Aperture 3 has been released by Apple and for some years now, being a Mac user, I never really believed that Apple had the chops to understand what photographers want. To start, I have previously met with a Adobe Photoshop Ambassador who basically loves going deep into the technical side of imaging. That said, I felt that maybe Adobe had a clearly idea with Lightroom (LR) but so far, as I write this, Lightroom 3 is still in Beta. So I won’t comments much on this.

Lightroom will remain the favorite for Photographers

I am using LR 2, which I feel has probably what I would basically want from a image management point of view. I love the fact that the image development  capabilities are stellar, allowing you to create pre-sets and passing them around to your friends to get the sort of effects you get only on film. LR 2 also had failings of course, for those JPEG images created on the Olympus Pen EP-1, the program has a tendency to ignore the JPEG file and goes right into the RAW version. So if I use a special filter to shoot with and this is saved into a JPEG file, upon opening, LR2 will open both files but the final one used in the editing window will be the RAW version. It practically tosses out the JPEG version since you have RAW alongside it.

I’m not sure Aperture does the same thing, I hope not but I do not know. I gave up on Aperture over a year ago when I got tired of the slow processing speed on an iMac. But there are improvements I hear and for Aperture 3, the significant ones are the ones listed here.

• Chromatic Aberration Filter

Remove the color fringing that can occur along edges due to optical issues by using the new Chromatic Aberration filter. The adjustments can be brushed in or brushed away as needed to achieve desired results.

• Halo Reduction

Use Halo Reduction to remove blue and purple fringes sometimes produced with certain lenses on overexposed areas. Simply paint over the halos to remove unwanted fringing. The brush can be used to eliminate difficult halos when Chromatic Aberration alone cannot completely remove them.

• Nondestructive Brushes

Make nondestructive image enhancements to specific areas of any photo using new adjustment brushes. Use brush strokes to modify — brush in or brush away — most of the standard image adjustments available in the Adjustments inspector. You can control the size, softness, and strength of each brush with intuitive sliders.

Aperture 3 will remain a disappointment

Apple clearly shot themselves in the foot with Aperture 3 as they have to play catch up to Adobe’s LR. First, most of the so called new features are not really new features as LR already has some of them. Furthermore those new features are really feature enhancements and does nothing more than what it could do in the previous version.

I was looking for more PRO type features, such as photo panorama and HDR capability but Apple instead decided to add iPhoto like features with GPS, Face recognition, etc.

Such features are meant for casual users and since they already have these in iPhoto, why would a PRO want to use them?

Aperture 3 will feel like an upgraded iPhoto application rather than one that is specifically meant for PROs and you would have expected more features to keep serious photographers happy. But this in itself shows one thing, the PRO market is far too small for Apple to cater to. These days, they are only interested in mass market, software that will generate serious revenue for them. Aperture 3 no doubt will fit into this class and this means serious photographers should skip this product.

Looks like for this round, Adobe wins. Even when they are in Beta!