First Look: Aperture 2

The first major revision of apple’s image workflow app makes excellent refinements and extends support for third-party plug-ins

If you're a Mac user, there's a lot to like about Aperture, and its version 2 includes new features that greatly improve the efficiency and capabilities of this powerful imaging application—all at a new, lower price of $199. There are more than 100 new features, but we've focused on some of the more important changes that make this new version worth the upgrade.
 
The biggest news, in our estimation, is what comes with the free update to version 2 that was just released. Version 2.1 opens up Aperture to enhancement plug-ins like Nik's new Viveza (see page 66), Picture Code's Noise Ninja and others. Version 2.1 also comes with a starter plug-in from Aperture—the Dodge & Burn tool brings this traditional darkroom technique to the Aperture workflow.

Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts
Don't like a particular keyboard shortcut? You can configure all of the keyboard shortcuts in Aperture to be keys that make sense for you.

Improved RAW Processing
Apple upgraded the RAW-processing engine behind Aperture, with an emphasis on better handling of extremes of the tonal range and noise reduction.

Highlight Hot & Cold Areas
This new feature, when enabled, shows areas in your image that are losing detail because they're either over- or underexposed. Blown-out highlights are shown in red and overcooked shadows are shown in blue.

Inspector Redesign Instead of using separate panels on the left and right sides of the workspace for the Projects, Metadata and Adjustments panels, Aperture 2 combines all of them into a tabbed panel on the left of the screen, freeing up valuable real estate. You can move the Inspector to the right side of the screen if you prefer.

Customizable Adjustments Panel You can now select which adjustments will be shown in the Adjustments panel by default, so if you frequently use Sharpening but only rarely use Vignette, you can set the Adjustments panel accordingly.

Recovery & Black Point Two new controls in the Exposure adjustment help you rescue lost details. Use the Highlight Hot & Cold Areas feature to show where you're losing detail; then use the Recovery slider to regain details in the highlights and the Black Point slider to restore shadow details.

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