[hugh]

Apple has announced Aperture 3, the next major release of its photo editing and management software for Macs.

Version 3 has over 200 new features including improved face detection and recognition technology, improved tools for photo retouching, ready to use image adjustments that emulate various photo processing styles, a full screen browser for navigating your image library and GPS support and built-in geotagging.

 

[uberchuckie]

I have Aperture 2.1 right now. Upgrade price is $90. Maybe it's worth the upgrade.

 

[JonO]

I think I'm gonna pull the trigger on this one...

 

[iMac]

I have tried Aperture 2, and it was a bit of a dog on my system so I used Lightroom 2 instead. Well today I downloaded the Aperture 3 trial and I have to say there was a major performance increase from Aperture 2, and I may pull the trigger on this one as well, I think I'll hold off until the full release for Lightroom 3. Aperture 3 is looking good as another choice. It was also quite smart of Apple to release Aperture 3 when that have, beating Adobe out the gate will perhaps be a advantage.

 

[Nuje]

Just to be clear - Aperture is more of souped-up iPhoto, right? As in, it's a photo management system (?).

It's not an alternative to Photoshop; to do things with layers and other editing, I'd need photoshop or photoshop elements?

Or am I mistaken?
(If I could get 70% of Photoshop capability in Aperture, I'd love to go with it, as I find Adobe's software totally non-intuitive; but if it's just 150% of the features in iPhoto....I don't see the need to drop $200 on it).

 

[uberchuckie]

Download the 30 day trial to try it. I tried Lightroom before I bought Aperture and I prefer Aperture as everything is on one screen. Lightroom has different pages for different steps of the workflow.

 

[okcomputer]

Just to be clear - Aperture is more of souped-up iPhoto, right? As in, it's a photo management system (?).

It is a photo management system, but also so much more. I find that I hardly use Photoshop at all anymore. I can make nearly every adjustment in Aperture.

There are no layers though... it's not for building or creating images, only applying adjustments to existing ones. Aperture 3 has brushes now, so I'm really going to be using Photoshop much, much less.

Faces and Places are a great addition to this release - although it took my MacBook Pro 3h to go through all of my photos and detect faces haha.