Every time you launch Aperture, a window with a welcome message and a list of quick options will pop up. This is the default setting. It's as if Aperture is saying, "Hello, how are you--how may I help you today?" It's an action-specific lead that directs you to what, exactly, you want to do.

But what's really great about the Aperture welcome screen is that it immediately provides you choices. Depending on what you want to do, you can go right ahead and do it.

The first choice available to you is "View the Tutorials." When you select this, it automatically directs your default browser to open a page in Apple's Aperture website where you can view all the free instructional QuickTime clips. This requires an Internet connection.

When selecting the second option, "Import your iPhoto Library," you can bring to Aperture all the photos from your iPhoto library.

Third, clicking on "Import Photos from a Folder or Disk" will give you the option to access photo files from different connected sources that includes CDs and DVDs, flash media, as well as internal and external hard drives.

Fourth, when you are shooting and you want to import your photos into Aperture, the available option you might want to select is to "Import Photos from a Memory Card or Camera." Clicking on this will direct Aperture to link up to a connected camera or a media card reader. Make sure though that Aperture is selected as your default application. You can set this behavior in Aperture's preference pane.

And finally, your fifth choice, which is to "Start Using Aperture," will bring you to the main interface.

From a usability standpoint, this start up screen is functional because it saves you a click or two when doing what you want to do right away. It provides a fast start-up that allows you to do the task at hand. The first few times when you are using Aperture, you will most likely click on "View the Tutorials" and "Import your iPhoto Library." But as you go along, and in the long run, you will end up selecting "Import Photos from a Folder or Disk" and "Import Photos from a Memory Card or Camera." And since you can do all of these from the main interface, you will then somehow end up habitually clicking on "Start using Aperture." When this happens, you might as well skip the welcome screen and jump right into Aperture. So, depending on which stage you happen to be as an Aperture user, the options are available to you right away from within the welcome screen.

From personal experience, and even though I know that I will go directly into Aperture, I still let Aperture's welcome screen "welcome" me. I know this is useless and unnecessary, but its effect on me is more psychological than anything else. It somehow gets me ready and puts me in the mood to work in Aperture.

If such sentimentality is meaningless to you, you can just skip the welcome screen and jump right into Aperture. Next time it pops up, uncheck the box where it says "Show the Welcome Screen at Startup" and when you run Aperture again, it will automatically, directly and readily launch into the main interface. If at some point in the future you change your mind, you can just as easily re-enable it.

There are a number of reasons why you'd want to disable the welcome screen. A couple of instances comes to mind: if you want to add Aperture as one of your Mac's startup items when powering it on or if you want to use Automator or AppleScript to process images even when Aperture is not already open. But if you typically independently fire up Aperture, as most of us do, you might want the reassuring welcome screen to pop up every time.

Personally, and I suspect a few photographers might feel the same way, I still continue to prefer that the Welcome Screen remains a part of the launch ritual. While it takes a few more seconds to start up, and though it requires pressing the "Continue" button, it somehow feels the right and comfortable thing to do. Of course, you can dispense with the "formalities" and dive right into Aperture.

[Note: Dominique James is professional photographer based in New York. He is an Apple Certified Trainer for Aperture 2.0. Click here to send him email or check out his websites at The Studio and The Playground. Thank you.]