The news
Apple is introducing version 1.5 of its professional image-editing and work-flow tool Aperture, building further on April's V1.1 overhaul of the much-criticised original. There is no price-cut this time, the SRP remains at £219 (inc VAT) - still about £30 more than in the USA - but the upgrade is free to V1.0 and V1.1 users.
Across-the-board enhancements are said to include "powerful" new adjustment tools and open library; "seamless" integration with iLife '06 and iWork '06; support for XMP metadata; and an export API that "makes it easy" to extend the Aperture workflow to third-party applications and services.
Significantly, Apple claims that managing RAW, JPEG and TIFF images in Aperture 1.5 is "incredibly flexible". The new open library system is said to allow images to be stored wherever the photographer wants. That can be within the Aperture library itself or on external hard drives, CDs or DVDs.
Aperture can generate high-res image previews at a variety of sizes and quality levels and these can be used when the originals are "off-line", including when out and about with a laptop Mac while the originals are back at base.
Pros will also appreciate V1.5 claimed ability to "dramatically" streamline the adding of metadata to multiple images after a shoot. New IPTC metadata templates are reckoned to automatically add captions, credits and other critical metadata on import, with the same options available on files that are already in the system. And, importantly, V1.5 is said to work better with Adobe Photoshop, thanks to its ability to export RAW images with IPTC data stored in XMP "sidecar" files.
Click for larger imageIf Apple's track-record on software development is any guide, then V1.5 will be the version that really starts to have an impact. Typically, a 1.0 version is dire; the next iteration sorts out the things that had users spitting blood; and the third version includes most of the rest of the features that were needed at the outset to make the program genuinely useful.
Check out this link - What's new in Aperture 1.5 - and Apple's Aperture press release on page two, then share your thoughts with us in this thread in the HEXUS.lifestyle.news forum.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.community :: discussion thread about this articleHEXUS.lifestyle.headline :: Apple intros V1.1 Aperture RAW image app, cuts price by 40%
HEXUS.lifestyle.headline :: Apple Aperture - raw deal, not real deal?
External.links
Apple UK - What's new in Aperture 1.5Apple UK - Aperture home page
