The Apple Aperture community is abuzz. After watching Leopard hit the street, we’re all biting our fingers hoping Apple is not too far off from releasing Aperture 2.0. It’s been over two years since the initial release of the product and to say that we could use an update, well, I’d drag out the desert/water metaphor but I’m so tired of waiting I’m just too lazy to put the whole sentence together.
O’Reilly’s Inside Aperture blog chimes in with two musings on post-Leopard Aperture goings-ons. The first, gave rowdy Aperture users a chance to sound-off on the features they’re looking forward to and the features they want (or else). The second, a roundup of useful Aperture community resource links that includes several ways to give your feedback directly to Apple (Tim O’Reilly is appreciative, but even he doesn’t have a direct line to His Steveness). There have been no concrete answers on when Aperture 2.0 will hit the streets with nary a peep from Apple (as usual). I have a laundry list a mile long of features I’d like to see in the new version, I gave my 2 cents in the first article above, you can click on over to read my abbreviated list.
In the second article, a commenter suggests that we, Aperture faithfuls, huff it on over to Apple’s Final Cut Studio site to see what the new version (6.0) has to offer, the reasoning is that some of the technologies found in FCS could possibly make it into Aperture 2.0. I took the advice and checked out a bunch of the ‘new feature’ videos. I was absolutely amazed by what I saw. My biggest curiosity was with FCS’s new bundled color adjustment application, quaintly called Color. If only half of the underlying technology and features of Color made it into Aperture 2.0, I’d be a happy camper. It’s gorgeous, innovative and intuitive. Here are just a few of the features* of Color that I’m hoping will have some shared DNA with those of Aperture 2.0:
- GPU accelerated action all over the place
- Next Generation FxPlug Filter architecture - for internal and 3rd party filters
- Filter presets and grouping of filters into one preset
- Pre-built color effects and ability to create your own (think Xprocess, film stock simulation, etc…)
- Drag and Drop filter application
- Grab and lift on-photo filter manipulation
- Signature looks that can by applied over an entire project (and controlled/adjusted from one place)
- 3D color scope
- Gorgeous curves implementation for Hue, Saturation and Luminosity
- Selective filter application based on targeted Hue, Saturation and Luminosity
- Vignetting - circle, square or custom shape (using b-splines)
I’m sure there are a million others, but this list is pretty impressive. The more I look at Color, the more I think that Apple should just do away with the Adjustments HUD concept all together. It works for a handful of limited-functionality filters, but what I’m seeing in Color is on a whole other level of image manipulation. I can’t see how the Adjustments HUD in its current configuration can possibly contain as much functionality as Color provides. I could be wrong.
One thing I gotta say though, is that even after two years of heavy usage, I still love the Aperture user interface. Looking at Final Cut Studio’s and even Color’s, they don’t quite match the polish and shine of Aperture. I’m assuming at some point FCS will inherit that particular part of Aperture’s DNA, as Logic Studio just has.
After seeing Color at work, two things strike me the heaviest: A. Color is so advanced it makes Aperture 1.0’s image adjustment capabilities look almost archaic. B. I have never been this excited and enthusiastic to see what the Aperture team brings to the table and I can only hope that they are sharing technologies with the team that worked on Color.
–
* I’ve changed the features slightly to make more sense with regards to how they may be applied to Aperture 2.0
It is going to be interesting, what Apple is going to present with the next version of Aperture. I have been playing a bit with iPhoto lately and there are some features that I could imagine in a new version of Aperture. If you look for example at the nice solution for online galleries. I just like it. It would be great to be able to customize galleries and upload them to your personal domain. That would be something I would love to see with Aperture 2.0.
Also great in iPhoto 09 and useful in Aperture is the Events view. When you move with your mouse over the events thumbnail, you see each image within that event.
This would be great to see with Aperture and stacks.
Overall, after using Aperture now for almost a year, I must say that it is a great piece of software, which helped me a lot to improve my workflow. If only, I could do some more serious image post processing within Aperture!