The long awaited 3.0 version of Aperture has been finally announced by Apple and it’s live on the Apple Store page: http://www.apple.com/aperture/
Aperture 3 is a $99 update for current 2.0 users, it comes with 200 new features, a rewritten engine to support 64 bits and some neat additions like Faces and Events, taken from iPhoto. Indeed, the new slogan of Aperture is “Pro performance with iPhoto simplicity”, meaning that - probably - Apple aims both at a professional user base and less demanding users with this 3 update.
Besides Faces and Places (I prefer the second over the first one. If you have a GPS enabled camera Places really helps a lot in connecting photos with..places) Apple introduced a major new feature called “Brushes”. From the website:
“Brushes let you paint in a wide range of effects to selectively fine-tune your photos. With precise control of the size, softness, and strength of each brush, you can adjust only the parts of the image you want, leaving the rest untouched. For example, you can burn the green of a palm leaf lying on a beach to decrease the exposure and make it darker, without touching the rest of your photo. Or you can dodge just its shadow to increase the exposure and bring out the detail of the sand. No matter how much you change an image, you can always go back to the original.”
Simple, nondestructive adjustments? Sounds good to me, we’ll see.
Moving on, Aperture 3 now comes with new presets and a full screen browser.
Judging from the screenshots (and really, I’ll leave my other opinions for a more in-depth review) it seems sexy and useful to browse your photos collection without being distracted.
Aperture 3 seems like a really big update, bringing tons of refinements and new, interesting features. Can’t wait to try it out.
