Apple has added image-editing plug-ins to Aperture in this free update to owners of 2.0. The first plug-in is Dodge and Burn, but may more are coming. From the Aperture Resources page:

Aperture 2 includes a powerful plug-in architecture for the seamless integration of popular third-party image editing software, such as Nik Software's Viveza and PictureCode's Noise Ninja (both available soon).

Aperture 2.1 also includes an Apple developed plug-in, Dodge & Burn, that provides tools for making selective edits of images with dodge (lighten), burn (darken), blur, sharpen, and saturation effects.

The free Imaging Plug-in Software Developer Kit (SDK) for Aperture will be available through the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) soon. Interested developers should contact Apple at aperturedeveloper@apple.com.

There is a new movie that shows Dodge and Burn in operation.
This considerably opens up the the usefulness of Aperture and will create a whole ecosystem of very useful additions. I will be very interested to see the SDK when it arrives.

In addition to the plug-in, there are a host of other features added:

• Customize Default Adjustment Set. You can now specify which adjustments appear by default in the Adjustments Inspector/HUD.

• Updated Crop Tool. A simplified UI makes it easier to preserve an image’s original aspect ratio, match the aspect ratio of your display, or use one of the standard preset aspect ratios.

• Sorting in All Projects View. A contextual menu allows you to sort the All Projects view in ascending or descending date order.
• Show on Map A contextual menu allows you to choose the Show on Map by right-clicking (or Control-clicking) on an image that contains GPS
data.

• Access to Toolbar on Second Display. When using multiple displays in Full Screen mode, the Full Screen toolbar is now accessible on a second display.

• “Snapshots” book theme. This additional theme includes new “photo border” frames in which to place images.

• Flip Images. You can now flip images horizontally or vertically within Aperture.

• Vignette. The range of gamma and exposure settings available has been expanded.

• Save Books as JPEG or TIFF images. Automator workflows have been added to the PDF pop-up menu in the Print Book window to automatically generate JPEG or TIFF images from book pages.

• Update EXIF from Master. This command allows Aperture to reread EXIF from master images after they have been imported.

• 8-bit External Editor support. Preferences settings have been updated to allow you to send images to an external editor as either 8-bit or 16-bit TIFF or PSD files.

• Extended AppleScript support. The “Reveal” verb in the AppleScript dictionary has been extended to include containers such as projects and albums.

The update also includes fixes that impact a number of other areas, including import, Quick Preview, All Projects view, image adjustments, books, printing and export.To get the update (41 Mbytes), go to the Aperture Downloads page. Then check the Late Breaking News from the Help menu.

[Late updates:]

Rob Galbraith has a particularly good write-up on his site.

The catch with the plug-ins is that they work on a copy of the original image, just like round-tripping to an external application like photoshop -- they are not integrated into the RAW processing that Aperture does. This means that you have to separate your plug-in adjustment workflow from your Aperture adjustment workflow, deciding what you are going to do first, last, and in the middle.

The logic of this implementation is understandable when you consider what will happen long-term, and what Apple has control over. Apple controls its own built-in adjustments and processing so can guarantee that they will stay intact, or be enhanced (like the RAW 2.0 processing update we received recently). But the same guarantees cannot be made for third-party plug-ins, so they have to create and store the intermediate images.

The improved crop is still lacking a basic setting: Current. There is no way to scale (except by math and typing) an image that has been custom-cropped and keep the same aspect ratio. There is also no "flip" option that keeps the clip rectangle the same , but rotates it 90 degrees.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Plug-ins