm concerned to hear the Aperture forums are full of complainers, although it should always be borne in mind that people are quick to whinge and slow to praise.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
Here's a good technical review of the flaws in Aperture.
arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/aperture.ars
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
Ouch - that Ars review makes it sound pretty lousy.
I'm shocked that such a powerful machine struggles with the images, and that the software appears to be so badly thought-through... at least it won't run on my mini, so I can't be tempted to buy it ;-)
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
|
MattClark: Any photo will look great at 72 dpi on a web site.
I'd like to see a portion of yours at 100% next to one processed in PS side-by-side.
K & P: Those images are straight RAW conversions with nothing done to them but being exported/saved as TIFs.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
I was kind of suspicious of Aperture from the beginning, just based on the principle of the design of the thing. Any program that relies entirely on processing the images "live" and in real time is going to (a) be very limited in the scope of operations it offers, and (b) grind to a halt the minute you start throwing a lot on the stack. (Buying a faster processor just delays the point where your stack of operations becomes "a lot".)
So I'm disappointed but not terribly surprised at the Ars Technica review. @Visual Reserve: I feel your buyer's remorse. Sorry to hear you got burned.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
@Visual Reserve: I see a lot of color noise in the Aperture example that is missing from the Photoshop one (fur), I see a lot of digital sharpening applied in the Photoshop (skin tone, specular highlights). I see the color fringing you mention in the Aperture example (headphone cord, a few areas of the jacket). However, are you sure you didn’t leave ACR on it's defaults. ACR actually does a lot of postprocessing of the image which has nothing to do with it's RAW processing: it darkens shadows (to reduce color noise in shadows), it increases contrasts (because constrasty images are usually more pleasing), it applies sharpening (because digital images look unsharp to the eye), it applies color noise reduction. In addition to these defaults, it can be adjusted to shift the edges to account for chromatic abberations, lighten corners, mess with the white balance, hues, etc.) The default settings have nothing to do with RAW processing.
I can't explain away the CA on the phone cord. I could guess that maybe the "shadows" setting of Adobe is pushing the red and violet CA to black? If it really is CA, then it is a lens, not a RAW problem. The Apple one might be seen as "more correct" in that regard.
A lot of these complaints, especially the Ars article are based on a fundamental misunderstanding about RAW or not realizing that ACR does a lot of post-processing (by default and otherwise) that is best left to Photoshop or associated plugins. (For instance, the sharpening on the skin tone of your subject's chin is particularly hideous in the Adobe version).
Having said this, you should go with the tool that serves your needs best. Many prefer the tool made by their camera manufacturer (which has an inside scoop in their pre-processing and AA-filter optics) despite the obvious inconvenience and poor UI design.
If you are fortunate enough to live near an Apple Store, I think their computers have both Aperture and Adobe PS CS2. You could have done a side-by-side before purchasing by bringing a memory card.
@h4rrydog: The Ars article lists "lack of DNG export" as a minus but never mentions it's perfectly good RAW export (choose "Export Master" from the File menu). DNG export would imply Apple would have to adopt Adobe's standard, which, besides doubling the size of the file, also means Adobe's processing assumptions. Every piece of software has their own sidecar files that contain recipe for their interpretation of RAW, DNG is a blatant attempt to have every manufacturer standardized themselves on an arbitrary one set by Adobe, which is why not a single one of them have signed onto OpenRAW.
My suspicion is that for every example someone can come up with where ACR processing (all the sliders set on neutral, not Adobe's bogus and misleading defaults) beats Aperture (no filters applied), there is an equally contrived example Apple could come up with where the reverse happens. That is the nature of RAW processing, there are a lot of tradeoffs and preferences in RAW processing since you are dealing with the RAW image data and different manufacturers are going to design based on different assumptions.
Just last month, someone was telling me that the anti-aliasing algorithm I was using to downsample an image was "bad" and I should use Photoshop’s which is “much better.” I was using Lanczos and Photoshop does, at best, a bicubic filter.
Aperture has some serious issues with crashing and file loss. It has a limited feature set and is missing some key workflow tools. It is a pity that so much hype has been made about the RAW processing.
@MarkAndMarina: If you have a chance to use Aperture (like in an Apple Store or a rich friend), please do. There is a reason is runs so slow—it's model is different from any other photographic software: designed by photographers, for photographers (both a strength and a weakness, one weakness is that it seems these photographers must be pretty damn rich).
Note: I'm biased: I own both Aperture and Adobe CS.
Originally posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
tychay edited this topic 79 months ago.
|
|
|
@Visual Reserve: If there's no human intervention processing then I don't think it's a meaningful comparison that you've put up. I think tychay explains it well. The only RAW conversion I am ever going to trust to work 100% with Canon's proprietary CR2 file is Canon's RAW converter.
Btw, if there's any bias to be had, it's towards Photoshop as Adobe pays one of the salaries in our household. ;)
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
|
@otherthings: That's fine if you don't use ACR, and automate/batch process of your RAW. For me, live preview of RAW and non-destructive editing is a good idea. For instance, when I do a straighten and crop, it'd be nice if I could change my mind later.
With Aperture I can. I manage in Aperture and then round-trip the PSDs with Photoshop to do the heavy editing (like noise-reduction using NeatImage, despite the existence of a (as you would point out and I would agree) severely-limited-by-processing-power noise reduction filter in Aperture). I'd then have no trouble straightening and cropping in Aperture, whereas I regret doing so in Photoshop now that I have Aperture.
But that's probably not your workflow. OTOH, someone can say that the color noise reduction in Aperture is good enough for them (it is for 99% of prints). That's cool also. Having your own way of seeing and doing is what makes your photography yours.
Here is my Aperture story: Yesterday I got home from hiking and imported my photos automatically grouping them into stacks of similar photos, hit the F key, saw something I didn't like in the full screen previews of my photos taken a dawn, hit "`" and looked again at 100%, and then pulled hit "T" and became instantly demoralized by the tooltip: I had shot the entire card at ISO800.
So Aperture made it very easy for me to feel like an idiot.
Yes you Canon users can proceed to tease this Nikon guy about that one—the button on the 350D has the good sense to show ISO information in the "info" LCD.
Originally posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
tychay edited this topic 79 months ago.
|
|
@otherthings while I mostly agree that aperture is lacking, I owuld like to point out the the ars review states aperture is not intended to be a photoshop replacment but then proceeds to compare it to PS. Aperture was designed to be a workflow tool, not an editor.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
They compare it to the workflow portions of PS.. PS CS2 has a built in workflow from start to finish.
Basically, they are saying that you can use Aperture to replace parts of PS but not all of PS.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
The workflow aspect seems to be left out of the discussion when people complain about Aperture, yet it is (to me at least) the biggest "feature". Since RAW processing varies so much depending on which RAW converter you are using, it ultimately comes down to finding the tool that works best for you. After you have converted your files, though, I think Aperture works well for sorting, viewing, proofing, etc. I'm curious to hear other examples of how Aperture is helping/hurting individual workflows.
Visual Reserve, do you have the sharpening option turned off in the ACR preferences? I am curious if that was applied to your image.
Originally posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
Billyterr edited this topic 79 months ago.
|
|
|
@billyterr, I agree with you. However the guy above you said they compare aperture to the workflow portion of PS, that is not true. There are several disscusions complaing about the weak nature of the filters in Aperture and noise in the raw conversions, etc.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
|
I think the point is that all the workflow improvements in the world aren't worth much if the images come out looking worse than they went in.
I'm disappointed that Aperture doesn't have any options for a user to choose the tradeoff between "realtime/low quality" versus "offline/high quality". I use 3D animation software all day at my job, and if we were always limited to doing only what could be done in real time, our movies would look like video games.
Considering the $500 pricetag and the target audience of high-end professional photographers, I would have expected they'd go for the highest possible quality, or at least provide it as an offline option.
Maybe this is something they'll fix for version 2.0.
Posted 79 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
I would appreciate some opinions as to how the Adobe raw converter compares to Canon's own dedicated raw converter application.......especially as to image sharpness and color fidelity (accuracy of white balance)
Posted 78 months ago.
(permalink)
|
|
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned The GIMP.
It's open source so it's free to download and use and is available for MacOS, Windows and Linux/Unix and is a worthy alternative to Photoshop.
www.gimp.org
Originally posted 78 months ago.
(permalink)
Vinnn edited this topic 78 months ago.
|
Would you like to comment?
Sign up for a free account, or sign in (if you're already a member).
|
|
Canon DSLR User Group /
Discuss
Feed – Subscribe to Canon DSLR User Group discussion threads
