With regular and consistent use, many long-time Aperture users may have already hit upon a fairly simple, efficient and straightforward workflow--a workflow that, perhaps, has even already calcified into a habit. Resorting to an almost automatic, repetitive repertoire of keyboard and mouse commands, expert Aperture users can go through the entire workflow, from start to finish, without thinking their way around the software. Naturally, and to a certain extent, this can begin to feel a little boring.

Having gone down the same workflow road more than a thousand or a million times before, photographers very well know where they will end up, even accurately pre-visualizing how the final images will look like. They've already seen it in their minds, sans the drama, surprise and excitement of the workflow.

Photographers who have already achieved this level of mastery will naturally find Aperture not only an able but also perhaps a comforting work tool. The flow of post-production process hums along nicely. The streamlined workflow has eliminated much of what used to be unexpected and unnecessary as well as everything else that used to cause a lot of trouble, headache and heartache. In fact, working in Aperture this way can even sometimes evoke a Zen-like experience.

Being able to work in Aperture without thinking about the software is arguably Aperture's greatest achievement as a photography management and workflow tool. The application recedes into the background, thereby allowing the photographer to concentrate on the work and focus on his photographs. Everything a photographer might want to do with his pictures, step by step, can somehow be done almost instinctively, as if on automatic pilot.

This is all well and good. And many will argue that that's exactly how it should be. However, because a photographer has developed a singular and typical way of working in Aperture, he might tend miss out on some of the other powerful things that it can do, or other ways to do the same thing. Take for instance, something as simple as going in and out of full screen view. Most will find that the easiest and fastest method is to simply press the F key. There are, of course, two other ways to do it--by clicking the Full Screen button on the toolbar or by choosing View > Full Screen from the menu bar. For sure, the keyboard shortcut would be the fastest and easiest way, but that's not the only way.

The way the software has been designed, everything that a photographer may want to do in Aperture can most likely be done in two or three different ways. Learning or getting reacquainted with the other ways may give the photographer a chance to further refine his workflow. And who knows, a new discovery or two can even perhaps spark a more exciting way to work in Aperture.