What is Aperture?

Powerful photo editing and management
Aperture 2 delivers streamlined tools for moving photos from capture to output with uncompromising quality.

Import images in a flash. Manage them like a pro.
Pop a memory card filled with new images into your card reader and Aperture gets right to work, instantly displaying thumbnails and offering intelligent external hard drive ways to add copyright, captions, keywords and other metadata as you import them. You can also import images from hard drives, optical media, even iPhoto.

Shoot tethered.
Connect a camera to your Mac via USB or FireWire and save the photos directly in an Aperture project.

Store your images wherever and however you like - directly in Aperture, on external drives, even on huge import screenshot network storage devices. Aperture keeps track of every photo. Organise photos logically in projects, folders, albums and Smart Albums. Aperture also provides powerful tools for adding metadata to images, making them easy to find long after you import them.

The value of metadata.
Use powerful tools to add ratings, copyright, captions and other metadata to images. With Aperture, you can search for virtually anything - even specific image adjustments.

Turn your good photos into beautiful images.
With your favourite shots selected, it’s now time to use Aperture’s adjustment tools to make your best photos look even better. Aperture takes you way beyond the basics of straightening, cropping and improving exposure.Inspector hud screenshot Use the new Vibrancy and Definition tools to create beautiful photos with enhanced detail and saturation. Or darken the corners of your image with the Vignette tool. Copying adjustments from one image to another is simple using the Lift and Stamp tool. And since all adjustments are nondestructive, you don’t have to worry about damaging your original master images. Aperture never touches them.

Make selective colour adjustments.
Use the enhanced colour controls to select a hue. Then make perfect spot adjustments with Luminosity and Saturation sliders.

Recover lost detail.
Powerful new tools, including Highlight Recovery and Black Point, let you salvage images you might once have discarded.

Make selects quickly and easily. You’ve added hundreds of new photos to your Aperture library. Now you need to review them all and pick the very best - your selects. Aperture lets you edit photo shoots using tools such as Quick Preview mode for rapid-fire image review and Compare mode for viewing two or more images side by side. With Aperture, you can even zoom and pan multiple images at once for tight comparisons before making a pick.

Using the Loupe.
The versatile Loupe magnifies images from 50 to 1600 percent. Use it to compare details in similar images.

Review and rate hands free.
To speed your way through a big project, use arrow keys to cycle through your photos and number keys to rate them.

New in Aperture 2

Your best shots. made even better.
Aperture 2 delivers over 100 dramatic, new features including advanced image processing, a streamlined interface, faster performance and unprecedented Mac integration.

Streamlined interface that’s more accessible and intuitive.
Aperture 2 includes an all-in-one inspector that consolidates the Project, Metadata and Adjustments panes, and lets you switch between them simply by typing W. Another convenience, the simplified Viewer and Browser setup lets you maximise screen real estate for your images.

Quickly locate images in the innovative All Projects view with project skimming (à la iPhoto Events). In fact, you can access your entire iPhoto library, directly within Aperture 2, to import selected events, albums or individual photos using the iPhoto Browser. Choose Show iPhoto Browser from the File menu to reveal the browser.

Accelerated performance at every step of the workflow.
Thanks to an optimised database and a streamlined, more responsive user interface, Aperture 2 provides dramatically improved performance throughout your workflow. Index Workflow Two

The new Quick Preview mode, for example, provides rapid-fire photo browsing, letting you quickly compare, rate and make image selections. You can create custom keyboard shortcuts to speed up your work. Or use the significantly improved search tools to conduct fast, pinpoint searches with extended search logic. Aperture also offers enhanced performance when making processor-intensive adjustments, such as Noise Reduction and Highlight and Shadows.

And because Aperture preps versions, masters or whole projects for export in the background, you can save valuable time while continuing to sort, compare or modify images.

Enhanced image processing.
Leveraging the next-generation RAW image processing in Mac OS X Leopard, Aperture 2 delivers images of astounding quality, offering superb colour fidelity, increased shadow detail, reduced noise and advanced highlight recovery. Realise the very best results from every image by applying new RAW Fine Tuning controls, adjusting RAW rendering on an image-by-image basis. To improve and enhance photographs, use the new Recovery tool to pull back “blown” highlights. With the Vibrancy tool, you can selectively boost saturation without adversely affecting skin tones. Or pick up the soft-edged Retouch brush to quickly and easily remove blemishes, clean up sensor dust, or clone out unwanted elements.

Aperture provides RAW support for the leading digital cameras and camera backs. It also supports DNGs made from the RAW files of most digital cameras.

Unprecedented integration.
Thanks to seamless integration with other Mac software, services and Mac OS X, Aperture 2 saves you time and effort by reaching out to almost every application on your Mac. With a .Mac account, you can take advantage of new support for .Mac Web Gallery to create beautiful online portfolios - even allowing clients, colleagues or friends to download JPEG or RAW originals complete with embedded metadata while you’re in the field.