Aperture 4 Wish List

Hey OBW,

I had played with LR in the hopes that Apple would surprise me but Adobe actually delivered the surprise with the 5.0 Beta... I finally took the last step and removed my Aperture libs from my Mac and now only run Aperture from an external TB drive. I am using LR exclusively... Even if Aperture 4 comes out, I do not think I am willing to put a lot of trust in Apple again. I know that Adobe will be upgrading LR at regular intervals with new features that are required... In my opinion, Aperture is simply iPhoto on steroids... Neither app is very good, with Aperture being slightly better... For me, the dumbing down and consumerization of Aperture is a step backwards...

If it makes anyone feel better I don't think Lightroom 5 is coming out. I think they are calling it LR 5 but it's more like an incremental update. The feature are not ground breaking by any means. I've downloaded and have been using it.

I was an Aperture 2 / 3 user and went to Lightroom 4 last year. I documented all the reasons on myblog. I also have a running list of all the differences between the two on my blog.

I'm not saying the LR5 adds aren't great and highly needed but come on, making slideshows play movies and stills is an advertised addition. Come on. It's just COMPLETELY lame it couldn't do that in LR4.

The smart previews (editing referenced files not connected) functions are ground breaking. I think "LR 5" is a bit of a misnomer personally.

Well, at least they released 3.4.4 now, and it claims to fix the most annoying problem I had with Aperture: Almost every time after the machine had been sleeping, Aperture would display a gazillion warning messages that it couldn't connect to flickr.

frustrating...frustrating...every year the same issue....LR is just slowly pulling more and more ahead....as much i love aperture's systemwide integration....at a certain point missing features just can't be ignored...fortunately for apple switching from one to the other isn't that easy but it almost seems apple knows that and relys on that...

key arguments for LR at this point:

all adjustments are way ahead now....incl the new ones aperture does not even have

camera support: yes apple has gotten better but adobe is still much faster and even reacts to improve (fuji trans x support, which apple still lacks completely)

books: not having blurb in aperture is understandable from a business standpoint but it hurts...bad...

the worst: adobe has come out with LR 4 and now the 5 beta and nothing from apple...nothing....aperture X/4/...could be a year or 2 off...or worse....or it could be around the corner....and i am not sure which is worse....

the only reason i am not running to LR (and as a adobe cloud subrcriber i even get it thrown in) is my investment in aperture and the hope that the next version will bring some kind of iOs integration.....

how ironic is that...a year late apple today comes out with fuji raw support....

that is the frustrating issue....to know that apple could drop an amazing aperture X any day...literally....

Hello There;

I have LR3 which came with the purchase of my Leica D-LUX 5.I like certain things it gives,but I find it cumbersome use Aperture 95% of the time.It is easy to use.Also I bought the excellent Plug-In .PT Lens for my WA distortion and further lens corrections.This works very well indeed.I am also hoping for an Aperture 4.Perhaps with layers and other improvements. Greetings: John Basso.

Wonderful thread.

I started with Aperture from day one. Dabbled with Lightroom on occasion but never liked Adobe's library-develop dichotomy workflow.

Until the announcement of LR 5 beta I would have been happy with Improved noise reduction and some lens correction capabilities. Now I want a better healing brush, gradient control, perspective capabilities and smart previews so I can edit on my laptop when away from my raw files. Adobe has raised the bar considerably and I'm not sure Apple can deliver the same.

With the announcement of Lightroom 5 beta along with my ongoing aperture library problems (constantly generating previews, thumbnails), Apple has to do something substantial and do it quickly or I'm outta here.

@1 Open Loop

If I look to the list of LR5, half of it are functions, that Aperture 3 allways had. F for full WindowMode. Wow. DiaShow that include videos. Wow. A big shot ... :-)

Apple had not made version 4 ore 5, they play in lower parts like version 3.4.4

It is not important how high the version number is.

I'm sure, they work on version 4 with many new and better functions. Keep cool.

:-)

GFHardy wrote:

If I look to the list of LR5, half of it are functions, that Aperture 3 allways had.

I took a hard look at LR 5 Beta these past few days. Adobe hasn't learned anything about designing user interfaces and photographic workflow since the pre-1.0 betas—LR 5 Beta still lags Aperture 1.0 in terms of general usability. LR's raw processing, noise reduction, sharpening, lens correction, etc. beats the pants off Aperture's, but it fails miserably as a cohesive application.

LR 5 Beta still lags Aperture 1.0 in terms of general usability. LR's raw processing, noise reduction, sharpening, lens correction, etc. beats the pants off Aperture's, but it fails miserably as a cohesive application.

Andreas, I agree with your comments, but IMO there's some areas where Aperture really needs to make some changes to improve it's workflow. (Keep in mind I come at this from a perspective of processing and editing thousands of images per month.)

- Aperture's implementation for cropping is one of the most frustrating I've ever used, especially after using LR's cropping functions. Crop and straighten need to be combined...they are complementary and having to switch between the two is a big usability issue. And if you don't crop before you straighten the usability issues are even worse. There's no keyboard shortcut for flipping aspect ratio...you are forced to use the mouse to click on a small icon. You can't save custom crop ratios-- having to enter the same custom ratio over and over again is ridiculous. This is database software...it should remember stuff like this. And other quirky behavior -- like changing aspect ratios unexpectedly after you've cropped an image, contributes to the lousy implementation.

- Batch Change is an implementation joke. There's three disparate functions in one dialog. If you neglect to reset the metadata part before you make a name change, you can easily modify metadata in lots of images you didn't intend to. And having to wade through metadata presets to change a couple of fields in a selection of images in incredibly inefficient.

- That leads to "Lift and Stamp". What an archaic, error-prone way to apply edits to group of images! If you have never used LR's Auto-Sync you don't know what you are missing, even with it's drawbacks and quirks. Aperture HAS to come up with a better version of LR's auto-sync so you can easily edit multiple images and apply metadata to multiple images. Keep Lift-and-Stamp around for those who crave it, but PULEEESE gives us a more productive way to do what we need when working with multiple images.

There's more, but you get the point. If Aperture-Whatever-The-Next-Version-Is-Called doesn't address these issues they are badly missing what's required to make it a truly efficient workflow application.

Prove this... That's like saying LR 4 will not come out... Not a cogent arguement or thought.

When ever it comes out Id like a log report generated with the repair and rebuild function in AP. The report would list the images that slowed down the process in comparison to its size. For me it would be a good starting point of looking for problem files besides Divide and Conquer. Thats all.

My Aperture 4 Wishl List?

It should have been here yesterday ... or the week before that ... or the moth before that ... or the year before that ...

It makes absoluteluy NO sense WHATSOEVER to keep your loyal user base in Limbo ...

Just look at what has transpired with Adobe this week ... It's time that you Billionaire corporations take us, the folks that made it possible for you to be what you are today, just a little bit seriously ...

You, Apple, are not so important, or so invulnerable that you can't yet fail.

We only wish to spend our hard-earned currency with you ... that iIS something you do understand ... C-U-R-R-E-N-C-Y ... in order to have better tools so that we may earn even more to share with you later ...

NOW ... is the time to respond ... not months or years into the future ...

I have a very simple, modest request to make. All I would like is that Aperture works perfectly. That's all I ask. No 'Unsupportef file format' nonsense. No database corruption. No need to sweet-talk it into not corrupting the database. Just work. Sweet, smooth and solid. It works fine for me. Anything it doesn't do, an old version of Photoshop or a new version of Photomechanics does just fine. All I want is an Aperture that doesn't need a janitor call in every week.

Maybe you can start a new thread and describe your setup, workflow and problems you're having. I never had a corrupt database. What file formats are comping up unsupported?