The Alpha male (A2 v Bibble)

I finished my first "project" with Aperture 2 the other day. Still working on the image watermark to use so Aperture can do all of my work, so I used my laptop tonight to get the project online.

I'm interested in seeing the results of Aperture 2 v. Bibble Pro. Here's the Alpha male gorilla using Bibble:

<img src="http://www.themeparkphotos.us/cpg140/albums/uploads/022008/226E4828a.JPG" />
Now I know I bumped up the saturation with Bibble, which resulted in the reddish hair on the top of his head, but his chest is very underexposed.

Same RAW file using Aperture 2:

<img src="http://www.themeparkphotos.us/cpg140/albums/uploads/022008/226E4828.JPG" />
I used the definition slider rather than contrast to correct for the DO lens' lack of contrast, edge sharpening, the vibrance slider more than saturation. You can see detail in his chest.

While the colors are more vibrant with Bibble, it's probably because of the saturation slider that I didn't really use with Aperture 2. But the grass behind him is overly green, very fake looking. I seem to be leaning towards A2, but of course, Bibble 5 is in the pipeline, so maybe they'll strike back. I love the loupe tool, which automatically appears when you use the eyedropper to look for neutral gray or white to click on for WB in the image. And the built in image management system. It's almost a complete replacement for ACDSee Pro 2.

 

I'm really enjoying A2. I love the definition slider vs. regular contrast (something bibble doesn't have), and while I haven't used it yet - the flash highlights for both hot and cold areas is great, as you can both recover highlights and change the black point (both via sliders) to try and get shadow detail without just using the "exposure" slider, which moves the whole image.

I haven't gotten to any shots that need aggressive noise reduction yet, but I'm sure Noise Ninja and/or NeatImage will come out with an Aperture plug-in.