Aperture 3 Upgrade

This was the upgrade that finally convinced me to leave iPhoto behind and move up to Aperture. Version 3 now has Faces, Places, Brushes, and Presets. I love the interface, you can customize it to be as clutter free as you want to be. Keyboard shortcuts are in abundance. Needs a update or two more before it's at it's full potential. It's a tad on the slow side, make sure you have at least 4GB of RAM if you want to run other apps while running Aperture 3.

While it is an evolutionary upgrade, Aperture 3 was already quite revolutionary, so it is no surprise that the new features were sometimes startling. Changes to the interface made adding metadata -- even extensive metadata -- even easier than before. A vast array of presets allows you to quickly adjust raw photos, in particular, to improper lighting, getting rid of the jaundiced yellow cast of tungsten or the Avatar-like blue cast of fluorescent lights.

The new geotagging features are very easy to use, though figuring out how wasn't immediately obvious; like most things in Aperture, don't overthink the process and you will do well.

Aperture's ability to create bundled libraries is both a plus and a minus compared to Adobe Lightroom. With Aperture, you can ingest vast quantities of still images (and even video), and then move the entire massive archive as a unit to another drive or server; Lightroom doesn't like such movement, at all. On the other hand, it is easier to add directories of photos to Lightroom, making it a better choice for a quick glance at what you've taken when you don't really have the time or inclination to do some serious cataloging.

Aperture 3 was the first release that struck me, on average, as easier to use than Lightroom. The new support for video and geotagging, the very easy preset corrections for lighting, and other advancements now make it my cataloging tool of choice.

As an Aperture 2 user, I began to wonder if I should switch to Light Room following suggestions from a couple of friends. But before making a switch and having to learn a new interface, I took a hard look at Aperture 3. All I can say is that after taking the plunge and buying it, A 3 works beautifully for me.
Great product.Aperture 3

This product works great and is replacing Photoshop for my routine photo editing because Aperture is simple, intuitive, and effective. It is also resource friendly. File management is very simple and easy to understand; it is a major improvement over Aperture 2 because it enables multiple libraries. The brushes are a terrific feature and with the detect edge feature are great for editing out background from birds, etc.

I also definitely recommend Derrick Story's Aperture 3 video tutorial on [...] to get you quickly up to speed.

I have not experienced any crashes. It did take a while to upgrade my images (automatically) but it was simply a matter of patience.

I have been using Aperture 3 since it came out - it definitely had stability issues previously but 3.0.2 is very stable. The new features work well and I am still learning about them. Definitely worthwhile upgrading now in my view. It is also working with the Niksoftware plug-ins now as well without difficulty. Check out [...] for some examples and info, or Maccreate.