What can Aperture 3 do for me?

I initially had mixed feelings about the launch of Aperture 3. I've always loved using Aperture, but my resistance to upgrade came from my objection to forking out for an upgrade yet again. Still, even after updating it twice it hasn't cost me as much as Adobe's Lightroom.

My Thoughts

Places - Although I'm a little annoyed that Aperture users had to wait so much longer than iPhoto users I do love this feature. I usually end up sorting my photos into folders manually anyway, so this feature saves me lots of time. I especially love that it can import a track and then assign photos based on time, as this takes out the middle step of syncing tracking data with your photos before import.

Faces - I'm glad it's there, but it doesn't work particularly well. I'm sure there are very complicated algorithms that go into face detection, but I would assume they could differentiate me from a tree. I have found that even after I have tagged many photos of a person there are still many of that same person that don't get recognised.

Brushes - This is where the update really pays off. To have this kind of retouching control in photo management software is amazing - to have it completely non-destructive blows me away! Some of the logic behind the brushes needs a little work (retouching the sky once picked a spot with a branch in it to patch with) but generally amazing. I love that it is so easy to make drastic, yet subtle changes and I know the presets will come in very handy.

My Review

Aperture 3 still has a few bugs to iron out (including the whole app crashing) but the features it offers make it absolutely worth every cent (and I'm sure Apple are working tirelessly to fix them). Whenever I travel I can't wait to get my photos into Aperture and it is then such a quick process to organise them. The practically automatic location and name metadata continue to add to the massive list of reasons why it is so easy and so fast to organise, edit and find your photos. iPhoto does do many of the things that Aperture can, but if you're dealing with high volumes of photos you need the uber-streamlined workflow that Aperture makes a breeze.