Emulsion
Could this be the app Aperture lovers have been holding out for?
£39.99 Developer The Escapers, emulsionapp.com
Requirements OS X 10.10 or higher
This Lightroom-a-like organises and nondestructively edits your photos. Images can be imported into Catalogs, which you switch between in the File menu, but it’s simpler to drag folders onto the bar at the left; the app watches for new items to save you manually importing them. Aperture and iPhoto library import is still in beta.
For metadata addicts, a lot of the basic EXIF data is editable, and you can build a list of your equipment to populate it in scanned film images.
The Adjustments palette enables image editing, although not until you’ve created a version. Sensibly, editing is restricted to a copy, preserving the master, although this surely could have been achieved in the background without prompting you for a name every time.
Edits consist of the usual fare, with exposure, colour controls and noise reduction. We found the Sharpen Luminance slider very effective at bringing out detail in images. There’s also an auto-enhance option, and a palette of one-shot filters.
The app’s downside is slowness, certainly compared to Lightroom when building previews of 20MP raw files on a Core i7 Mac, with plenty of pauses between adjusting a slider and the effect appearing. It taxed our MacBook’s CPU too, causing the fans to kick in when processing raw files. Ian Evenden A good choice as an Aperture replacement if Lightroom doesn’t set off your flash.
Importing photos is easy
Great at sharpening images
Supports masses of metadata
Rather slow