I heard that Apple did something different when they came out with Aperture 1.5. They opened it up for a free 30 day trial. I've been chomping at the bit since Aperture first came out because it seems like a really powerful tool for managing digital photos and the workflow of getting the photos onto your computer all the way to publishing them, printing them, etc... And since I got a new MacBook recently I figured I would download it and give it a try. Honestly I wasn't sure if my MacBook would be powerful enough to run Aperture 1.5 . Luckily I had no problems getting it to run, and I was also able to run other apps like iTunes, Eclipse, Mail, etc... at the same time with no slow down.
Initial Setup::
The initial setup was easy, it even asks if you want to move photos from iPhoto over to Aperture. Also importing images from any other location is very easy. I went through process of importing all the images (roughly 25,000 of them) from my external backup drive into Aperture. The process was seamless and suprisingly quick. It took a little bit longer due to the way that I manage my photos (organized by month).
Metadata::
I love the fact that you can put just about any type of metadata on your photos that you want. You can rate the photos with starts (ranging from 1 star to 5 stars), you can add keywords, and you have the metadata that was added when the photos were taken. This makes finding the photos you want that much easier.
Finding Photos::
An example of finding photos for me is that I wanted to find photos of Wookie that were taken in 2006 and were rated at 4 stars or higher. The query was simple (date = 2006 && rating >= 4 stars && keyword = wookie) and quick and I found exactly what I was looking for.
Image Integrity and Support::
Aperture now natively supports RAW images which is pretty cool because the way I manage my RAW images now is to use the Canon software that can read the RAW images and then convert them to jpeg. Sorry Canon, no need for me to do that anymore since I can work with the RAW images directly in Aperture. For image integrity when you edit an image (limited to contrast, brightness, etc...) you are not editing the original image. In fact the original image is never directly touched and can be stored anywhere (external hard drive, local hard drive, network drive, etc...) which is pretty cool. I don't have to use my MacBook's hard drive to store all 25,000 images that I want manage and play with.
Managing Workflow::
The process of managing the workflow using Aperture is pretty good. I was able to take my memory card, plug it into my memory reader, plug the memory reader into my MacBook, automatically launch Aperture, and ask where you want to put the photos, and import. Once you have the images in Aperture you can add keywords, ratings, etc.... You can also do basic editing. You can also easily export the images you want to do more work with to Photoshop. There are even plug ins for Smugmug and Flickr, so you can push your best images there, along with the metadata. On top of the workflow that you can come up with via Aperture it is also extensible via Automator. So if you have processes that need to run against lots of photos or some routine for managing your photos you can easily automate it. A good resource for learning how to automate Aperture tasks can be found here.
Conclusion::
Now that I've played around with Aperture for a month I can see why many professional photographers have moved to Aperture. It is very flexible and powerful, kind of like iPhoto on steroids. I plan to take the vast majority of my photos from now on in RAW because I can use Aperture to easily work with the images. I definitely want to continue using Aperture 1.5 after my 30 day trial runs out. I'll see if I can negotiate a discount or something. :-)