Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Apple-Aperture! Takes Digital Photography Back to the Future

Apple has just begun shipping its $499 pro-level digital photography workflow and editing application, Aperture.

Apple set out to create a program that lets photographers and photo editors work in ways reminiscent of film photography, with tools like the Light Table and Loupe. These allow you to look at multiple images in more flexible ways--such as being able to spread out your work and group, rearrange, and stack images as you go along--which even resolute digital-imaging partisans should appreciate. Other distinguishing features include Aperture's use of the RAW image file format for viewing and editing--the most information-dense type of file you can get out of a digital camera--as well as the program's ability to display multiple images side by side and to edit in almost any view.

The Light Table lets you arrange and resize images to see how they'll work together. The two flashy features mentioned above, the Light Table and the Loupe, caught my eye right away. The Light Table allows you to arrange and resize multiple photos to see how they will look together, then print the group or export it as a PDF. Light Table works well for creating rapid mockups of a collage of pictures, or for viewing images at different sizes in groupings.

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