My last series of slightly panic stricken posts revolved around an Aperture 2 vs. Aperture 3 speed debate. This went across a few posts:

I never really managed to finish this series off so I thought I'd take this opportunity to finish off those threads. Since those posts I've managed to mislay my timings but what made a big difference (as a few commenters and twitterers had mentioned) was my long over due switch to SnowLeopard that filled in the final missing gap and all of a sudden the speed was back and the times I was seeing were suddenly comparable with AP2 so the world seemed like a much better place again!  It has however made me realise that    my MacPro probably only has about 12-18 months of top end performance left in it, at least where Aperture is concerned. My graphics card is the weak link at the moment and I really must get it changed sooner rather than later, just as long as Apple stop bringing out shiny new things like the ipad and iphone4! :D

I have been very fortunate from day one with Aperture 3, I had no upgrade problems, no erroneous issues where a specific set of adjustments would cause Aperture to take many hours to export a single jpeg, no random crashes or slow down, nothing! For me at least Aperture 3 has been rock solid from day one through every update since. To this end I have tried where possible to offer any help I can to those on twitter who have had some truly awful problems, some of them I've even managed to help :)

I wouldn't class my usage as extreme as some and as I've mentioned in numerous other posts since the early days of Aperture 2 I've always subscribed to the practice of multiple libraries, at present in the last 10 days I have been regularly using 9 libraries! Although not extreme interms of number of images the way I use Aperture pushes it in a few areas. In particular every single studio session I do involves me using Aperture libraries over a wireless network (something I did with Aperture 2 as well) many of my sessions also involve having to download, sort, crop & process 40-100 5DmkII images in 5-10 minutes, this ONLY works because I am able to bend Aperture to fit my needs and workflow as well as adapt to fully exploit Apertures strengths.

This fast processing under pressure (while the customer is waiting) was one of the issues I was struggling with when I posted my speed concerns as I was struggling to edit the files in the required time, since the switch to Snow Leopard this has becomes easy again, in many ways the process is even quicker than before as I'm able to use Aperture 3's "processing" time to do other things, in particular interact with my customer. So although the over all time 5-10 minutes is the same I only spend about 3/4 of that times at the computer.

That may sound like an odd way to talk of something being faster but if it means I spend less time actually sitting in front of the computer it means I can accomplish more in the same amount of time :)

It took me a little longer than I'd planned but on certain event I've taken Aperture away from the confines of the studio and unleashed it on the hectic fast paced world of event photography! The results have been stunning!  First of all Tethering in Aperture has always been a wonderful thing and that is still true today in Aperture 3 (especially after the recent update to add tether support for the 5DmkII)

Using the import presets at events really makes Aperture shine, watching the image appear on screen (running in full screen mode) and then seeing it suddenly 'pop' on the screen when the preset is applied not only impresses me everytime but the customers are in awe everytime! It basically means that from 25 feet away I just KNOW that when the photo appears on screen it will get that 'wow' factor, previously i'd have to be sitting in front of the screen mouse whizzing about to tweak the image.

I start with a standard preset and then make any small adjustments based on the specific event and create a new preset and then I'm up and running :) 

Once it gets down to the choosing and selecting using Aperture also comes into its own when running on two screens, being able to have the customer looking at one screen with their chosen photos on and nothing else just adds an extra dimension to the service.

There are still a couple of occasions where I have to resort back to a camera raw/photoshop workflow but those jobs are few and far between now.

Something I haven't really touched upon on any of my Aperture 3 ramblings is the actual photo quality, the actual finished output that comes out of Aperture, this has partly been because this is VERY subjective. One photographers oversharp is anothers soft, one persons noisy is anothers clean, etc etc. What I will say having output thousands of files from studio shots, to mobile studio, swimming galas, gymnastics events (oh the dreaded orange lights!), plays, hockey matches, weddings and everything in between! and IMHO the quality of photo I'm able to extract from Aperture 3 is significantly better that what I got out of Aperture 2 with the same camera in the same situations. This is an odd omission as I would have said how good the Aperture 2 output was a year ago if you'd asked me.

The closest analogy to explain this is to use the iphone4, for those of you lucky enough to have one (oh I love mine!!) the Iphone 3G screen was great, bright, crisp spot on....BUT...as soon as soon as I saw the iphone4 retina display I was literally stunned, I keep telling people how good it is and sound like even more of a fanboy than usual (impossible ;)) but I suddenly look at the iphone 3G screen and it looks dull, clunky and dated. Thats how the Aperture 3 files look to me, there is nothing specific but the photos just look cleaner, crisper, but not even as specific as that they just look better...VERY subjective I know but they are just better! :)

These are VERY personal and ranked in order of annoyance:

1) Faces - awful

2) Lack of compelling plugins...not that I have any specific needs just feels lacking

3) lack of options for printing

4) Places - useful to many...to me pointless

5) missing some extended export options

For me it can only get better, the adjustment brushes are fantastic but have so much more potential, in both features and usability (and the potential to piss off Adobe). Aperture was one of the reasons I switched the Mac in the first place and I know it'll be Aperture that forces me to upgrade my 1,1 MacPro. Aperture 3 is as slick and as enjoyable to use today as it was last year and the year before, but now capable of so much more. Aperture 3 has allowed me to change the way I do things for the better, and allowed me to further refine my workflow.

I am an Aperture fan, an evangelist even (converted 3 people to Aperture in the past 18 months! :D) Will I always use Aperture though? who knows, as long is it carries on in the direction its going, providing me with a fast, slick way of managing and edit my photos, then yes! If Lightroom changes of gets ahead then I'll switch (it would have to be some BIG changes to make me switch to lightroom) but for now, for me, my using Aperture is lick the preverbal chicken & egg question, has Aperture perfectly fitted my workflow or have I adapted to perfectly fit what Aperture does. Which ever one is true the end result is the same...it just works! :) lol