Photoshop challenger from Apple?

[ktinkel]

Apple just announced a new product, Aperture: Designed for professional photographers ($499). Are they mad? Photoshop is queen, right?

Well, I do not know how well this will do. The printing industry is still strongly Mac-oriented. But photography? Who knows. Sounds interesting, regardless. (And who knows what could happen once Apple completes the move of the Mac to Intel hardware.)

According to the press release, Aperture is . . .

Designed from the ground up for professional photographers, Aperture provides everything you need for after the shoot, delivering the first all-in-one post-production tool for photographers. Featuring a RAW-focused workflow, Aperture makes RAW as easy as JPEG, letting you import, edit, catalog, organize, retouch, publish, and archive your images more effectively and efficiently than ever before. From capture to output, you work directly with your RAW files, never having to first convert them into another format before viewing, adjusting, organizing, or printing them.


And with the most powerful image processing in the world, Aperture is fast — whether you’re working with RAW, JPEG, or TIFF images. It supports the RAW formats from all leading digital camera manufacturers (including Canon and Nikon) and provides optimized support for such market leading cameras as the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, Canon EOS 20D, and Nikon D2x as well as the highly popular Canon Digital Rebel and Nikon D50. It also supports the Adobe DNG format.

Whether you’re a fashion, wedding, sports, portrait, fine art, commercial, or editorial photographer, Aperture’s color-managed workflow and flexible design tools will help you easily create stunning prints, customized contact sheets, elegant books, and web pages as beautiful as the images you capture.