Product Reviews

Aperture's brief history has not been a glorious one. Version 1 was followed by an update which addressed its flawed Raw converter. Then the 1.5 variant met with widespread disappointment from existing users, anticipating a big-number upgrade.

But this new offering, the first paid-for release since the original launch, looks set to turn the trend. It could finally set Aperture on course to fulfil the combined roles of a pro photographer's lightbox, filing cabinet and digital darkroom - all the tasks that Apple always intended it to do. The price has dropped significantly too.

Of the 100-plus new features in this release, big performance improvements, enhanced Raw image processing and additions to photo adjustment and editing tools top the list.

The new Raw 2.0 converter supports an extended range of cameras as well as Adobe's DNG format. The good news for owners of unsupported models is that Aperture can now convert DNG files from cameras not natively supported.

The Raw fine-tuning section of the Adjustments Inspector sports two new sliders. Hue Boost helps to prevent clipping of saturated colours when tonal controls are applied, while the Chroma Blur slider has been replaced by a control for the removal of moiré patterns and colour fringing.

Apple has beefed up its tonal controls with the new Recovery and Black Point sliders, which help to rescue blown highlights and dense shadows caused by overexposure or underexposure. The ability to fix exposure problems is one of the big advantages of shooting Raw - at last Aperture has something on a par with Adobe Camera Raw. Hold down the Command key while making exposure and levels adjustments and Aperture will indicate clipped highlight and shadow areas on a mask overlay.

In practice, we found that hefty doses of the recovery slider were required to rescue blown highlights on even mildly

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overexposed images. More extensive use might reveal hidden depth but our initial impression is that Aperture still has a way to go before it can match Adobe Camera Raw in this respect.

A new Enhance section includes Definition, which enhances local contrast, and Vibrancy - a less aggressive version of the saturation slider. Its actions are limited to under-saturated colours and skin-tone protection, producing a more subtle and natural-looking end result.

Rather than try to compete with Photoshop, Aperture's approach to image editing has been to provide tools for everyday photo-editing jobs.

The new Retouch tool is an improved version of the Spot and Patch tool, which has been retained for the sake of backward compatibility with previous versions. It has two modes - the repair facility copies only texture and preserves hard edges, while clone copies pixels.

Though you couldn't describe Aperture's interface as cluttered, there was enough going on to make a dual-screen setup the preferred option for many users. By combining the Projects panel and the Adjustments and Metadata inspectors into one tabbed panel, Apple has simplified things to the extent that running Aperture on a 15in MacBook Pro is a realistic option.

According to user forums, productivity is one of the biggest issues that photographers have with photo-management applications and in the past Aperture's performance has put some of them off. Apple has addressed this by, well, making everything faster.

A new Quick Preview mode uses the Raw file's embedded Jpeg preview rather than the Raw master data to display an image. This makes scrolling through even very large projects lightning fast, though you have to turn it off if you want to make image adjustments. Exporting versions and masters, a common cause of workflow flatlining, now happens in the background and you can include IPTC metadata in exported Raw masters.

Apple has rewritten the Aperture database engine from the ground up, so metadata searches are now much faster and you can search on the basis of adjustments to locate all black-and-white versions in a project, for example.

Other major additions and enhancements include tethered shooting, vignette and de-vignette filters, project skimming iPhoto-style, an iPhoto browser, publishing to a .Mac web gallery and support for 16-bit printing.

Pro photographers have had many reasons to doubt Aperture in the past; it seems that few now remain.