Given the level of photographic interest here, I thought for sure I'd have seen a post about Aperture in the past couple of weeks. But nada.

Anyone else have a good look through the press/presentations and think it just seems to do quite a lot in a very tight and focused application? It surprised me that Apple would have gone this route, but it sure is an application that's been lacking. Perhaps professionals already have a decent workflow I don't know about, but I can see myself not ever using Photoshop for standard digital photography chores. It's still one of the king for detailed effect manipulation and compositing, but the non-destructive nature of Aperture and its integrated management are sure to be a big hit.

After viewing the online video demonstrations I'm still curious to see more of its management side. I already know a number of the strengths that come with software like iView Multimedia Pro (Mac and Windows) and Photools' iMatch (Windows only - and cannot be "matched" for price by anyone else). Lately we've seen players like ACDSystems integrating more and more features into what used to be quite streamlined applications (in their case, ACDSee). But often what consumers end up with is a solution that's more muddy than desired if not downright horrible - possibly losing the charms the software once had and making a previous workflow tedious or confusing. Adobe for instance has been both here and there with their line-up. Still in need of some major revisions across the board and better consistency between applications.

And in other news, it looks like Nikon is about to unwrap their long-awaited, much rumoured, D200. A camera I've been waiting to see since about 5 minutes after they announced their D100 in 2001. Thanks to a number of web-based slip-ups by Nikon offices around the world, a number of details have come out which corroborate some rumours and completely dash others. With a street price of $1600 it's looking pretty attractive and could end up being my long-awaited SLR (I've been "planning" on and off to get a Nikon SLR since the bloody F90x (n90x in the US)). My ideal would be all the features of the D2X in a body the size of the Pentax *ist for under $2000US. Since I can't have that, let's see what D200 finally brings to the table.

Bruno