After venting my gripes with the new Canon EOS 1D series cameras I feel “Reviews” is turning a bit into “Rants”. I am unfortunately not going to change direction today as my daily use of Apple Aperture software has raised a number of unhappy issues. But there’s some good as well... read on:

While I have used a number of computers and operating systems since the days of CP/M and ProDOS (yes, before the IBM PC and Microsoft...), I immediately settled on the Macintosh as my computer of choice. Even during the dark System 8 times, I haven’t regretted it once and still love my Macs. Even though I like cutting edge hardware and software, I am very pragmatic when it comes to tools and have always preferred the down to earth Apple software to the bloated and unnecessarily complicated Microsoft offerings. I am also a little bit angry at Adobe for its insane pricing structure, especially in Europe so when Aperture came out, I immediately jumped on it.

When I say immediately, I did in fact wait quite a bit as, such a tool, for a photographer, represents a huge investment in time. I was happy with a combination of the almost faultless iView Media Pro and Adobe Photoshop CS2, but as many other photographers, I wanted a solution combining basic RAW processing, cataloguing and annotation for my pictures. Both Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture did that and it was difficult to choose between the two. What made the difference was the way Aperture built versions of the same picture very cheaply in terms of disk space and of course the fact that I expected a superior user interface from Apple.

I have now been using Aperture exclusively for several months and I must say it has mostly served me well but I have also been keeping a look on Lightroom and there are certainly areas for improvement. This is very much of actuality as a new version of Aperture is very near and I might be tempted to switch to Lightroom if it fails to appear or does not solve my problems with the software.

There are several key areas where I feel let down by Aperture:

File management. Because Aperture initially expected to completely manage your picture files, it doesn’t think in terms of folder hierarchy but rather forces you to organise your files in “Projects”. The “Projects” have a limitation of 10,000 pictures which happens to be precisely less than the number of pictures I take on.... a project. Before Aperture, I organised my pictures by shooting date, one folder per day, usually corresponding to one shoot (but not one project..). Since I wanted to keep my picture library untouched and preserve an eventual migration to another software, I option-command-dragged each day into a corresponding “Project”. This gives Aperture access to the RAW files but doesn’t change their location. The problem, of course, is that I ended up with 900 “Projects” so I decided to organise them into yearly folders. Aperture does provides higher level folders you can put “Projects” into but, since for some weird reason you cannot select more than one project at a time, you have to move them one by one. Because this process is much slower in Aperture than in the Finder, not only I had a horribly repetitive task to do but it also took me almost a day to do. Not fun. I understand that a database must be kept to a manageable size, but iView copes with 100,000 pictures and scrolls through that many thumbnails in seconds. Why does Aperture have to crawl as soon as a “Project” has more than a hundred pictures in it? Lightroom can manage your pictures but is perfectly happy for them to reside in folders with the hierarchy of your choice.

Performance. That is the main problem of Aperture. It is a very ambitious software that was built on the premise that the necessary power to make it run properly would eventually become available. Two years on, it hasn’t. I am running it on a Power Mac G5 2x2.5GHz which, while not being state of the art anymore, never was a slouch, and if general use is acceptable, Aperture will immediately slow to a crawl as soon as I start editing pictures. To have a vaguely comfortable experience with the software, you need the absolute fastest computer Apple makes with the fastest Graphics Card you can buy for it. Lightroom is just very quick.

Annotations. This is where the real investment in time is for a photographer so the system has to work. Strange bugs in iView Media Pro meant that annotations I took a long time to input sometimes didn’t stick and that was infuriating enough to drive my switch to Aperture. Annotations do stick in Aperture and there are a few good tools in it such as lift and stamp but either I still haven’t understood the hierarchical keyword system or it doesn’t actually work. Actually, it is a design quirk that while you can organise keywords into hierarchies, they do not get copied to the pictures IPTC fields, just the ones you type. Lightroom seems to be better in that area.

Interface. Like with all Apple professional software, there is a learning curve. Unlike, for example, Final Cut Pro, it is steep but very, very short. Once you have learnt half a dozen shortcuts, what tools are available and how a few screens can be organised, you’re off. The software is completely non modal and you can effect any action on your picture at any time. Where Lightroom forces you to be inside a “Module” at any given time, all tools are always available in Aperture. Aperture is also famous for and alone in handling multiple monitors and its full screen/ heads up display interface is very practical when used with very large screens. In general there is nothing wrong with the Aperture interface which does break new ground while retaining the user friendliness one would expect from Apple. Lightroom is not that far behind and is quite nice to use as well. I am not sure why they  wanted to separate the functionality into “Modules” but in practice, you can switch from one to the other instantly so they are not a serious  limitation.

Editing. Lightroom calls it “Develop” and Aperture “Adjustments”. Basically, it is all the processing you can apply to a RAW file to make it usable without going into Photoshop-like editing. Both software provide exactly the same tools but sometimes presented very differently. While Aperture has a very nice Levels adjustment interface, Ligthroom as a superb, industry leading, curves tool. But they actually both do the same thing. Apple’s weaknesses are in the patch tool which could be bettered and the straighten tool which is absolutely, totally useless. Both software do have highly effective ways of automating settings to process pictures in batches or create styles.

Import-Export. While Lightroom imports RAW pictures through Adobe Camera Raw which Adobe maintains scrupulously, Aperture gets its RAW conversion from Mac OS X which sometimes lags behind. I am still waiting for my Canon EOS 1Ds3 to be supported by Aperture. Both do a reasonable job at converting RAW files, arguably not the best in the business, and both have a slight flavour to how they do it. Adobe Camera Raw does seem to give much more options to the RAW conversion process but one could say that the whole of Aperture is about RAW conversion so it’s pretty much a draw. Interestingly, all of Aperture’s work is done in the largest possible colour space. It only gets limited to Adobe RGB, sRGB or other upon export.

Output. Aperture’s printing window does work but is the most obscure part of the program. Lightroom’s printing “Module” looks much more solid and feels more precise even if, again, it has the same result. For those who can use them, Aperture’s books are brilliant although they have the limitation of coming in only two, set in stone, sizes. I used neither software web editing functions so cannot comment on them but it would be nice if Aperture linked easily to iWeb.

In conclusion, I do like Aperture but would start to be really interested in Lightroom if Apple didn’t solve a few problems very soon. Foremost is the speed issue. I wouldn’t mind dealing with “Projects” if they loaded immediately and I could scroll through thumbnails without having to wait. It would also be nice if the “Projects” bar worked like, and at the same speed as, the Finder. On the annotation front, something needs to be done about hierarchical keywords and creation of often used sets. The patch tool needs some work and it would be nice if it didn’t stop my computer once there’s five patches in a picture. The straighten tool needs to use the line drawing interface which would make its unacceptable slowness irrelevant as it is a one step process rather than a slow adjustment. There needs to be a custom option for book sizes (Europe works with A4 pages, remember?). Finally, the printing interface needs to be rethought so as to make the result more obvious and maybe allow the printing of more than one picture on a page (actually, paper roll management would be cool, but not essential I suppose).