Greyscale Gorilla’s review of Aperture 2.0.
When Aperture 2.0 came out. I was pleasantly surprised to see that apple had dropped the price to $199. Early reviews of the software claimed that the speed issues were also solved, and the the new version was super fast. So far, so good. When I go take a closer look at the specs however, I am astonished to see that Apple Aperture still had no Curves. Thanks right, after all the criticism, Apple still decides to leave out the most flexible color correction tool available. I understand that Aperture is not supposed to be a full replacement for Photoshop. I don’t expect Aperture to have some esoteric Photoshop feature like Gradient Map, or be able to execute complicated layer based photo editing, but I am talking about Curves here.
And the follow-up:
Why did I decide on Aperture over Lightroom? It was the ease of use, and overall feature set that brought be back to Aperture over Lightroom. The full frame mode is GREAT. I can flip through all the images and quickly rate and process the best ones checking for focus. The full RGB levels editor in Aperture is actually MORE flexible than Lightroom’s curves. HOW? The ability to adjust the “quarter points� on the levels graph allows one to emulate curves. It’s a little tricky to get used to, but after I figured it out, it all became clear. And, with the ability to adjust the red green and blue separate, I can do 90% of what curves can do.
And a different review going the other way:
I spent a couple of days with it and to be honest couldn’t see anything that would stop me pushing ahead with my migration to Lightroom. Ironically some of the new search options (�have adjustments�) actually made it easier to manage the data migration. And whilst speed had improved, it still wasn’t snappy in the same way Lightroom is.
It seems to me the number one Aperture plug-in would be a curves tool. Number two would be Noise Ninja (or similar). And if only there was a way to save “looks” like there is in Lightroom, although someone has developed a work-around… (can’t find the link, but basically it was making a library of your favourite photo’s with their preset looks, and lifting and stamping from them - simple, but workable).