For the longest time, Apple has been neglecting the professional photography market segment, but no longer. Aperture is to digital photography what Final Cut Pro is to digital video.
It’s the biggest, most taxing job you have as a photographer. You’ve finished your shoot. You’ve taken thousands of photographs. Now you need to quickly edit the shoot, reviewing all of your photos and identifying your very best. Aperture helps you accomplish this with powerful and flexible tools designed specifically to address the needs of the professional photographer.
I am excited to see this application first-hand, as it appears to be tailored specifically for the working photographer. Features that I’m especially excited about include:
- Deep metadata support
- Preserves existing file structure of photos (unlike iPhoto)
- RAW processing using CoreImage
- Version control over Master and derivative images
- Automatic backup using Vault
Although I have a fairly well-thought out workflow for my photos, I struggle with the lack of coordination between the various apps that I’m using: iView Media Pro, CaptureOne, Noise Ninja, and Photoshop. Aperture looks like it can replace iView and CaptureOne, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it can integrate with Noise Ninja, my preferred noise reduction program. Checking the feature list, Aperture comes with a noise reduction tool, along with spot and patch healing tools. Perhaps Aperture can replace all of my image editing tools after all!
Eric Cheng and I were talking the other day about the difficulty in maintaining version control with our images. I annotate the RAW images, while Eric annotates the processed versions of his RAW files. Aperture maintains all derivative versions using a concept called Stacks. And, each new version apparently takes up no more additional storage space. Eric might want to Switch soon himself!
I’d venture to say that Aperture is more exciting than their new PowerMacs. Of couse, I’d need one of their new PowerMacs just to run Aperture at a reasonable speed! Looks like I’ll be upgrading soon.
tow.com 
Believe me, Adam, I’m tempted to give it a try. Once you get your setup, I’ll come check it out to see if it is compelling enough to get a new desktop machine. Have to stick to a PC notebook because the Mac notebooks are so damn slow. Regardless of software offerings, if I can’t work with large images on the road, it’s not going to work. I’ll have to wait for the intel macs. :)