Aperture 2.0 Wishlist
Posted March 16th, 2007 @ 08:00am by Erik J. Barzeski
Here is my Aperture 2.0 wishlist. I've tried to limit this to features I think we could see.
- Improved performance. I still have to quit most of my apps (especially Safari) if I don't want minutes of stalling and disk-thrashing. And this is a Mac Pro with a Radeon x1900 with 5 GB RAM.
- A more widely exposed and improved API for plugins. The export capabilities have been well-used - now it's time to let Noise Ninja or other plugin makers plug in to the actual editing.
- Ability to export a raw image plus a sidecar image of some sort so that another Aperture user could see my image with the adjustments, further adjust it, etc. I've read good and bad things about DNG, so that may not be the solution.
- Better stack management. Searches and other things should more clearly have the ability to look inside stacks (or not, depending on the state of a checkbox). As such, stacks are a bit of a headache. Selecting a stack selects only the stack pick.
- A vastly improved spot/stamp/clone tool.
- Lightroom's "click/drag" adjustment capability for color saturation, hue, etc. I believe they call it the "targeted adjustment tool." Whatever it's called, steal it.
- Something like Lightroom's "sync" feature. The "lift and stamp" tool is fine and all, but sometimes I want to just apply a single change to the 10 or 20 images I've selected (this is an example of a time when selecting a stack sucks). For example, I want to adjust the sharpness of all images to 0.6. I should select them all, click an "apply to selected items" checkbox, and slide the sharpness to 0.6. Currently I have to apply the sharpness to one image, lift it, uncheck and delete several adjustments, then stamp on each image (or on a range of images).
- Multitasking, primarily in the form of background exports.
- I reserve the right to add to this list. 😀
Finally, these suggestions probably won't ever see the light of day, but if they ever did, wowee!
- Adjustment layers with masks. Just give me the ability to select rectangles, ovals, and a lasso tool with a "fuzziness" setting for the edge and I'll be in heaven. Combined with the "click/drag color adjuster" above, this would kick butt. Essentially, I don't want to have to create an 80 MB TIFF file for Photoshop just to do something simple like adjust contrast or exposure locally within an image. This would also kick butt if it could be used with the targeted adjustment tool. I could change the color of a red shirt without affecting a person's skin tones or a red barn in the background, for example.
- More to come as I think of them…
What are yours?
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Posted 16 Mar 2007 at 12:34pm #
I would like to see the Lightroom 'click and drag in the respective part of the histogram to recover whites, blacks, saturation and fill light' tool. Wonder if it has a real name.
I would like so see xmp sidecar files and also metadata templates al la Lightroom also.
Posted 16 Mar 2007 at 4:36pm #
As I've written about over on the Insider Aperture blog, I think mine come down to speed, RAW decode quality, speed, printing improvements, speed, oh and speed.
Posted 24 Mar 2007 at 12:42am #
So, what do we all think? Do we think Aperture or Lightroom are going to replace Photoshop? Get a grip folks. Learn Photoshop and be happy. Never look back. These nice not-so-little programs are "viewer" programs. They are to be used to show images to clients with the intent of selecting the final versions to be printed. You aren't supposed to retouch, or refine, other than, e.g., make a really dark photo lighter and vice-versa. I have over 21 years as a full-time professional photographer earning his living from taking pictures. If I were to charge $10 for a 5x7, please, just shoot me and put me out of my misery. If you are going to spend $300 for Aperture, what a pity. Just bite the bullet, buy Photoshop if you have the decent credit for a credit card, buy a how-to book, dig in and get it together! And, by the way, dng is sort of a joke. One could think of dng as a pdf. Dng was created to make an image compatible with whatever image editing program. Like, uhh, whatdaya think a tiff is? A raw file, if it is to be used for anything will be changed to a tiff.
Posted 25 Mar 2007 at 1:10pm #
[quote comment="40741"]These nice not-so-little programs are "viewer" programs.[/quote]
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…
[quote comment="40741"]I have over 21 years as a full-time professional photographer earning his living from taking pictures.[/quote]
That doesn't make you a good judge of new technology. Clearly.
[quote comment="40741"]A raw file, if it is to be used for anything will be changed to a tiff.[/quote]
Or, you know, not.
Posted 03 Apr 2007 at 11:24am #
[...] has one, and I’ve been meaning to make one as well, so here it is (with significant overlap with [...]
Posted 20 Dec 2007 at 3:55pm #
I'd love to see a new gradient filter tool for aperture. Picassa already has a decent implementation of this tool and I loved it in the Windows days.
Posted 27 Dec 2007 at 11:53pm #
Speed is my main concern. This is a hobby for me, and I'm not getting a Mac Pro just for Aperture. Given that, I've been playing more with Lightroom. I'm uncertain I'll stay in the Apple camp...
With that said, given this post was waaay back in March, I'd simply like to see SOME kind of announcement next month...
Posted 28 Jan 2008 at 1:17am #
It feels like Apple allocated engineering talent away from Aperture, perhaps to support Leopard.
In any event, I'd be delighted with any and all of the wish-list items included above and in Fraser Speirs recent post.
I have a really, really simple request: I haven't figured out a way to get the Keyword HUD to NOT collapse all the Keywords to their highest rank order when you X it. Our ranching business (yes, even ranchers use Aperture...) has a significant ongoing scientific effort that uses, among many other approaches, photomonitoring of photo point transects. Keywords are critical (unit, drainage, allotment, cognizant public landlord, season, etc., etc. -- pushing 100 keywords). It would be great if the HUD would remember what was open and bring it back up that way, or provide preference settings to do the same thing, or at least allow the user to minimize the HUD (to avoid closing it and collapsing the keyword hierarchy). Also, the drag and drop to assign keywords is fine, but it would be better to make them "tactile" -- mouse click them in quick sequence -- this would save a lot of time...
Sometimes the simple things are the most important to certain users!