Apple has given us something for the weekend: a 2.1 update for Aperture. Normally a "point" update wouldn't get a mention, but this one introduces a single feature that could be enough to wrest photographers away from its rival, Adobe's Lightroom.
The feature is dodge and burn, and is not even real new feature, just an example plugin from Apple to showcase the new plugin support introduced in this release. This is big because now anybody can write image manipulation tools. Lightroom only supports export plugins. These additions mean that more can be achieved in Aperture without taking a trip to Photoshop. And all of those edits remain non-destructive. If you are shooting RAW (and if not, why not?) then your original files will never be touched.
The dodging and burning actually occurs in a new window, which pops up after Aperture has "prepared" the image. The first time takes a few seconds on a MacBook, but is no slower than opening the image in Photoshop. There are also settings to fade, saturate, sharpen, blur and add contrast. Very impressive stuff. This should have Adobe running to catch up.
Press release [Apple]
