Aperture 2.0

i've recently become somewhat disenchanted with Aperture and the reasons why are in accordance with what has been widely discussed about Aperture across the web. i've got about 30,000 images cataloged and organized within the library and having all of these photo at my finger tips is a real joy.

however, there are some real annoyances, chief among them, speed. Aperture gets so tied down in loading images and loading sets of thumbnails where Adobe Bridge merely breezes through loading the same size RAW images. Apple needs to fix this. This is a tool for professional photographers and we don't have time to waste.

next, is overall RAW support for new cameras. the Aperture team needs to disconnect itself from OS updates that are tied to numerous other bugs unrelated to a select few applications' abilities to read and manipulate RAW file formats. Apple did it before with an off-cycle update that brought support for new cameras. why can't this be the norm? in a world where competition among photographers can be fierce, it can be sometimes damaging to wait on adopting new technologies. i recently purchased a new Nikon D300 camera body and it has a different RAW format that's not recognized by Aperture. Adobe Camera RAW and Bridge support it and have now for a few months. so for now, that's what i'm using. its an incredibly crippling workflow, with images spread across two different collections and locations. very unsettling.

the last thing i'll talk about is book printing. i recently attended the Photo Plus Expo in NYC and was astounded at the multitude of options and sizes for printing books. some of them looked way, way better than the few samples i'd printed from Aperture! my chief complaint here is that the books are too small and the printing process is not all it could be. we need matte finished paper, larger book sizes, and a better, more flexible layout engine. Apple's CoreImage technology builds Photoshop-style filters right into the OS for any application to take advantage of. why does Aperture not let me apply these filters to images in my book layout?

the thing is, i think that all these concerns will vanish and become a memory when Apple releases Aperture 2.0. at least, i hope it will address my concerns. i'm fairly certain that an upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.5.2 will include support for the D300. and PMA 2008, one of the larger professional photography expos is coming up. i would be surprised if Apple didn't use something like this to introduce a new version of Aperture. its long overdue for a v2.0 update and i could use it now more than ever!