Apple announces Aperture 3


Tuesday Apple released version 3 of its Aperture graphics program. The release offers up over 200 new features for photo editing and management. Headliners include Faces, Places, and Brushes. Mac users will be familiar with the Faces and Places feature, as it's included with iPhoto '09.

"Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets."

Using Faces and Places, Aperture 3 can help users sort and find photos. Using facial detection, Aperture can learn facial features of individuals, and then sort through the user's library. For example, if you want to quickly pull up photos of a family member. Places uses photo's hidden geocode data where the photo was taken to sort by location. For example, if you take a photo on your iPhone using location services, it will stamp the photo's location.

The new Brushes feature allows users to touch up photos by painting effect directly onto the image. The feature includes 15 Quick Brushes to do popular photo editing tasks such as Dodge, Burn, Polarize, and Blur.

When finished, photos can be exported to iTunes for sync with iPhone or iPod. Photos can also be shared with Facebook and Flickr.

Also worth noting Aperture 3 is now a 64-bit application, which can take advantage of OS X Snow Leopard and Core 2 Duo Macs.

Aperture 3 is available now for $199. Current users can upgrade for $99. Aperture 3 is available for download as a 30-day free trial.

Aperture 3