Photofocus

Copyright Scott Bourne 1999 - All Rights Reserved

A short time ago, Apple released the much-anticipated update to Aperture 2.0. It has a long list of admirable features, but the initial release was short on performance. I wrote my initial review about Aperture 3 on Photofocus here.

Aperture 3.0 was flat-out buggy and I believe Apple knew it. Very shortly after the release of 3.0, Apple released  3.0.1 which was a minor bug fix that helped somewhat. But the substantive fixes and changes that needed to be made weren’t made until version 3.0.2 released earlier this week.

The changes were successful and impact the big problem areas. The program is now much more stable. Gone are the intermittent crashes and freezes I experienced with the 3.0 update. Libraries import more smoothly. Issues like improper scrolling behavior were fixed. Best of all, the program now delivers some of the previously-promised speed increases that I never experienced before the 3.0.2 update.

A complete list of updates and bug fixes can be found here.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2518

There are still a few minor issues. We’re still waiting for most of the third party plug-ins to be 64-bit compatible. And Faces and Places work much better than they did in 3.0, but are still not quite up to par.

Overall, I think Aperture 3.0 has in many ways caught up to Lightroom. Now Adobe has answered with Lightroom 3 Beta II. This keeps the chase alive. When Adobe finally finishes Lightroom 3.0, and takes it out of BETA, I’ll do a blow-by-blow review of the two looking at the pluses and minuses of each program.

For now I am comfortable with Aperture 3.0.2, and am using it with success. I am also using Lightroom 2.0. I have to admit to being more comfortable with the Aperture interface. While I spent most of the last six months using Lightroom, I’ll probably spend most of the next six months using the new Aperture. I’m going to be teaching Aperture again and since Aperture is out of beta (my words) I want to concentrate on it for now.

I’ll continue to report my progress with the new Aperture if anything major pops up and I’ll be offering some tips here in the coming months on how to get the most out of the program.

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This post sponsored by the Digital SLR Store