Aperture 1.5

When first introduced, Apple’s Aperture took a bit of flak for its ridiculously high hardware requirements and limited camera support, which is not the reaction you want from a pro-aimed Raw image manager.

Version 1.5 of Aperture, however, offers extended Raw support to include recently launched cameras, such as the Sony Alpha a100, but some models are sadly still excluded.

The library cataloguing in this new release is now more flexible, and it’s also capable of producing more sophisticated image manipulation effects. The software’s edge sharpening system is subtle and powerful, and the metadata control that both comes into, and exports from, Aperture will be a boon for those who sell a lot of images.

Aperture is a three-function package: it imports and catalogues Raw and other images (it catalogues images and categorises metadata), subtly manipulates them while keeping Raw data safe, then exports the images for any one of a number of purposes.

The import function isn’t too speedy, but that’s because you can get Aperture to do an awful lot of work for you when it imports a batch of images. For example, you could set the program to attribute information to shoots, or group images by different characteristics.

But it’s once images are imported that Aperture really comes into its own. Every hard-working photographer deserves a treat now and then, and Aperture’s Auto-stack function (where similar images are cleverly grouped together) is one of those ‘wow’ features that you’ll find hard to live without.