“Along with unveiling new Power Mac and PowerBook hardware at an invitation-only news event Wednesday, Apple Computer Inc. announced an entirely new application, called Aperture, aimed at professional photographers. Though many Mac enthusiasts have long anticipated that the company would one day field a competitor to Adobe Systems Inc.’s iconic Photoshop, professional photographers and Adobe itself see Aperture more as a complement to the image editing juggernaut, not as a competitor,” Daniel Drew Turner writes for Publish.
“‘It looks astounding,’ said Andrew Rodney, the author of ‘Color Management for Photographers,’ who said he was looking forward to hands-on time with Aperture,” Turner reports. “‘Aperture may take some work away from Photoshop, but it won’t replace it,’ he said. Aperture will not be a pixel editor, said Rodney, comparing it more to Phase One’s Capture One file management software. ‘I could see doing as much work in Aperture as I could and then going to Photoshop for pixel editing.’
Turner reports, “Aperture will be able to make global image edits and print files without having to open them—something Photoshop can’t do, Rodney said. ‘It seems silly to open up a 150MB file just to print it.’ Time is a critical resource for professional photographers, Rodney said, noting the slowness of Adobe’s Camera Raw import. ‘If Aperture is as fast as it appears, it’s worth many times its price,’ he said.”
Full article here.
Advertisement: Introducing Aperture. Designed for professional photographers. $499. Free shipping.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Does Apple’s Aperture threaten Adobe’s Photoshop? – October 20, 2005
Apple’s revolutionary new Aperture software a must have for every professional photographer – October 19, 2005
Apple introduces Aperture, first all-in-one post production tool for photographers – October 19, 2005
Every photog on my staff is drooling at this one – we watched Apple’s three Quick Tours (QT movies, available via the Aperture product page) and there was repeated bursts of applause!
If only it were shipping now!
I don’t see what the big deal is, Microsoft® Digital Image Suite does the same thing.
/sarcasm
tank,
good job, adding that ‘/sarcasm’ tag to the end of your post. the natives are restless today, and they would have eaten you alive…
re: tank
/ignorant bastard who needs a slap.
Adding on to “Unfettered’s” comments above, if you haven’t watched the demos on Apple’s website, you really have to. I’m not even an amateur photographer, let alone a professional one, but Aperture completely blew me away! Apple has a huge hit on its hands here for the professional photography market.
I’m a filter freak but hate activationware. Competition is good. What’s next?
hehe
try color management on a winblows machine between apps and without a color spyder pro or similar…
yeah I am restless today where is an Enderle article for me to flame…
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Did Apple write this one from scratch, or buy it? (like they’ve done with some of their other products recently.)
Aperture may not replace Photoshop today (and that is most likely by design), but it wouldn’t be hard to finish its feature set so that it does in the future.
The key is, first get a million copies deployed, then incrementally improve Aperture to the point that one day you ask yourself, why you are still using Photoshop?
Adobe has been public with its position that Mac share doesn’t warrant product development expense. Adobe gets far less than 50% of its revenues from Mac users. Apple wouldn’t be deploying these products if Adobe did. Now, because Adobe won’t, Apple is going after this market, if for no other reason than to justify the continued use of Macs by creative professionals.
The thing is though, Apple is an excellent software house, and its products are taking share away from Adobe. Aperture will be the app that negates any reason to use Photoshop.
Let Adobe have the Wintel market.
MW = fear, as in, there is fear in the Abode house.
If I were a wedding, studio or fashion photographer, I’d be rushing to buy Aperture just for the stacks feature alone. (Landscape. journo, street photogs should and probably will pause at the price.) But this is not a pixel editing program so if Adobe is threatened, it will be for their new Bridge component, not Photoshop proper.
There is a pretty big divide between apps that can edit on layers and those that do not.
I note the comment about Adobe’s revenues but given the supposed 95/5% split in market share between Wintel/Apple-PPC OS’s isn’t it surprising that 25% (or more or whatever) of Adobe’s revenue is from Mac Users. It does really suggest there’s a much lower proportion of PC Users who buy Adobe apps. Or at least a lot of pirated s/w!
Clearly a higher proportion of Mac Users buy Adobe S/W compared to PC Users. In view of the known issues with Wintel and the impending switch from PPC to Intel and the possibility of an upward move in Apple’s market share Adobe would be very foolish to alienate Mac owners who are considering their product. Or would they…..?
notatotalsucker–
Does it matter how they got it? If it’s done right, who cares how it’s done?
Adobe seem to be playing the assimilation rather than innovation game at the moment … and we know where that leads: bad products.
“given the supposed 95/5% split in market share between Wintel/Apple-PPC OS’s isn’t it surprising that 25% (or more or whatever) of Adobe’s revenue is from Mac Users.”
Apple has 16% market share – installed base – according to the SPA. Apple’s sales figures are a third that because Mac’s last, on average, about three times longer than PeeCees.
Rainy Day
“Apple has 16% market share – installed base – according to the SPA. Apple’s sales figures are a third that because Mac’s last, on average, about three times longer than PeeCees.”
Agreed, but it still proves Mac Owners punch above their weight in Adobe S/W purchases compared to PC owners. My own experience with PeeCee owners is that they prefer to use pirated stuff which benefits Adobe NOT. The majority of PC owners seem not to add stuff to their machines so Adobe ignores Macs at their peril……?
Aperture is a very, very long way from replacing Photoshop. Aperture does indeed look absolutely killer, but anyone who thinks that it can replace photoshop in a pro photographers workflow is simply misinformed.
Photoshop is such a massively deep program. Understand as well that while in the general consumer market Apple has a 5-15% market share, in the pro photographer market they have 40-50% market share. That’s a big deal and because of aperture I would wager that that number will increase. Its about time we saw a killer pro app like this. I for one am very excited because there’s nothing on windows that comes close. If you put 3-5 windows programs together you can approximate what aperture does, but what a hassle to do that!
Apple needs to buy Adobe! Aperture and Photoshop would be a great combo. I hope this happens. By the way did Apple buy a company just to make Aperture or was this home grown?