If you shoot in RAW and manage large numbers of photos, you need to give very serious consideration to Aperture 2. The program provides truly outstanding RAW conversion tools – greatly superior to Adobe’s free Digital Negative Converter. It provides very flexible, easy-to-use tools to compare and rate photos, including stacks, ratings and comparison tools. The library management tools are truly outstanding, giving you multiple levels of keywords, a variety of tools for organizing your shots, and a hierarchical system for organization. And it links tightly to the photo editing application(s) of your choice.
Batch processing is well-supported, both on import and on photo selections. Essentially all data associated with the photos – both image details and EXIF – can be handled individually or at a batch level.
Famously, Aperture makes its edits to photos by linked mathematical formulas; the RAW photo itself is not touched. So manipulations can always be reversed. This also keeps the photo database from growing through duplicate files; there’s just one file, and a series of small files representing the edits.
Aperture isn’t perfect. While it is adequate for simple edits to photos, you’ll still need a tool like Photoshop or Elements to perform serious adjustments to your photos. Aperture does a fine job of working with those photo editors. And Apple can be slow – sometimes, seriously slow – supporting the RAW formats of newly released cameras. In the case of the Olympus E-3, the camera was released for five months before Aperture could import its RAW format. There are always workarounds – Adobe DNG if nothing else – and in fairness to Apple, its Aperture RAW converters are outstanding, but be prepared for a wait if you have new model camera. And Aperture demands significant resources: at least G5 (an Intel chip is better), at least 2 GB RAM (4GB much better), an approved video card, hard drive space adequate to your projected library and a backup or removable drive to hold a backup (a “vault”).
Perhaps best of all, Aperture lets you define your own workflow. Adobe Lightroom, by contrast, pretty much imposes its workflow structure on you. You can do things in the order you want, not the order some programmer wants.
If you are new to Aperture, I recommend the Classroom in a Book tutorial, Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2 (Apple Pro Training Series).
I could not be happier with this program. I have some 35,000 shots, and add 1,000-2,000 per month. It has been flawless. And I’ve never lost a photo.
My highest recommendation.
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