The forthcoming arrival of Aperture has leave something of a wake - up call to Adobe — but not because the software program giant see Apple ’s unexampled pro - level app for manage and edit digital photos as a Photoshop rival . Rather , Adobe believe that Aperture underscores the desire of professional photographer to have skillful work flow tools . And that ’s a desire Adobe skip to meet with its own offerings .
“ Whenever there are other solution popping up , it is a polarity that there is a lot of change going on and that everyone needs to keep innovating to work those problems , ” Kevin Connor , Adobe ’s theatre director of digital imaging product direction , told MacCentral . “ Apple is recognizing some of the same things that we are — there are some problems for photographers that are not in full solved yet . ”
Adobe attempted to solve some of those workflow issues with the loss of Adobe Creative Suite 2 earlier this year . That collection of image - editing , page - layout , illustration , and Web - varlet invention tool sum a unexampled standalone program phone Bridge . Replacing Photoshop ’s File web browser , Bridge provides file - management and mechanization tools throughout Creative Suite .
“ We want to provide as complete a solution as potential to photographers , ” said Connor .
That desire stems from the ever - shifting landscape for photo pros as their professional becomes ever more immersed in the digital earth . Photoshop debuted as a general - role look-alike editing program , but as prison term go on , functionality look to allot with more specialised tasks . Take entanglement graphics : before there were specialised applications for creating entanglement graphics , people used — and extend to apply — Photoshop to tackle that trouble .
“ I think we are seeing the same type of situation today with digital photography , ” Connor says . “ People have been edit out their images in Photoshop for a tenacious sentence now and that workflow is well established . What is Modern is that , with digital SLRs , the integral work flow , not just the editing process , is now on the estimator . ”
And that figure to only increase as digital SLR cameras become more commonplace . A study by market research firm InfoTrends say that 80 pct of professional lensman now own a digital SLR . There are currently 250,000 pro photographers and 8.5 million serious amateur or semi - pro lensman in the United States .
Another tendency in high - end photography is the increasing preference of the RAW filing cabinet format over JPEG . When you shoot in RAW , the camera records only raw image data , leaving you to make adjustments at your information processing system — the process is not unlike taking a negative into a darkroom and adjusting lily-white balance and exposure to your liking .
One of Aperture ’s chief selling points is its support for altogether file . And Adobe believes that has led to the perception among some user that Apple is targeting Photoshop with its new program .
“ If you attend at what Aperture does nondestructively with RAW files , it ’s not that different than what Photoshop does nondestructively with RAW files , ” Connor says . “ [ Apple does ] a few things we ’re not doing on RAW , and we do a few things [ Apple is n’t ] doing with RAW . ”
Still , while Apple says Aperture is n’t a Photoshop rival , that perception remains — though Connor think it ’s beginning to fade . “ In the beginning you saw a few stories out there that said Aperture was a Photoshop grampus , ” he adds . “ The customer were pretty nimble to say , ‘ No , this is n’t a Photoshop killer , but it is an option to Bridge and Camera RAW . ’ That ’s a pretty precise way to look at it .
“ [ Aperture ] is an alternative to Bridge and Camera RAW , but if you expend any of those , you still need Photoshop , ” tell Connor .
Adobe think Aperture has highlighted specific problems relate to workflow for professional photographer . Those are the problems Adobe , Apple , and other software makers will be working on in the coming years .
“ You are probably going to see innovation and alteration from a variety of companies over the next few years , ” said Connor . “ Ultimately that ’s a nifty affair for photographers . ”
