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Photokina - Apple reveals brightened Aperture
An enigmatic product from an enigmatic company, Apple's Aperture photo image management and workflow software package has, until now, obver-promised and under-delivered. With the launch of version 1.50 here at Photokina, there is genuine enthusiasm (and some relief) among Mac fans that Aperture is now the package Apple promised when it was first launched.
Apple Aperture was probably launched too early, it was too slow and although the theory behind it, being able to non-destructively process images, including RAW files and tightly manage their storage, presentation and distribution, was great on paper, many people I know failed to get past their initial aquaintance with the software.
But that seems to have all changed now with version 1.50. No longer do you need to run it on a top-spec Mac; it will run well enough on most OS 10.4 or later machines, even running modest CPUs.
Apple has also improved its compatibility with third party applications through enhanced XMP metadata support and a feature described as pre-filled IPTC Metadata Presets. You can export RAW files including their IPTC data stored in an XMP sidecar to compatible applications like Photoshop.
There are also improvements to Aperture's image editing and enhancement tools, including a new luminance-based Edge Sharpen filter, tighter control of hue, saturation and luminance in selected range within an image, and the loup magnifier tool can now go up to 1600% magnification.
Apple is also introducing new API support to enable Aperture to interface seamlessly with complimentary services: names mentioned included Getty Images, iStockphoto, Pictage, Flickr, PhotoShelter, DigitalFusion, Soundslides and Connected Flow.
Although Aperture is aaimed at professional users, it has some neat personal functionality so you can connect your iPod into your Aperture workflow via iTunes 7 and iPhoto.
Aperture 1.5 is shipping now, according to Apple and is available as a free update for existing Aperture users, or US$299 for new customers.