Toronto Photography Meetup Group

For all the Aperture 3 users out there its time to upgrade.

http://www.apple.com/ca/aperture/

LOL, I can't believe Apple had shut down their online store prior to them offering Aperture3 for sale.

The online store goes offline every time they update their product listings... and almost always on a Tuesday.

I, for one, will be swinging by the Apple store for my upgade copy tonight

Bugger. They won't be in stores 'til Thursday

I called this morning at the apple store near my work - but they didn't know when their copies would be in (just that were in transit). So I just went online and order my upgrade copy! (free shipping) I should have it by Thursday

I tried to get the trial serial and download link; that requires me to supply an email address, but they have not sent me anything yet. I wonder what's up?

I downloaded and have been playing with the trial version all evening. I can finally retouch my 16bit B+W .tiffs from my scanner

Places I like since it will replace a couple of procedures I've been using to geotag right now. I need some new pics/data to really give it a go. I gave Faces a challenge with a very wide angle B+W set.

It comes with some fun adjustment presets (which I'm sure most others will not find as amusing as I do). The 64bit seems snappier, but it's hard to tell since I did not import my complete library. Can't switch libraries on the fly until I get a fully registered version.

The built in flickr uploader is a two way street, and I'm not sure how much I like that. It may also change the way I sync photos to my devices.

For me, I think it's a worthwhile upgrade. It definitely looks and feels closer to iPhoto than ever, but it still has the same underlying file management and workflow model as before. I still seem to want the hard-copy, so it will be another couple of days until I get all of my photo libraries converted.

managed to get a download link now.

wow. the package has certainly ballooned

I enrolled however I never received an email link. Hmm will try again.

How do you guys like it compared to LR?

I use LR and CS4 exclusively but wanted opinion from Aperture users.

With my 2 day exposure to it, I must say that I'm not quite impressed with the demo. On my dual screen setup, full screen sometimes gives me unpredictable behaviour including black outs. The general feel of it, for me at least, is more akin to a stable beta than a working product. Maybe I'll wait for a major update before I really use it? Or maybe I need to get used to the new UI quirks?

The Faces feature seems gimmicky to me. And having a huge library, it is really tedious to have to go through the entire library to confirm faces.

Anybody else have experiences to share?

I heard the Faces recognition doesn't work so well with tilted heads .. hehe

I started out with Aperture (pirated) and switched over to LR (fully licensed). LR offers a much more efficient workflow but that depends on what you do. If your shooting pro I would suggest LR or C1.

Hmm, still no support for quite a number of cameras which have been on the market for quite a while. All the new Sony Alpha's up to the A850 are missing, as are the fall crop of Micro-4/3rds cameras.

It all depends on what your needs are. I started out with LR 1 then made the progression to v2, and it was then that I decided to give Aperture 2 a trial run. Well, it left much to be desired feature-wise so I just let the trial expire and that was the end of it. As soon as v3 came out, I downloaded the trial version once more and was blown away by the new features. As a wedding and portrait photog, the new export plugins for high-end photo books are a major plus, and the slideshows with multi-layered audio and HD video incorporation are definitely making me lean towards Aperture 3 rather than Lightroom's 3rd incarnation. In my own humble opinion, Aperture not only caught up to LR but surpassed it.

Having said that, the faces feature seems gimmicky to me, there are several reports of memory leaks with this new version, and some adjustments take more keystrokes or steps to accomplish the same thing that I could do in half the time in LR. However, those are issues that I'm wiling to put up with until a future update, since the two items mentioned in the previous paragraph are major time-savers for me.