Aperture 3 draws the iphoto users and existing Aperture users to a more advanced experience. Scores of features are linked to what’s available in iphoto but a unique and new addition is the brushes feature in this image-editing package.
Invasion of the iPhoto features.

Further Apple has included iphoto’s Faces and Places application into Aperture 3. The trend appears to be that Apple will eventually morph iphoto totally into Aperture.

The faces processing still has some distance to go as shown in the selection of photographs here. The face defined for recognitions gets mistaken with others so often that it becomes abundantly clear that this technology still needs big time tweaking. The interface for going through your photos is not exciting either.

Places is a lot more promising especially if a geo tagging camera is part of your backpack.  Since this piece of equipment is still rare the old drag and drop of relevant shots to the place they belong can be thought of as some fun time spent. It’s a new way to walk down memory lane placing the photos at the location they were taken. Wow! There’s a browser-based album, which can make the news. Once you know this feature is available you can begin to shoot with this sort and display method in mind. So don’t judge this feature based on the hassle of sorting the scores of photo’s you have in store. Think of your next escapade. Having said this, there is no earth moving new feature. The slide show option too can be similarly rated.

Accessing the welcome screen by Help>Welcome to Aperture route takes you to mini videos, which explain the new feature with clarity.

The good stuff

Based on the description if you feel that Aperture 3 is mostly fluff, don’t be mistaken there is serious stuff and that’s in the RAW editing and adjustment tools coupled together with the user interface.

Brushes are possibly the best feature. It lets you play with certain effects in identified areas using a brush adjustable to size and intensity. Which means that your dream of adjusting one part of the photo will not disturb another part, which you are happy with. You can make the cheeks blush while keeping the nose as is. It could have been done even before but Aperture 3 makes it so much more user friendly. This one feature brings the apple and Adobe challenge more face on.

The full – screen browser is helpful but not really nova. Agility around libraries is better but can do with some stream lining as the regular browser, which has single stroke accessibility. The full screen view is a real winner and a great option to show photos, be it family or business presentations.

The preset adjustments as shown in th photo’s work, but not breath taking. Largely made of professional adjustments like they always have been the limited quick adjust options but amount to being filters. Not all of them give fine tuned adjustments either.

The option of multiple libraries is neat; dividing work stuff and personal would be helpful to free up space and make backing up and sharing easier. It is also now fired up with complete 64-bit support. Which means that if you are into the newer Macs with snow leopard you will enjoy performance pep up.

A quick note

Installation will be time consuming. Loads of data in the library needs to be converted and searched for the Faces and Place application as well the new profile has to be applied to the RAW files.

Conclusion

If what’s given above is not conclusive lets say without any doubt that Aperture 3 is indeed a good program worth loading especially for the amateur with professional aspirations.