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I received Aperture yesterday so I’ve spent this morning playing with it. I really am excited to let this replace iPhoto. There are so many ways that this will improve the way that I work with photos….even as a amateur photographer.

First thoughts on Aperture:

1. Apple is very aware that this is a project for professionals. There has been a lot of care made on being sure that you don’t make any unintended changes. (e.g., trashing a project, making changes to books.)
2. The loupe (magnifying glass) is a kick to use. I have been going through my pictures and have seen details that I never noticed before. For instance, I can really zoom in on an eye and see myself in the reflection of their eye with the camera. Whoa!
3. The import from iPhoto is very well done. I had my images in rolls. Each roll imports as a project in a “Rolls” folder. The Roll folder resides in a “iPhoto Library” folder. As promised, all the metadata is still in there.
4. If you have altered your images in iPhoto, they are imported as stacks. Your altered image on top, with the original in the stack behind it.
5. There have been reports that the html in the exported web galleries has multiple errors. That may be true, but the web galleries sure look great. ( Quick sample here)
6. When you install, you can choose to install about 800MB of sample media. I am glad that I did that because I learned from what was in there. However, the images are quite large (7-12MB), so if you have lag while jumping around don’t fret too much. When I trashed that project and put in my own jpeg’s (2-4MB), the program was quite a bit snappier. I am running on a brand new iMac G5 with 1.5MB RAM and a 2.1 Ghz processor and the “Sample Media” had a small lag on it. I also have a brand new Powerbook with 1.5 MB of RAM and a 1.67 G4 processor so I will give it a try on that next and report back.
7. It is quite important to stay organized with your photos if you want to use it to it’s full extent. That includes making sure everything is named and rated.
8. I suppose the Core Image is necessary because of all the appetizing animation in the program. As you would expect, everything zooms here and there when you push buttons. Looks nice.
9. EVERYTHING has a shortcut. It’ll take a while to learn them all, but when you get them down you should be able to zip around the interface.

There is quite a bit more to play around with so I’ll continue to add to this post in the comments. If you have any specific questions, I’ll try to stay on top of those too.