Aperture 3.3

Aperture has largely sat still over the past two years, occasionally tightening up the code and adjusting to new Mac OS capabilities, while Adobe's competing Lightroom pro photo workflow app has majorly improved. The latest point upgrade of Aperture, 3.3, does bring a few new interface tweaks, photo fixing tools, and native support for iPhoto libraries, but it still hasn't caught up with Adobe Lightroom ($149, 4.5 stars) in powerful, profile-based image corrections. And Lightroom is just the most important competitor in a growing field of pro photo-workflow software?ACDSee Pro ($129.99, 4 stars), CyberLink's PhotoDirector ($99.99, 3.5 stars), and Corel AfterShot Pro ($59.99, 2.5 stars).

Aperture's smooth user interface, Faces and Places features, plentiful output options, and good camera raw support do stand out, however. For Mac users who want a big step up in power from iPhoto, Aperture is a natural, and it's the only pro photo workflow app updated to support MacBooks with Retina displays and iCloud Photo Streams. But Lightroom goes further for the pro or very serious amateur, not only with its enforced workflow, but in the image corrections it offers, both basic and advanced.

Signup and Setup
As will all Apple software, Aperture 3.3 is only available through the Mac App Store. If you bought Aperture 3 on disc, you can upgrade through Apple Update. That means there's no longer a free trial download version, but when you buy the $79.99 app from the App Store, you'll be able to install it on up to five computers. Moving your photo editing from iPhoto to Aperture is easier than ever: Now when you first run the latter, you'll see a splash screen that asks if you want to use your iPhoto library for Aperture, without requiring an import of all the photos. In fact, with this update, your iPhoto (v9.3 or later) and Aperture libraries become one and the same. This will be key for Mac users with large iPhoto libraries in place. When I installed the update, however, a note told me that I wouldn't be able to use my library with previous versions of Aperture?no problem, I'm not going back!

I tested Aperture 3.3 on a MacBook with Retina Display, a recent iMac, and a three-year old MacBook. Performance was obviously excellent on the Retina MacBook. On the white MacBook with 2.6GHz dual core, the library update took 5 minutes, and then my MobileMe albums had to be moved. But performance during general program use wasn't so bad on the older machine, either.

Interface
Aperture's interface differs in a basic way from that of Lightroom (and most other photo workflow apps) in that it's not "modal." In Lightroom, the app has major task-related interfaces for Library, Develop, and more, while Aperture always uses the same interface. Its Inspector panel has tabs for Library, Info, and Adjust. This means you can navigate among your photos while making adjustments, without having to switch modes as you do in Lightroom. Some will prefer Lightroom's separation of tasks and enforcement of a workflow, while others will prefer Aperture's flexibility.

Aperture's find and filter tools do let you limit the thumbnail view in the library browser to very specific criteria, such as ISO or camera make or lens used, but Lightroom's search filters are snappier to use?you don't have to create a rule set the way you do in Aperture to get to the files you want. Just limiting the view to only video files should be much easier, as it is in many other photo applications.

Though Lightroom hasn't been customized for Retina MacBooks as Aperture has, you can simply view at the former's 1:2 proportion to see 1:1. And after a bit, I found that the Retina update wasn't such a big advantage for Aperture?I could work just as effectively in Lightroom, as long as I knew that 1:2 was actually 100 percent view. And the Lightroom image looked sharper than the same raw image in Aperture at 200 percent.

Version 3.3 makes some subtle but desirable changes to Aperture's user interface. The icons atop are now all monochromatic gray, and the colorful sharing icons (Facebook, Flickr) are now collapsed into a Share dropdown. This removes distractions from your image. But I still wish you could change the app's frame color from the outdated-looking light gray borders. The answer to this is Aperture's full-screen view. In full screen, you can adjust the background shade of gray to black.

My final interface note is that Aperture makes excellent use of keyboard shortcuts?something those who process a lot of photos can appreciate. But, again, the competition also features strong support for shortcuts.

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