Every time I think I will switch to Lightroom...

bob.tullis wrote:
Seems like the biggest issue with Aperture is the lack of any development/release news to keep folks on the fence waiting. It would go a long way if there were news for which folks could pace their anticipations.

Of course Adobe isn't announcing their 2.0 development schedule either. There's no official posting on their site about when to expect a LR 2.0 and what it would hold.

ya, but we all know that they know of these problems so you would think they would want to hold onto their embedded base especally when going after the big boys.

I'll tell you, now with the other product, I'm really happy as they re did their library into a "catalog" system. Now I can export indiv. "catalogs" into a seperate drive along with the catalog "launcher" and import it back whenever I want thus taking a heck of a lot of resources off the products core system and I can see the difference. I think they now have a pretty big league. I can hardly wait to see what they do in ver. 2. But I'm never going back to AP.

Fair enough.

I remember when they did keep folks baited, but that must have been before the official release.

(Maybe the response should have been, "What's LR?" [g]).

Yeah there was a time. It was the fifteen months between when they announced LR and when they shipped 1.0. The program was in "public beta" from about 2 weeks after AP shipped until their 1.0.

Not saying I don't want more transparency in companies. I've spent a lot of time around Apple (as a journalist before my current user-organization days) and it's often frustrating to run into the "we can't talk about that" wall. But Apple's not the only one that does it. Adobe does too, and I think they're against a harder wall. Every copy of LR they sell is one potentially fewer sales of Photoshop. But every Mac copy of LIghtroom sold is a potential hardware sale for Apple.

I just wanted to point out that Adobe doesn't post their release schedule either, they're just faster with raw support.

Tom Aellis wrote:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=AdobeLightroom%2C+AppleAperture

Hmm, an awful lot of Czech Republic traffic on that trend. I'm not sure exactly what that says. The Czech like Lightroom? 🙂

I don't think that they are losing that many Photoshop sales, like AP, LR is really a complementary product and not a replacement by any means to Photoshop. I think people are getting that now. There are still a ton of photographers who don't use AP or LR, they just use ACR because they are familiar with it. Then, of those that do use AP or LR, they still use PS for heavy editing. IMO...AP, LR, and PS all have definite strengths and weaknesses that appear fairly balanced to me, if AP and LR were apples and PS was an orange.

I would expect a LR 2.0 pretty soon. They were on the record explaining why LR was not part of the Creative Suite. They explaination was that the CS product line is on an 18 month development schedule, and that they rate of technology change requires LR to be more agile and accomodate a compressed dev schedule.

I agree with all that's been said. You're right neither Adobe or Apple offer news about their updates. The key disatisfier for me is Adobe supports my new camera and Aperture doesn't. I have enjoyed Aperture and regret that I am forced to use LR/PS CS3. I just don't get how Apple let's Adobe beat them out like this.

The only thing Adobe's doing is getting raw support into the program faster. But they also don't mind releasing a raw converter that gets tweaked later via updates to Adobe Camera Raw, while Apple wants to get the camera raw support right the first time.

Which of course raises some interesting issues about LR. Open a raw file today and open it a year from now, and they might look completely different, without the ability to do anything about that.

Whoa!

Never thought of that before...

Anyway, is that why Apple did what it did with the RAW processing? You know, giving us the toggle switch to use the old RAW converter or the new RAW converter?
Scott

Scott Hampton wrote:
Whoa!

Never thought of that before...

Anyway, is that why Apple did what it did with the RAW processing? You know, giving us the toggle switch to use the old RAW converter or the new RAW converter?
Scott

I still remember the vitriol expressed at Aperture because people didn't know how Apple would deal with updates to the RAW converter. What would happen when improvements were made to the engine but the photographer had carefully made adjustments on the old one? Apple did this one right. Did Adobe?

There's more that Apple did right, took heat for, and then became accepted when Lightroom was stuck with the same limitations or features. For example. Anyone else remember the heat over Apertures managed library? After the Lightroom Beta got people interested in Lightroom because it wasn't forcing users into a Library, Apple adapted and gave you the option of storing your originals wherever you want. Good, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing...however, Adobe then implemented a similar managed library and even recommended it. Again, I think Apple got it right. There's pro's and con's to each method. I keep reading about users who were camped in their own folders who eventually tried the managed library--and won't look back.

Oh, boy. The managed library!

I went to an Aperture seminar at B&H and everyone was boo-hooing about the managed library. They didn't want their originals locked in there. Well and good. That's their legitimate concern.

Me? There's no way I as gonna keep putting CDs, DVD, and hard drives in and out when I needed a shot. Not me, baby. I accepted the managed library from the moment I got Aperture. Can't have it any other way.

For those who like referenced masters, feel free. No hard feelings...
Scott

Scott Hampton wrote:

Anyway, is that why Apple did what it did with the RAW processing? You know, giving us the toggle switch to use the old RAW converter or the new RAW converter?
Scott

Why I'm glad you asked. [switches into instructor mode]

Let's say that you shoot a Pulitzer Prize winning photo (I say "you" because I'm not in danger of shooting one any time soon.) You process it with Aperture 1.5, which uses the "1.1" converter engine.

Fast forward to the future, and you're asked to send someone that shot. Assume this future is after Aperture has been updated with newer raw processing powers.

If Apple had not chosen to provide a path to previous conversions, when you went to export your file, it would use a different converter model to create that output. It would use whatever model was part of the current system.

What you'd end up with is a file that is NOT the original Pulitzer winning shot, but one that's processed using the current tools. While the assumption is that each new version of a processor would add to the ability of the raw file's decoding, even back in film when new developers would come out, people would stock up on the old chemicals so they could produce their images the way they originally seen it.

Now this might not be a big deal if the raw processing were to add better noise reduction, or more accurate colors, or some such, but if your client's signed off on an image and you can't deliver that image, there are problems.

One of the cool things about that toggle, and the Migrate Images command is that it allows you to choose to either have Aperture update non-processed images only, or processed-images only (on a per image or per project basis) and to make new versions or not. This allows you to create a side-by-side comparison when a new processing engine comes out, to compare the results.

As opposed to the model in LR/Bridge/CS3 whereby the converter is tweaked occasionally and you have no way of knowing what rev it was.

Now, that's forward thinking!

There's an obvious concern for the well-being of the photographer on the part of Apple. As well as the photographer's reputation and future. I like that.

Scott