It's easy to get accustomed to taking the various features and tools within Aperture at face value without really thinking any further about what they might have to offer. But if you're willing to think outside the box a tad, you may discover a lot of untapped potential. For example, on the surface, the Book tool in Aperture exists to let you create books from your images. As you know, there are options for various layouts, with and without text. You can opt to have Apple generate the books (and by the way, their quality is now quite impressive) or generate a PDF to send to the printer of your choice. But did you realize that you can use the Book tool to create posters or text slides for use in a slideshow?

If you’re a US citizen there can be major benefits to registering your images with the Copyright office. Basically if you discover someone using your images without paying for them, and you’ve registered them, you are in a much better...

Deciding to use only Aperture to organize your photographs is not a "limiting choice." With Apple's elegantly designed integration, pictures from your Aperture library will show up, and can be used, in iLife, iWork and several other Mac and 3rd-party...

Do you know what Aperture is doing other than what you are doing? Most likely, not. Unless you are keeping an eye at the activity status from the Control Bar. But what if your control bar is hidden? And...

As a nature photographer, I travel a lot and depend on Aperture and my MacBook Pro while on the road. There’s no doubt in my mind that using Aperture is the most efficient way to manage my images - both...

Most of the time I don’t have a lot of noise in my images. Partially that’s because of the cameras I use, and partially it’s because I try to make sure not to underexpose images. I rarely use ISOs higher...

Last week, I finally gave up on a long-time personal policy that neatly divided my entire collection of images between professional photographs and personal pictures, between Aperture and iPhoto. I've decided to move everything and merge my entire collection into...

I’ve had to give a number of presentations recently in a variety of arenas and I want to share some of my observations. Most of the time I use my own projector - the original Canon Realis. That way I...

Chris Breen and I sat down to chat about Beijing, photography, and Aperture in the Main Press Center at the Olympics. It's a great conversation with an old friend, and there are plently of links to other goodies too. You...

Inside Aperture reader Alfred Lanctot sent me a "cool" tip that I think you'll find useful. When you're working with the "Highlight Hot & Cold Areas" display on in Aperture 2.1, you can temporarily disable it by clicking and holding...

There's been some interesting conversation, bordering on FUD, about Aperture's Edit Plug-In architecture, saying that it really provides no advantages over using an external editor. Micah Walter, whom you may recognize as a contributor to this blog, has published a...

Noise Ninja 2.0 was just released for Aperture 2.1 as a plug-in. This is a welcome addition since Noise Ninja enjoys a reputation as being one of the better noise removal products in the industry. I gave it a test...

This coming Monday I board a plane to Beijing to help Kodak and Apple in the Olympic Media Center. In addition to the excitement that comes with my first visit to China, not to mention my first media pass for...

If your new camera doesn't appear on the Digital camera RAW formats supported Knowledgebase document, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't add its Raw files to your existing Aperture library. Thanks to baseline DNG support in the current version...

One of the features that LightRoom users miss in Aperture is image presets. Aperture has it's 'per brick' presets which are quite handy, but LightRoom will save pretty well all types of adjustment as a single preset that can be...

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was working on a video tutorial series for Aperture - and because of that I occasionally come across some features of Aperture that I really hadn’t paid much attention to or was...

One of those things I view as a necessary evil, is making cards with some of my images on them. It’s such a great idea on the surface to showcase your photography by having cards that you use to send...

If you haven't discovered some of the hidden layout options yet in Aperture 2.1, I'll show you where they are. Once discovered, you'll look at this program in a new light. It's like having an application within an application.

I’ve been working on a video tutorial series for Aperture and in the course of creating each tutorial I often rediscover some of the little and not so little gems that make Aperture so outstanding. It’s easy to become complacent...

Nik Software released Viveza for Aperture yesterday. This is a plug-in that you’re going to want to give a test drive. It’s really pretty amazing software when you put it through its paces. I first saw a demo of Viveza...