New Features in 1.1 Beta
These are all observed features (in action), not just announced - with the exception of some PSD items and the D200 support. Note that as this is a beta version the actual features released may not be quite as described here. Universal Binary is not listed as a new feature, though Aperture was shown at the show running on both new Intel Macs and the G5 desktops with identical feature sets.
Version 1.1 is due to release sometime in March. It was observed running on OS X 10.4.5, so it may or may not be released around the same time as a 10.4.6 update, but it does not appear to require it to function.
Color Meter
You get an R, G, B, and Luminance readout (located just above the Adjustment Histogram) of any location the mouse pointer is over, the values for which also reflect the current proofing if enabled. In fact the display of these values doubles as a proofing indicator, as the “R: G: B: L:” labels next to the values turn italic when proofing is enabled.
There is also a checkbox next to the Color Meter values that activates the display of the same values inside the Loupe as well.
Using the Adjustment Tools dropdown menu you can also change the color meter to report CMYK and LAB values instead, and also select a sampling size for the color measurement - using 1x1, 3x3, 5x5 or 7x7 sampling (further illustrated by a box around the pixels being sampled when the color meter loupe display is activated).
RAW Fine Tune
A new default tool in Aperture is the Raw Fine Tune Tool, located above even Exposure. This tool is copied by the Lift operation and so adjustments made can be stamped across any number of other images.
The RAW Fine Tune Tool offers the following set of controls to adjust the RAW conversion:
Version - allows you to select a version of RAW decoder to use. New images automatically use the newest decoder, whereas images imported into Aperture before a newer RAW update was available stay at the version they were imported at until you migrate them (using a new Migrate Images command).
It’s worth a side trip to examine the Migrate command at this point. As part of the migration you can opt to have Aperture either migrate images (simply switch to using the new decoder), or have it create a new duplicate version for each image using the new decoder for comparison.
In terms of what images from your selected set will be converted to, you can opt to convert all images, images with adjustments, and images without adjustments.
This is a great way to handle updates to the RAW converter underneath without having to worry about updates to Aperture suddenly altering your photos, so no longer will you have to keep duplicate TIFF versions of every file before each update.
The remaining Controls from Raw Fine Tune are:
Conversion Set - You can use Apple defaults for the following Raw Fine Tune controls, or use your current settings as a “Camera Default” to use as a default for all other images.
Boost - Defines how much of a tonal boosting curve you want applied to your image. Somewhat like saturation but more subtle.
Sharpen (Intensity & Edges controls) - Adjusts degree of sharpening in conversion.
Chroma Blur (Radius) - Reduces color issues with conversion while still keeping image sharp.
Auto Noise Reduction - Tries to reduce noise in image, basing the amount of reduction on variables like ISO and shutter speed used.
DPI Settings
You can now choose image DPI in two different areas of Aperture:
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1. External editing. You can now specify a DPI to set an image to as it is passed to an external editor.
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2. Export presets. In any export preset you can select a DPI. Furthermore, you can use units of inches instead of pixels for maximum, size and the combination controls the ultimate pixel count - as an example, I selected a maximum size of 100 x 100 inches @ 72DPI for an export option and the final exported image was 5687x7200 pixels. This also illustrates the new ability for Aperture to upscale an image if the resolution is lower than the maximum output size, which it did not do before 1.1. Note that it only maximizes along the largest edge, it does not distort the image.
Dropdown Quick Searches
The search box over the image browser now has a dropdown with a number of different quick searches, such as by rating. Also, you can use this to opt to have text search through all text in an images metadata, or just “common” search text like keywords and captions.
Inside Aperture
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Aperture™ PMA 1.1 Features - New
