On a gray and snowy winter day, Chicago's skyline looks decidedly drab and featureless. Despite the impressive assemblage of towering buildings, including three of America's tallest skycrapers (Sears Tower, John Hancock Center, and Aon Center), the urban skyline doesn't seem to amount to anything much. Shall we wait for another season and come back to a time with better light to photograph Chicago's skyline? Not everyone has that luxury. I certainly don't. The best I can do, under this circumstance, is to capture perfectly exposed RAW image files of the Chicago skyline, capture as much image detail and information possible, and then work on it in post-production. Of course, using Aperture.

The best technique I learned on the most proper exposure from digital capture was to take the brightest possible exposure without over-exposing the image. This works for me. Keeping this rule of digital exposure in mind, I snapped several frames of the Chicago skyline, bracketing my exposure.

I know that the tonal range of the original RAW image output will be drab and lifeless. But I'm banking on Aperture's enhancement capabilities to bring out the brilliant colors under that layer of drabness.

First, and because of the recommended proper exposure, I want to know which of the images I shot is the brightest without being overexposed. I do this in Aperture by checking View > Highlight Hot Areas from the menu bar at the top (or press Option+Shift+H). In any selected image, this gives me an instant visual feedback by showing (in red) the over-exposed areas.

Second, and once I've identified the properly exposed images by giving them a rating of 4, I go through them and select which one I like best, upgrading the photos with a 5-star rating. To stay organized, I use Smart Albums so I can easily keep track of both the 4-star and 5-star selections.

And third, with the selected final image, I go into the adjustment stage. I enter full screen mode (press F) and bring out the adjustment HUD (press H).

I begin with what may be the most unused and least appreciated adjustment tools, the Tint wheels. I start with the White tint wheel (located at the right-most area in the row), then move to the Gray (at the center), and finally the Black (at the left-most area). In some instances, I find myself going back to the White Tint wheel, and then a bit on the Gray Tint wheel. The easiest way to do adjustments is by clicking on the Eyedropper button located below each of the Tint wheels. Eventually however, and for refined adjustments, you might just want to click and move around the circle inside each of the Tint wheels. Adjustments are shown in real time.

My next step is to adjust Contrast, Exposure, Brightness and Saturation. I move each of the four sliders left to right, and combine the most optimized positioning or level in the 4 sliders till I get the desired result.

I then further fine-tune the image using the Levels tool, making sure that the Quarter Tones setting is checked. I often adjust levels based on Luminance or RGB, but then I go into the individual Red, Green and Blue channels when necessary. Adjusting Levels with the Quarter Tones turned on is, for me, an incredible way to adjust the image colors in the most accurate way possible, and to preserve proper (or acceptable) exposure.

After that, when I need to make more exposure adjustments, I play around with the Highlights & Shadows.

The next steps are then devoted to working on the White Balance with Temperature and Tint sliders or the eyedropper tool; and also the Color's Hue, Saturation, Luminance and Range. I sometimes go back to some of my previous adjustments and refine my previous adjustments.

My last step, as always, is Noise Reduction. When correcting or reducing the "noise" of an image, I always make sure that I zoom into 100 percent view by pressing the Z key. I play around with both the Radius and Edge Details. At a hundred percent view, I can clearly see the changes. I press Z again to toggle in and out of full view as often as necessary.

As a final touch, I sometimes add Sharpen and Edge Sharpen corrections. I add these last two steps only when necessary. I am often happy with just the Sharpen commands, and often ignore the Edge Sharpen.

Bringing out brilliant colors is often easier and faster inside Aperture when compared to round-tripping the image to Photoshop CS3. The results are often comparable, and sometimes, with practice, even better. And as always, it is faster. I also like the fact that I can easily create as many different versions as necessary without bloating my hard drive, and despite all the image color adjustments I do in several versions, the original remains untouched. Because of these advantages, I often adjust the colors first inside Aperture before bringing it out to Photoshop CS3 for localized editing and other adjustments.

Thanks to Apple's Aperture, even in the middle of winter, Chicago's skyline pops with deep, brilliant colors.