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`9/29/21, 12:08 PM
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`The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20100322203551/http://www.crunchgear.com:80/2010/03/19/review-aperture-3/
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`Review: Aperture 3
`by Devin Coldewey on March 19, 2010
`
`If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros
`— and the latest version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual shooters using
`iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot. Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and
`makes the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture users will find them helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other
`hand, are a welcome addition to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of admission.
`
`Invasion of the iPhoto features
`As long as I’ve been using Aperture, I’ve considered it a processing application. Its photo management was troublesome here and there, and iPhoto had
`the best ways of showing o! your shots, but I dealt with it since maintaining two separate libraries of the same photos would be disk space suicide. I’ve
`only used Lightroom a little bit (and a version or two back) but all my friends say that it just has a better workflow for serious photo work — importing a
`couple hundred shots, scrubbing through them, doing the necessary adjustments, and outputting to the necessary format. Not that I have trouble doing
`that in Aperture, but apparently it’s faster and better in Lightroom.
`Confronted with such a fearsome opponent, Apple decided that it would be better to flank than to risk a frontal assault. Hence the expansion of
`Aperture’s incorporation of iPhoto features Faces and Places. I question their relevance in a photo processing application, but given Apple’s tendency
`towards coalescing functionality, I’m guessing that iPhoto will eventually be Aperture: Gimped Edition, and the only real choice for organizing and
`messing with large numbers of photos will be Aperture.
`There are some kinks to be worked out. Faces plainly doesn’t work. After it spent literally five hours going through my photos (about 1000 per hour),
`this is what it has come up with:
`No, it didn’t have a lot to go on (I hadn’t “trained” it much yet) but really now. After giving it a few more pointers on what I looked like, it still mistook a
`three-year-old tow-headed girl, my friend Monica (who is Indian, and in a wedding dress), some E3 booth babes, and Casio president Kazuo Kashio for
`pale, bearded, Devin Coldewey. The cork board background is jarring (you can change it but the corny, ine"cient “polaroid” interface and font remain)
`and the interface for going through your shots is terrible. I realize this is a technology still being perfected, and that is why I am wondering: what is it
`doing in my RAW editing program?
`Places is useful if you have a geotagging camera (still rare) or want to spend a few hours dragging and dropping stu! onto the map. It can be fun,
`actually, if you take a lot of pictures of your friends, and want to drag and drop this or that night onto the location you went to; it’s like creating a
`di!erent kind of album (“Linda’s Tavern”), and indeed you can make a browsable smart album from locations. If you’re like me, you won’t feel complete
`until the photos are more or less where they were within the city, and not all grouped in a single pin, smack in the middle of the city. This could have
`some promise, but with a backlog of several thousand shots, getting a library up to date in Places is a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
`It’s a mistake to judge Faces and Places by simply saying “well we were fine before them,” because it may just be that we found ways of working in the
`old system of organization (Project>Folder>Album) that approximated what these new features do. But I don’t think it’s wrong to say they just don’t
`really do much, and feel out of place to boot. You have to work at them, or shoot for them, in order for them to really be worthwhile. Still I have to give
`credit where credit’s due: if you just consider Faces and Places new columns to organize by (like rating or date) then they’re worth their salt. As flagship
`features, though, they’re duds.
`Lastly, the slide show thing. It’s like finding a trout in the milk. Not that it doesn’t work — it works as well as iPhoto’s thing, and I suppose it’s better to
`have than not. It’s just a little weird to have a sort of… aftermarket feature popped in there next to the serious editing tools. Its little presets are, like in
`most Apple programs, 25% solid, 75% flu!. Who in the name of all that is holy is going to pick “Shatter” as their slide show transition? It’s ghastly.
`The new features are very well explained in little videos accessible through the “Welcome” screen, which will be handy for new users — if they can find
`the screen after they close it (it’s in Help>Welcome to Aperture).
`The good stu!
`So if the iPhoto features are icing, the actual cake is the RAW editing, adjustment tools, and user interface. Let’s start with what I would say is the best
`new feature: Brushes.
`You can see a pretty thorough overview of the feature at Apple’s site, but the gist is that it allows you to apply certain e!ects in limited areas using a
`brush of adjustable size and intensity. That’s great! I can’t count the number of times I’ve vacillated between two versions of a photo where an
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`https://web.archive.org/web/20100322203551/http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/03/19/review-aperture-3/
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`Petitioner Apple Inc. - Ex. 1044, p. 1
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`Review: Aperture 3
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`9/29/21, 12:08 PM
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`adjustment necessary for one part ended up blowing out another, or I just wanted to bring out the color in the eyes but not in the background. A lot of
`fiddling could usually approximate the e!ect I wanted, but it would be so much easier to just use a brush. I’ll be using the hell out of this feature, and
`it’s perhaps the only real step Apple took against Adobe in this update.
`
`(combination Brushes and Help Video screenshot)
`The brushes are non-destructive, like any of the dials and curves you can play with in the adjustments panel, so you can feel free to experiment, layer,
`and try out di!erent e!ects. One thing I often have to do when shooting review shots is emphasize the color of LEDs, but if the subject is well-lit, the
`LEDs are going to be barely visible. No problem; make a little brush, add in a little contrast right there, bump the saturation just in the one area, and
`boom, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Brushes are useful for lots of little things like that.
`The new full-screen browser is handy but not really a revolution. They’ve added the ability to get around your library a little more, which is nice, but it’s
`not as streamlined as the regular browser, which is always accessible by a single keystroke. The fullscreen presentation has definitely been improved,
`however, and when showing o! photos to friends or clients, it’s a better option than either the plain editing window or a slide show.
`The preset adjustments, I think we can agree, are being blown way out of proportion; Apple’s breathless description sets them up to be quite the killer
`feature. Unfortunately, these are the same kind of “professional adjustments” that you have been able to apply on cheap point-and-shoots since the
`beginning of time. There are a few quick adjust things like high-contrast black-and-white or exposure +1 that are nice to have previews for (the live
`preview window is handy), but let’s be honest, these are just filters. I’d like to be able to say that they’re carefully adjusted so you won’t see weird color
`e!ects, blackouts, or blowouts, but the fact is every one I tried looked cheap and overdone. The others, like white balance and so on, seem pretty
`redundant considering the actual controls for adjusting those aspects are mere pixels away in the same window.
`Click to see it larger. You can’t really tell here, since this photo isn’t very high contrast, but in several of the other shots I tried this on, the vintage look
`was really purple, cross-processing was really green, and toy camera pushed the contrast way too far. Subtle adjustments these are not.
`The good news is that people new to the program might try a couple, see that they were created by dragging curves and color bars around, and then
`make their own. I’ve had my own “base” adjustment for years now, which was just as easily accessible and just as customizable, though limited to a
`single adjustment category. Putting together a “look” for a shoot using this feature might be easier now than before, but it’s still just a toy at this point.
`The ability to have multiple libraries is nice; splitting work and personal stu! would be my move, so that if a meteor crashed into TC HQ (or, more likely,
`I’m fired for insubordination), I could free up a couple gigs in one clean sweep. It’s also convenient for backing up and sharing; “here’s my whole
`‘wedding’ library, feel free to do what you like with it” rather than “here’s a folder full of RAW files.” (Update: my mistake, multiple libraries were already
`available.)
`A quick note
`Just a PSA: installation of Aperture 3 took ages. Plan on losing at least a working day to 100% processor usage as it converts your library, searches for
`Faces, and reprocesses your RAW files with the new profile. I’m not holding this against Apple (it’s a LOT of data to sift through) but it’s just something
`to be aware of.
`Conclusion
`Aperture is still a great program, in my opinion, and the budding photographer would be a lot better o! with this than with iPhoto if they’re planning on
`doing anything more than collecting snapshots. I’ve gotten used to Aperture’s workflow and they haven’t changed it much in 3, in fact they’ve provided a
`couple serious improvements with Brushes and potentially Places and Faces — you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.
`The trouble I see is that Aperture, once a rather single-minded program, is being diluted with features that have nothing to do with its core functionality.
`Why not have a new program, called “Collection” or something, that hooks into all your libraries, allows for creating robust slide shows, exporting
`directly to Facebook, and all that sort of thing? Putting all this junk into Aperture is doing to it what Apple has done to iTunes: once a sleek and
`straightforward program, it has now grown bloated beyond comprehension; it’s a bit like seeing a once-great fighter gone to seed. I have more of an
`attachment to Aperture than to iTunes, but if Aperture 4 continues along the vector indicated by Aperture 3, you can consider me a Lightroom
`conversion.
`Give Aperture 3 a 30-day trial for free here. $199 to buy, $99 to upgrade.
`Update: I completely neglected to mention that Aperture 3 also now has full 64-bit support. This means newer macs sporting Snow Leopard and
`adequate hardware should get a sweet performance boost.
`Also: wow, guys. Take it easy. I didn’t insult your children. I’m not sure where I suggested that Aperture is the worst app ever made, or attempted to do
`anything other than hit the major new features and give what can really only be my first impressions, having used Aperture for a couple years but A3
`only having been out for a month. What can I say? The core functionality is unchanged, and I feel half the new features are specious, suggesting the
`feature creep that has characterized Apple applications in the last few years.
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`© 2010 TechCrunch
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`https://web.archive.org/web/20100322203551/http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/03/19/review-aperture-3/
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`Petitioner Apple Inc. - Ex. 1044, p. 2
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`Review: Aperture 3
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`9/29/21, 12:08 PM
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`Petitioner Apple Inc. - Ex. 1044, p. 3
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