It’s no surprise that Apple has updated Aperture on the eve of the Photokina photography conference. Version 1.5 brings several new features to the table:
- Flexible Library Management: Taking a cue from Lightroom and iView Media Pro, Aperture now allows you to store your images wherever you want. This is one feature that I was really looking for
- iLife integration: One big drawback with iView Media Pro is its relatively poor integration with the iLife and iWork products from Apple. Aperture used to be on its own island as well, but no longer!
- Export metadata to XMP files: Not quite embedding the metadata with the image itself, which I would prefer, but at least Aperture 1.5 lets you export to a sidecar XMP file now
- Advanced Color Controls: Finer-grained color adjustment tools. What I’d really like to see are custom color profiles for different cameras. Capture One with Magne Nilsson’s color profiles provide me with very accurate and neutral colors from the get-go. This means less dickering around with the temperature and tint sliders, something I’m endlessly doing in Aperture.
- Metadata Presets: Not much to say here, but a welcome improvement. Eric and I were discussing this feature yesterday at his place.
- Adjustment Presets
- Image selection via AppleScript: Finally! This will allow me to update Annoture to be even more powerful. I’ve been falling behind on updating my syncing app between iView and Aperture due to new incompatibilities with iView 3.1.x and Aperture 1.1.2.
- Automatically Generated Previews: I wonder if this willl make Aperture run faster, especially since the app now runs on any Intel-based Mac. Capture One uses a high-resolution preview image for all of its on-screen image refreshing. Previous versions of Aperture rendered the final image every single time you made a correction. Even if you had a really fast video card, image manipulation could get really, really, slow.
- Improved File Renaming: I’ll have to see, but maybe it’s time to replace the venerable ExifRenamer from Stefan Robl? In fact, on paper this new update may be just enough to leave iView Media Pro for good.
- Export plug-ins: A new extensible architecture allows access to Aperture from third-party applications. I wish I had been informed of this for my Annoture work, but it appears that the focus of the plug-in architecture is on exporting to third-party web sites like Photoshelter or iStockphoto.
- Free Update: The best news of all is that this version of Aperture is a free update for existing owners!
I’m sure there are more features in this release that are waiting to be revealed. When it’s available later this week, I’ll share with you my experiences using the app.
Update: Ben Long from CreativePro has a beta review of Aperture 1.5.
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Hello. Does Aperture allow for the playing of the .wav sound files that are created when I take caption information in the field? This is an essential part of my workflow that helps me get the names of people I photograph. Adobe Lightroom doesn’t allow for the playing of these files as far as I can tell. If I could get rid of iView and only use Aperture that’d be great!
Good question, one that I don’t know the answer to yet. We’ll find out later this week when the update is released.
Hello. So what’s the verdict? What’s the best way of typing down the information from those sound files? Thanks!
-jason