thomas fitzgerald.net

I’ve been playing around with the new adjustments options in Aperture 3 and I’m really impressed. Here’s an example. It’s a pretty bland image to start with.

Note the sky is completely burned out. The recovery slider would only bring it back in so far, but thanks to the new extended range curves adjustment I was able to recover much more of the sky. Here’s the final result after playing around for about half an hour:

I’ve only had a little time to play around with Aperture 3 (as I’m still recovering from a fairly serious illness) but I thought I’d post my first impressions. I had installed the trial version on my laptop and when the boxed version came in the post I put it on my main machine. I should point out that both are about two years old. My laptop is a core2duo 2.4ghz and my desktop is a 24″ iMac 2.4ghz. In no particular order then here are some thoughts on the software:

Aperture 3 is an amazing upgrade. People had begun to worry about the future of the software, as it was two years since the last version came out, but I can see now that they’ve been doing some major work under the hood. I feel silly for doubting Apple’s commitment to the product now. What I find interesting though is that some of the features Apple has chosen to highlight as part of the marketing bumph, namely places and faces, while understandable from a marketing point of view, are not the software’s greatest additions. They really have put a lot of thought into this release and it addresses pretty much all the concerns most people had about it. It more than bridges the gap with Lightroom. There are so many new features though that it can be difficult to get your head around all of them. So then, here are my top ten, in reverse order !

For those of you out there who are running their blogs on Wordpress then you probably already know this but 2.9 has been released, and it seems like a major upgrade. Of biggest interest to me is the new image tools (especially for my little photo site!) although there is a lot more they need to do on that front. Anyway, I haven’t heard of many issues with it yet, so I’d say it’s fairly safe to upgrade. I use a lot of plug-ins on this site so I’m a bit weary, but I’ll probably brave it later today.

Apple has finally added Aperture and iPhoto support for the Nikon D300s and a few other cameras including the Canon 7D. Considering the length of time the D300s in particular has been available it seems to have taken the company a long time to get Aperture support for the Camera, leading once again to frustration amongst users with Apple over the pace at which it adds new camera support. Other Cameras now supported in the update include the Eos 1D Mk IV, The Nikon D3s, The Nikon D3000, Canon G11 and the afore mentioned Canon 7D. Even if you’re not an Aperture user and you have one of these cameras (and a mac) you should download the update anyway, as it will add support to Preview and quicklook for their raw files.

Check out MacUpdate Promo Holiday Bundle. I had bought one of their bundle’s before and so keep getting emails whenever they release a new one. I normally don’t pay that much attention to them but there’s some good applications in here for a very low price. Certainly worth getting hold of are PathFinder, Socialite, Drag Thing and Speed Download. Oh, and iPod rip is pretty handy to have too. I was just about to buy socialite as my trial was ending so now I get a bunch of other stuff too! See, sometimes it pays to read your junk mail.

Following up my earlier review of the magic mouse, and thanks to Don in the comments for pointing it out, BetterTouchTool is a small application for OS X that gives you a third mouse click with the Magic Mouse. It does more than that though. It allows you to do all sorts of custom gestures. For example, now If I put my whole hand on the mouse for a second it brings up the application switcher, and swiping down with two fingers is the equivalent of hitting the end key. It’s pretty cool and worth checking out if you have a magic mouse.

Mac Beta of Chrome is now available