Q: Aperture 4 Wish List

Best post in this thread. The thought of a universal RAW converter must have Adobe and the rest laying awake at night. Imagine if someone could come up with this and if they could also develop software that would allow cross app processing. Tired of Aperture, just go to X and use this software to migrate across. I would gladly pay for something like this.

It's ironic that most raw formats including DNG are nothing other than proprietary TIFFs anyway.

I've seen that Adobe is pushing the DNG format as well. Saying that it is a way to future proof all standards. A load of bollocks....

I had a very bad experience with Adobe converted DNGs in LR and importing them back into Aperture.  My advice is to save all RAW originals no matter what, as Aperture DNG support is behind that of Lightroom, and thus images can be unreadable. 

I am not sure what this means. Tiff is really a container format, which has been coopted as a lossless transfer format. In reality, you can have a JPEG compressed Tiff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_Image_File_Format

hardyjc,

Did you embed the original raw in the dng that you then tried to import into Aperture? If so, extract the original raw and deal with that instead of the dng.

This problem usually occurs with Canon RAW files.  Adobe coverts these to what's known as linear DNG, which is a specific DNG format that Aperture can't read.  Aperture reads only RAW DNG. 

Nope, like an idiot I just converted to DNG on import and didn't keep the originals. 

One Big Wookie:  These were all Sony A77 RAW or NEX 6 RAW images.  Some Aperture could read, some it could not.  It wasn't necessarily those I had edited in LR only.  I could not find a correlation.  I ended up extracting them all as TIFFs and bringing in the images in Aperture.  Sorry to derail this thread, but I suppose we could add "Better DNG Support" to the want list!

As an aside. I am curious how this thread reactivates. It literally goes weeks or months without a peep. Then bam full of posts. Is Apple aggregating the posts and then releasing them or are we hiberating and then awaking with new (nothing about Aperture) info regarding new equipment from Apple. Just a Friday morning though in cold Finland.

No, I think it's just that someone comes on and does a search about a new verion and these threads show up, and then they get added to. You'll note that there are a few of these threads that run in parrallel, often the same poster regenerating them by posting in two or three.

Two wishes now that we're stuck with Apple Maps:

1. Maps that are current and don't turn into blurry messes once you leave populated areas. Apple Maps is 100% useless for reviewing our Iceland adventures. The With Google Maps, you can actually see the trails we hiked and the huts where we stayed. As for current, the imagery for parts of South Georgia is years old.

2. Topo maps sure were handy.

My wish list:

1. Please let me re-order the adjustment tools. I don't want to hunt up and down the list to do jobs in the order in which I do them, I want the tools in my order.

2. An adjustments history, so with a single click I can go back to any stage. A pro app should expect there to be a lot of editing, it's not just 'Enhance' and done.

3. Local adjustment tools - brushes and gradients.

4. Please make noise reduction work. On the occasions when I need it I export a TIFF to LR5 and apply the noise reduction there (it's fantastic - better than Dfine 2 by far).

5. Whatever else you do, don't dumb it down. iPhoto and Aperture will go in the trash if that happens, and I'll be doomed to the dark side of the Creative Cloud.

Chris

Aperture isn't going anywhere, but it may be in something of a holding pattern. The program is absolutely necessary for Apple's multimedia offerings that may not be as photographic-centric.

Adobe has poured itself into a niche of supporting Photoshop-centreed products while the market base has been stagnant, requiring a new subscritption revenue model. Apple's strategy and revenue model revolves around hardware and to get people using hardware you need software.

In 2012 when I got my 1st DSLR camera, I read the DAM Book  by Peter Krogh, which praised the DNG format as insurance against obsolete digital files. I understand Leica cameras come with an option to save files as DNG. I got my first computer in 1983, and so I know what Krogh is talking about when he cautions about dead media storage or dinosaur formats.

I have a Nikon. And I decided to learn Aperture. I tried Lightroom for a short while, then sold it on eBay. I guess the organizing features of Aperture and the interface appeal to me. Although I understand that the LR 5 adjustment tools are great.

It is a shame that the camera makers — at least those in Japan — don't standardize their RAW formats. Aperture does a great job on Nikon RAW. Files approach 20mb, so longterm storage can be an alligator that will eventually bite me. But Tiff doesn't offer much of an advantage. And I've learned the painful lesson of trying to make adjustments on a Jpeg. So, it is RAW for me.

I've been shooting RAW for 10 years now. Storage is cheap, so the large files have never been a problem. You just buy another hard drive every now and then.