02/12/2008, 8:45am, EST
Tuesday, February 12th
Apple introduces Aperture 2.0
Apple on Tuesday released Aperture 2.0, a major revision of the company's professional photo editing and management application. The upgrade brings in a new, sleeker user interface that allows users to flip between Browser and Viewer modes with a single key press and a heads-up display that makes the most of the screen area while still allowing quick access to editing or navigation controls. A completely new RAW image processing engine is also said to bring out more detail and more faithful color accuracy for imported shots. Performance has likewise been improved with faster loading times and a Quick Preview mode that lets users browse their libraries at speed without loading each entire image.
New editing tools also let editors enhance special qualities of an image: Recovery reduces overblown highlights, while Vibrancy boosts saturation without hurting the skin tones crucial to portraits. A Repair/Retouch function similar to that from iPhoto lets users quickly remove cosmetic imperfections just by dragging across affected areas.
The Aperture update is also designed to integrate more smoothly with Apple's modern web tools: users can more readily post photos to their .Mac Web Galleries with formatting for the iPhone and other handhelds. Apple launches the software immediately for $199 through the company's online Apple Store.
Filed under: iPod, iPhone, Apple, software, digital imaging
Other story tags: Aperture
, 
, 16
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Hopefully they added more features to slideshow (including Ken Burns effect) so that I do not have to export previews to iPhoto.
I'd rather see a text layer added so I don't have to move everything into PS as a final save.
Yes, this doesn't mean much to the casual shooter, but is a death knell for pros. Take the Nikon D3/300, still no RAW support, but many have been using these cameras for 3 months already. Adobe had support for them almost before the first one shipped.
2.0 MAY have support for these cameras, but what about going forward? ANY commitment from them to keep the RAW portion updated in a timely manner? Without that, this is nothing more than a more expensive iPhoto only for amateurs.
Despite what people say, I still think Aperture is more useful than Lightroom (which feels like a little toy, IMHO)
Yeah, I do understand that the resultant lag in support is a serious grip, and I would hope that Apple would do something about it, but just explaining how it's handled.
Aperture 1.x was a pig. hopefully this will be snappier!
D3/D300 are now supported but only with 10.5.2 installed.
Trouble is it really needs 2 monitors. 2 big monitors.