Professional photographers and Adobe itself see Aperture more as a complement to Photoshop, not as a competitor.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.
Click here to read more about the new Power Macs and PowerBooks.
"It's clear Apple is positioning this as complementary to Photoshop," said Kevin Connor, director of product management for Adobe's digital imaging products.
Aperture, which is scheduled to ship in November for $499, centers on setting up a workflow for Camera Raw files, with the goal of making it as easy to work with these files as it currently is to work with JPEG files. Similar to Apple's consumer iPhoto application, Aperture will organize photos (in Aperture, these collections are called Stacks and can be organized by time between shutter clicks). Aperture will be able to manage thousands of projects, support metadata and provide searching capabilities based on this metadata, according to Apple.
In addition, Apple said Aperture's reliance on Mac OS X's Core Image, an operating system technology that offloads much display functions to a computer's graphics card, will speed the display and manipulation of large images. For example, Aperture will feature a loupe tool that users will be able to use just like a real-world loupe, moving it over an image to see fine details.
Aperture will also provide basic editing functions, including crop, blemish and red-eye reduction, patching, and noise correction. All editing will be non-destructive.
Though Aperture will not feature batch processing, it will be compatible with Apple's AppleScript and Automator tools.
However, though Aperture will provide adjustment tools such as Histogram to modify color and white balance, Apple seemed to suggest that most content editing of photos should remain Photoshop's province. In its product information, Apple wrote that Aperture will feature "seamless Photoshop integration." This will include one-click file export to Photoshop, native support for flattened or single-layer .PSD files and management of Photoshop-generated image versions.
Edmund Ronald says with Aperture, Photoshop is no longer invulnerable. Click here to read why.
The professional photography market has changed rapidly in the last few years, according to Adobe's Connor. "Quickly evolving workflows have resulted in more photographers complementing Photoshop with specialized applications to solve problems not yet addressed in Photoshop," he said.
"Apple is now one of many software developers providing such complementary tools," Connor said. "We encourage each photographer to build the solution that works best for them."
However, he added, "We'll continue to innovate in Photoshop knowing that our customers prefer a single, integrated environment."
David Blatner, a graphics arts consultant and author, wondered if Aperture would be more a competitor to Adobe Bridge, a file management application that grew out of the file browser in Adobe's Creative Suite and is included in Creative Suite 2.
Bridge is "relatively slow" when importing a large number of files from a high-end digital camera, according to Blatner, adding that he hopes Aperture will improve on this.
"It looks like iPhoto plus a Camera Raw plug-in," he said.
"Take this all with a grain of salt," he stressed. "No one's had a chance to look at it firsthand."
"I'm still waiting for a Photoshop competitor from Apple," he said. "Core Image could result in amazing stuff, and it's built into the operating system. Maybe this is just Version 1 toward that."
Click here to read more about Aperture.
"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.
"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."
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.
Apple representatives were unavailable for comment.
