Extract from C-Net
February 15, 2008 4:00 AM PST
Apple upgrades Aperture ambitions to 2.0 Posted by Stephen Shankland CUPERTINO, Calif.--Apple, why hast thou forsaken me? That, loosely paraphrased, is what some Aperture customers had been asking after Apple went too long without updating its higher-end photo editing and cataloging software. It got to the point where some were plotting strategies on Apple forums about how to flee to Adobe Systems' rival Photoshop Lightroom software with their photo metadata intact.
CUPERTINO, Calif.--Apple, why hast thou forsaken me?
That, loosely paraphrased, is what some Aperture customers had been asking after Apple went too long without updating its higher-end photo editing and cataloging software. It got to the point where some were plotting strategies on Apple forums about how to flee to Adobe Systems' rival Photoshop Lightroom software with their photo metadata intact.
Goes on to say...
Schnorr knows the company hit a rough patch with Aperture 1.5, which wasn't able to support many high-profile new cameras such as Nikon's D3 and D300 and Canon's 1Ds Mark III and PowerShot G9.
And further down the article...
• It handles highlights better and lets photographers use a recovery slider to pull back overexposed regions. • It handles noise better, preserving details and changing the turning speckles into a something closer to the grain of high-speed films of analog photography days. • It preserves more detail in shadow regions rather than blocking them up into a dark murk. • It's got changes in color rendering to handle skin tones better.
• It handles highlights better and lets photographers use a recovery slider to pull back overexposed regions.
• It handles noise better, preserving details and changing the turning speckles into a something closer to the grain of high-speed films of analog photography days.
• It preserves more detail in shadow regions rather than blocking them up into a dark murk.
• It's got changes in color rendering to handle skin tones better.
Given Corel are in catch up mode on RAW we can excuse some short comings. At the same time there is scope to learn from those that have been involved in this for some time. And the issues that Apple have targeted here are the important ones that Corel should be putting at the top of the list. Also mentioned inthe article is that Apple have chosen to use a HD JPG image in the converter to speed up viewing. And clearly there is also scope for the interface of viewing the files and perhaps some pre-processing to prepare preview images in bulk on a directory basis.
Note that in Apple's case not going far enough with this quickly lead to a revolt in the Apple forums. And on the Adobe side, Lightroom was likely a response to the need to provide a product that had a competitive advantage over the Apple Aperture interface.
Corel have an 'advantage' here in that the issues have been clearly defined by those that have preceded them in implementing RAW. It is not only an opportunity for Photopaint but an opportunity for a new product in the vain of Lightroom. Importantly competitive advantage here will be obtained not by a feature catch up but by exceeding the feature set offered by the competitors.
Adobe's Lightroom was a products that under went a long public series of betas and release candidates. This is really essential in creating a tool that has to manage such a large variety of file formats.
What is our roll as a community that is supportive of Corel's efforts to-date in actioning these issues?
In other words there is scope for the community to be 'pushy and verbose' in order to get effective outcomes asap.
PS: Hope this doesn't run foul of moderation as I've paid attention to the required aspects for quoting from another place.