The quality of things

I am not that much of a pixel peeper unlike some others I know.  So, I won’t being doing a definitive review of the quality of the RAW conversions.  Honestly, they look “okay” to me for now.  At least the conversion of my D2h files look acceptable.  I haven’t seen the poor noise that others have seen but that isn’t to say noise isn’t there.  I’m just saying so far everything looks very good and acceptable.  Is it better than what Nikon has to offer with their Capture software?  I can’t say for sure.  I would be surprised if Aperture performs better.  To me, if the RAW conversion capability is within an ear shot of the basic manufacturer’s, then the user interface will more than make up the difference. 

The deal for me is there’s much more about a browser than just the basic pixel quality.  If that’s acceptable and the user interface is wonderful, then we’ve got ourselves a competitor.

The bottom-line

I’m jazz about the interface and the general approach Apple has taken with Aperture.  There are many, many details I wish they would fixmany I haven’t even alluded to here in this article.  But, there’s lots to like.  Those that decry the capability of the application aren’t spending much attention on using Aperture. The workflow for the basics of editing is simply superb and that's what's giving me confidence that Apple will take this application to the next level.

Cheers

Tom

Update - 7 Jan 06

Hurray, Hurray... iView is almost completely compatible with Aperture Libraries.

Thank god for the internet and forums. You can learn so much from someone else that's discovered neat little tricks with different things like Aperture. In this case, I just found out and experimented with a cool little feature--you can interface iView with Aperture's libraries. You may be wondering why this is a romotely good deal. Well, it's as simple as this. I can interface with my files, hidden away in the atypical Aperture file structure. I can drag and drop Aperture Projects directly into iView catalogs. After importing into the catalog, the links can be restored using the applications "find items" command. It seems the only feature not supported by iView is normal interface through the import command. This appears to be a limitation of Finder and Aperture's packages than anything specific to iView.

What does this really mean? I can the images of my iView catalogs directly linked to files inside the Aperture Library. I can access the exact same RAW files Aperture uses with iView. This gives me the ability through iView to open files with Nikon Capture or any other application I could've had access to within iView. I can sort, catagorize, add keywords, export IPTC data... I can do almost anything.

Before Aperture, I maintained the links within my iView catalogs to the a separate archive from my all encompassing archive. Basically, I have two sets of archives. The first is nothing but RAW files and they're organized by shooting session--i.e. Antelope Valley Jan 06. My other archive is a copy of every DVD I've burned which includes every RAW file I've shot and every Photoshop file I've ever worked on. With my backup system, I have 5 copies of every NEF I've ever shot and three copies of every Photoshop file I've ever created. I'm kind of anal retentive about backups if you haven't guessed.

The other neat thing with this is I now have the ability to view my RAW files when I'm not connected to my archives. With Aperture, when you disconnect your laptop from its external drives--where the Aperture Libraries reside--you loose all access to your images. There's no off-line capability with Aperture. iView makes a little JPEG for each file in its catalogs unlike Aperture. This enables you to view these files--a thumbnail, mind you but it's good enough--when you aren't connected to the orginal/master file. You can size these within iView almost anyway you want. I personnally set the size to about 480pixels a side--competely large enough when you're just reviewing images. The result is the catalogs can be quite large for large numbers of files. For example, my 2005 catalog with 9,000 images is almost 400mb's large.

While I could've kept my links to my main/larger archive and not have to deal with the Aperture Library Packages, I perfer the links to the Aperture Library since those are the files I'd be adjusting and working within Photoshop. My iView catalogs are catagorized precisely the same as my Aperture Projects. They could be different but I prefer to keep things easy to understand.

Between iView and Aperture, I can do almost everything I need. If Aperture would address a couple of key points, I'd stop using iView. With this new information, we're a little closer to ending my use of iView but not yet.

Cheers

Tom