APERTURE GOES ON SALE

Sometimes if you shout loud enough even the largest company may hear you. The grumbling became a roar as weeks turned into months of waiting for Apple to update Aperture - to make it usable on the new INTEL Chipset Apple boxes, and for this photographer - an update to make the RAW images from the D200 accessable. They announced updates to be released "in March" and promptly missed their deadline. Of course the corporate spin was that they would rather miss the release date than release an buggy update. Meanwhile, unknown to some of my professional friends (using D200 Nikons), the OS update 10.4.6 contained the RAW translator for Aperture. That answers a major mystery --- RAW updates are, or can be, part of an OS update and not necessarily an Aperture update.

Last week APPLE released it's much awaited update for Aperture (v. 1.1) and in what can be considered a one-two punch they announced a price drop of 200. for the purchase of Aperture and 200. rebate for instore purchases for those of us on the bleeding edge who purchased Aperture when it was released last year. It is a smart move and one intended to silence (by paying off) its critics. Heck, who wouldn't want a new iPod video?

If you deal with images and are a MAC user, you should have this program. Keep in mind it is not Photoshop and is not intended to be a replacement for Photoshop. However, it resolves a lot of workflow issues, it exhibits wonderful translation of RAW to jpeg and tiff and it will cut your time in workflow - dramatically. So far, this is a MAC only program, but with the advent of the intel chips and APPLE edging into making the new boxes run Windoze, a PC version will be available sooner rather than later. At a new retail price of 299., there is nothing on the radar that come close to what this software will do.

If you want more reasons to switch, or purchase, now is the time to seek that knowledge.