Categories: Reviews Software

With the first three ranges of Intel-powered Macintosh systems all now shipping, I and many other power-hungry users are keeping a close eye on the availability of key imaging and workflow software products in the Universal Binary form that allows them to run natively, at full speed, on the Intel machines.

There's a wide range of software available to support all or part of the photographic imaging workflow, and this is my own update on the current release state of my favoured workflow applications, including both those I use day-to-day and those I'm trialling, reviewing or considering.

In roughly decreasing order of importance to me (not by inherent quality of application) and as of 20th March 2006:

• Photoshop/Bridge/ImageReady: Not until Adobe CS3, probably in 2007.
• iView MediaPro: Runs under Rosetta, although I've seen some stability problems reported. Universal Binary on its way, but no date given yet.
• Noise Ninja: Standalone "soon", but plugin version may have to wait for native Photoshop.
• Genuine Fractals: "It'll be a while". No dates given yet, but should run under Rosetta.
• Spyder2PRO: Runs under Rosetta now. UB version scheduled for summer '06.
• ABFR: Available now (v7.1.5).

Others that I use or am trying and like, but which are not (yet) in my core workflow:

• Lightroom: Available now (Beta 2). As an aside, I've been very impressed with Adobe's attitude and approach in developing Lightroom: refreshingly different.
• Aperture: Universal at release 1.1, scheduled for March '06.
• Capture One: Universal at 3.7.4 (release date not yet given - "weeks, not months" as of mid-March)
• Photo Mechanic: Available now (v4.4.1).
• Bibble: Available now (v4.6).

Finally, for some indicative benchmarking of the relative performance of Universal, G4 and Rosetta applications on Intel Macs, check out this article at robgalbraith.com.