Review: Apple Aperture 3

Sharing Made Easy
With this release, Apple has added a few new features that, while useful for pros, will most likely appeal more to enthusiasts.

Faces, a beefed-up and slightly tweaked version of the iPhoto tool of the same name, is one of the most enjoyable, efflcient facerecognition software programs we’ve used. Because it’s so streamlined and fun, you might actually start tagging your pictures to make them easier to sort and to locate pictures of speciflc people. Click on the Faces icon on the top of the screen to search and tag people from the project you’re in; with no project selected, it will tag your entire library. This differentiation is not present in iPhoto, and will be particularly useful in Aperture for, say, wedding photographers who want to name just the members of that wedding party in their metadata.

Places, which is another tool from iPhoto, has similarly been spiffed up and added to Aperture. If your pictures contain location data, Aperture can automatically add your images to a map as pins.

Also built into this version of Aperture: Syncing with Facebook and Flickr. You no longer need software plug-ins for sharing. Once you set this up by inputting your account and password information, you’ll be able to upload to Facebook or Flickr simply by selecting a set of images and clicking the appropriate button. Facebook will ask you to choose your privacy settings (unfortunately, the only choices are to share with friends, friends of friends, or everyone—if you want more speciflc settings you’ll have to do that within Facebook itself). Then just click Publish. To add more images to that Facebook album, drag and drop into it. And since they’re synced, you can delete images this way, too. Flickr works similarly.