Aperture
Aperture is driving me nuts. It is so good, so full of good ideas, so well thought out, it is almost miraculous. Yet, Apple misbehaves so badly on important details, it is almost killing it. The problems I have are RAW support, performance and printing.
RAW Support
Aperture was designed and is marketed primarily as a RAW files management, workflow, do-it-all solution. Emphasis on RAW files usage is very strong. From there you’d think the list of supported cameras would be at least as good as the one supported by PhotoShop, right? Wrong. Aperture’s RAW support is very limited. Compared with Adobe’s list, it shows that while Adobe tries to be very current and neutral, Apple prefers to support what they think are the main cameras. This makes Aperture is the RAW tool with the most limited support on the market. Consequence is that photographers cannot really trust Apple on that regard. Many photographers use Canon and Nikon cameras but many among them have secondary cameras, often not best sellers. For those photographers, Adobe’s approach is much more appealing.
That would not be such a problem is Apple would support the DNG format. Apple says it supports DNG. Well, that’s corporate Newspeak at best. It support DNG files that are the result of conversion from RAW files it supports natively. In other words, what Apple calls DNG support serves no purpose other than posturing like supporting something without actually supporting it. It is either colossal corporate stupidity or a bad example of the “Not Invented Here” syndrome. It brings no advantage to Apple nor to its users and it brings misery to both. Apple sells less software (and related hardware) because of it, and users are restricted in choice. Besides the 5D, I also have a Sony DSC-R1, another excellent camera, very well suited to landscapes. Alas, the R1 is not on the Aperture list. Never mind it is on the list of all its competitors. The very sad thing is that the R1 will probably never be supported by Aperture because it is now discontinued and Apple is facing a growing list of more recent cameras to support.
Actually, when I complain about Aperture limited RAW support, I’m not really explaining what is going on. Aperture does not support RAW itself. It relies on the MAC OS X operating system to do it, more precisely a component called CoreImage. The idea of putting RAW support in the OS has many advantages, like offering it as a service to any developer who might be interested. Problem is, Apple updates the OS much less often than what would be needed to keep pace with the digital cameras market. Never mind that in the process it is killing the rationale for putting RAW support in the OS: What developer would be interested in having those limitations in his application? Especially when a nice free alternative exists! So, in the end, putting that function in the OS does not work. Please Apple, put that back where it belongs: in the Aperture team.
It could solve 99% of the problem by offering true DNG support like the excellent LightZone and RAW Developer programs. But no, too simple an idea, probably.
Performance
The second problem is performance. Here again, Aperture relies on CoreImage for its image alteration functions. Another great idea. CoreImage is wonderful in what it can do and in the quality of results it provides. It is also wonderful when supplied with proper hardware, namely a powerful GPU. The idea in CoreImage is that, when the GPU can process the function, it is used. Otherwise, conventional CPU-based processing is used. The choice is transparent, proving the user with the best of both worlds. Theoretically. The way CoreImage is implemented, it is indeed very fast when it can use the GPU, but it is much slower than the competition when it has to rely on the CPU, which is the case on my machine, the MacBook. There is no other reason for this other than laziness. Apple programmers are at least as capable of others to program fast graphical routines, as they have repeatedly shown in the past. End result: Aperture is slower than it should be on my hardware.
Printing
This is different. It used to be nice. Not as well featured as the LightRoom printing module, but enough to meet my needs. Used to. Since release 1.5.1, a bug has appeared. When you reduce the size of a picture on the page by telling Aperture to put a white border around it, instead of downsizing the picture, Aperture print now crops it! In a flash, they have rendered their whole printing module useless. This shows bad quality control, for a start. Not too bad, it is probably a simple bug to correct, so by now, one would expect Apple to have acknowledge the issue promptly and provided a fix. No. Not even an acknowledgment. This is the most serious issue, for me. Not just because it means I can’t really print with Aperture, but because it shows an attitude incompatible with the professional market Aperture is targeted at.
Conclusion
I keep using Aperture, partly because it remains the best in its class despite the problems, and partly because it is still in its early stage and I’ll see how it evolves. However, yesterday I downloaded the LightRoom Beta 4.1 to check where Adobe is in their development. It looks better than before. Apple has some time before Adobe fully catches up, but when that time eventually expires, I’m afraid many Aperture users will give a long hard look at the competition. This is so stupid.
Stephane :: Nov.30.2006 :: Software :: No Comments »
