The emergence of the iPhone as a preferred camera

Once the iPhone 4s came out with its great camera, and because of my own general laziness, I don’t bring my “real” camera out anymore unless I specifically need it. I feel the most important part of any photography workflow is to capture the moment first, and a technically correct photo second. Obviously, if you’re shooting an event professionally you’ll want both. For most of us, though, if we are skilled at photographic composition we can take a perfectly fine photo with the iPhone most of the time. And Apple is set to improve the sharing capabilities drastically — in iOS 6, which will be available to the public this fall, I can take a photo and have it posted to Facebook almost immediately thanks to the deep integration with the social network.

The iPhone as a camera also really impresses me. Below are two iPhone photos I snapped that I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out. I was surprised for two reasons: For the shot of the kid, I was able to snap a credible photo, edit it, and post to Facebook all from my iPhone in about two minutes. For the shot of The Wall, I was amazed at how well a photo taken at night, from about 300 feet, came out on a cell phone camera.

Neal Vitullo and the Vipers, Warwick City Hall

Roger Waters, Fenway Pahk.

Post-processing

There are two post-processing tools I use: Lightroom 4.0 and Aperture 3.3. Each is a great program, and you’d be well-served with either. I like Lightroom’s workflow a little better, and the fact that unlike Aperture, my photos aren’t contained in a single database. Aperture, however, allows me to also sync my photos directly to iOS, and take advantage of Photo Stream. Because I float between the two editors, I also keep a clean copy of my master images in a separate folder.

Plug Ins:

There are two Topaz Labs plug-ins I love: Denoise, and B&W Effects. Denoise is indispensable for reducing noise from high-ISO pictures. My DSLR images of rock bands tend to be in the 32000-64000 ISO range, which generates a ton of noise.  Denoise allows me to drastically reduce, if not eliminate, the noise.

I’m color blind, so I tend to convert my images to black and white since I might not be able to tell if the photo is a little extra blue. I also grew up shooting black and white (even developing photos by hand in our bathroom with my dad), so for me, B&W holds a lot of nostalgia. B&W Effects by Topaz has a wide range of presets that allows me to get close to the image I want. It also has eight Collections that encompass a broad smattering of styles.

iOS and Sharing

I sync almost all of my photos to my iPad. Usually, it’s to show them off if someone wants to see my work. Or, I’m showing the pictures of a family event with the participants. One feature for sharing I absolutely adore is Photo Journals in iPhoto for iOS. I can group the photos I want into a Journal, then share them via iCloud and just mail off a link to the Journal. I was hoping that this feature would make it to OS X iPhoto when Mountain Lion shipped, but, alas, it didn’t. In fact, for most post-processing, I find that iOS iPhoto does a remarkable job with light adjustments and cropping.

Another valuable I keep in my camera bag is the Camera Connection kit. Often after a shoot with my DSLR, I’ll import the photos from my SD card into my iPad and quickly determine the keepers on the larger screen.

Final Frame

It’s amazing at how quickly technology has altered the photography field. It seems like just yesterday I was hanging strips of negatives up to dry. If you had told me even a year ago that more than 60 percent of the photos I take would never touch my Mac, I’d have laughed. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

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I’d be lying if it was a match made in heaven.  Overall I found Aperture slow, especially when previewing images. However, with Aperture 3.3, recently introduced at WWDC, I find myself singing its praises. There are three things I’m going to share with you that I really like: faster previews, better white balance and shared iPhoto and Aperture libraries.

Faster preview after import

Aperture now has an option to use the camera preview of images after import. This reduces that lengthy period after an import where Aperture pretty much let you do nothing. As someone for whom a light day of shooting means 150+ images, this is a life saver. I’ve noticed an overall improvement in image previews. I can’t tell if it’s because Aperture is still using the camera previews, or if they just made the program snappier overall.

Better white balance

Most often, I’m doing event photography (car shows, bands, demolition derbies and the like). None of these are known for great lighting and stationary models. As a result, if a photo captured the mood perfectly, but required too much post-processing to make it presentable, I’d just skip over it.

When I read that Apple included a skin tone white balance in this latest version I was intrigued. Most of the time I’d do a manual white balance filter by choosing a section of the image that was the most neutral and praying for a good result. To test the feature out, I experimented with an image of my friend Neal playing in a poorly lit club with a can light right above his head.

Left image is the original; right is with skin tone white balance applied.

It’s still not a great image. Some of the orange of the guitar is lost, but the skin tone is a little better and the coloring on the shirt is more accurate. I was impressed with how well Aperture handled the image though. This shot is a good representation of the conditions I shoot in and I can’t wait to use the skin white balance on the next band shoot.

Using the white-balance setting is easy. On the Adjustments tab, choose skin tone white balance and then use the eye dropper to choose the flesh area you want to balance the image against.

Shared iPhoto and Aperture libraries

You can finally share libraries between iPhoto and Aperture now (although only one program can access the library at a time). This helps keep unified libraries if you use the Add Image to iPhoto feature of Safari, or want to use iPhoto to do a quick import. Where I hope this is leading to is the next version of iPhoto that will allow albums and events created in iPhoto for iOS to show up on OS X.

Final thoughts

While I’ve read some people saying that Aperture 3.3 could be considered Aperture 4.0, I don’t share that view. While the features list is lengthy, there aren’t enough improvements to warrant a 4.0 version tag. That said, since the release of this version was tied to the introduction of the Retina MacBook Pro, Apple could have just upgraded it for the Retina display and called it a day. What these improvements do tell me is that Apple is serious about this program and its future.

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Now, with iCloud and Photo Stream, that hassle has been eliminated. Once I take a photo with my iPhone, as long as all my devices are connected to a Wi-Fi network, my photo will appear on all of them. My photos also appear on my Mac (in either Aperture or iPhoto, so long as they’re installed), or in the My Pictures folder on Windows. It’s one part of iCloud I can say worked exactly as advertised, but even so, it has both strengths and flaws.

Setting up Photo Stream

On a Mac: Go to the iCloud System Preferences pane and make sure Photo Stream is checked.

iPhoto: To enable Photo Stream in iPhoto, just go into the Preferences and make sure Photo Stream is checked.

Once you’ve done that, click on Photo Stream in the sidebar and you’ll see your photos.

Aperture: To enable Photo Stream in Aperture, just go into Preferences and make sure Photo Stream is checked. In this case, I’ve intentionally left Upload unchecked since I don’t want photos imported from my DSLR to go into the Photo Stream; just those I sync.

Once that’s done, click on Photo Stream in the sidebar to see your synced photos.

On a PC: First, download and install the iCloud Control Panel. Once you launch it — you guessed it — make sure Photo Stream is checked. You will also need to click on Options next to it to specify the Upload and Downloads directory.

The gotcha: You can’t delete from Photo Stream

Photo Stream’s directive is simple: keep either the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken or the last 30 days worth, whichever comes first. Update: It’s only the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken on an iOS device, not on iCloud.com. But right now, it seems to require a chicken, two goats, and a shaman to get a photo deleted. None of my devices can delete directly from Photo Stream, and deleting the source image on the device where it originally appeared doesn’t delete it from Photo Stream.

I’m perfectly fine with Photo Stream uploading my Camera Roll on a moment’s notice. What I’m not thrilled with is not being able to delete from Photo Stream. Part of my job description is taking iOS screenshots and during a heavy review week (like this week), I’ll take a ton of screenshots. I don’t need them or want them after they’ve been put in the article. Now, I’m kinda stuck with them. There’s been a lot of attention paid to this Photo Stream failing, so I expect Apple to issue a fix soon.

Update: Apple points out that you can delete photos, but only by completely resetting your Photo Stream data, and removing all images stored there:

• You can reset your Photo Stream at icloud.com. This removes your photos from iCloud but keeps photos already on the device. For more information, see Photo Stream Help.
• Photo Stream photos can be removed from your device by turning Photo Stream off in iOS settings or in OS X Lion System Preferences. You can also delete any photos imported into your iPhoto or Aperture library on a Mac, or in the folder they’re imported to on a PC.

Until then, be careful what you take pictures of if you plan to make Photo Stream a part of your digital life.

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Collecting GPS information

Two important pieces of info are required for adding GPS data to your photos. The first is the latitude and longitude where the photo was taken. The second, equally critical piece of information, is the date and time the camera was at that location. This is the key to automatically matching up the GPS data with photos.

When it comes to figuring out where a shot was taken, there are three main sources that myTracks can use:

1. GPS data logger. One way to collect this information is to invest in a GPS data logger. There are several Mac-friendly GPS data loggers on the market to choose from. These standalone units will keep track of where you and your camera have been without draining your other device batteries. myTracks can then import the location information directly from the logger itself, or indirectly through GPX or KML files. Under the hood, myTracks uses the open-source library LoadMyTracks to support a wide range of GPS devices. If you find that your device is not supported, you may need to use a utility like HoudahGPS to convert the data to a format that myTracks supports.

2. iPhone sync. If you have an iPhone, then you already have a basic GPS logger. In fact, I’ve found the tracking capabilities of the iOS version of myTracks to be great, and it offers a built-in sync feature that will allow you to transfer location information directly from your iPhone to the Mac version of myTracks. If you prefer using a different GPS tracking app, then you’ll need to export the data and import it into myTracks using either the GPX or KML file format.

3. Track from photos. The simplest way to collect the location information you need is to take a series of reference photos along the way with the default camera app that came with your iPhone. Provided you are adding location information to your photos on your iPhone, myTracks can create a track from your iPhone’s library. From the Tools menu in myTracks, select “Create track from photos…” and select the photos you want to create a track from.

Adding GPS Information to your photos

Now that you have your track loaded into myTracks, the first thing you will want to do is ensure that your camera’s clock is in sync with your GPS data, as well as any of the other cameras you may use. Once you’ve made any time adjustments to your photos, you’re ready to add the GPS info. MyTracks supports adding GPS location information to photos in iPhoto, Aperture and Adobe Lightroom as well as any folder of images on your Mac. The following steps are for iPhoto ’11, since that’s the program most will likely use:

1. After importing tracks into myTracks, select the track that has the GPS information you want to sync.
2. Open iPhoto and select the photos you want to add the GPS information to.
3. Drag the photos from iPhoto onto myTracks.
4. Make any final adjustments in myTracks’s Pool of Photos to align the GPS track info with the photo time stamp.
5. Click Start in myTracks Pool of Photos and select the GeoTag option.
6. In iPhoto, select the photos you tagged, and from the Photo menu, “Rescan for Location.”

Reviewing and sharing your mapped photos

Once you have added the GPS information, using it to help illustrate your life’s adventures is much easier. You can sync your track and photos to the iPad version of myTracks, or post the images to one of the many online photo sharing sites that support geotagged photos, including Flickr.

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After only a few days use, Syncomatic has already become one of my most-used apps, since it lets me keep my iPhone’s camera roll clear and uncluttered, while also making sure I don’t lose a worthwhile clip or snapshot in the process. It works by monitoring your iPhone’s on-device photo and video library, and automatically grabbing new photos and videos when you’re near your Mac, putting them in either a folder of your choosing, or your iPhoto or Aperture library. Photo Stream in iOS 5 will do something similar, but Syncomatic is available now, is only limited by the size of your hard drive, and also offers multiple destination syncing options instead of just one. Here’s how to get it up and running yourself:

1. Install the Syncomatic iOS app to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
2. Download and install the Syncomatic Mac companion client (direct link to download file).
3. Click on the Syncomatic icon in the Menu bar on your Mac and go to “Preferences.”
4. Choose whether you want Syncomatic to launch automatically, and pick a destination for your synced iPhone photos and videos. You can choose a folder, sync to either iPhoto or Aperture, or choose a combination of all three.
5. In the iOS app on your iPhone (or other iOS device), click the gear icon in the top right corner to enter the Settings menu.
6. Choose your destination Mac from the “Mac to Sync With” menu. If you have the Mac client installed correctly and are on the same Wi-Fi network, it should automatically appear.
7. Your Mac will display a four digit PIN. Enter that PIN into the iOS app when prompted.
8. Turn Sync on.

Now, whenever you’re within range of your Mac and connected to the same local Wi-Fi network, photos and videos will automatically be transferred to your Mac from your device. Syncomatic will also display a badge number with a count of how many photos or videos remain to be synced since it last connected, so that you know when everything’s been moved over to your Mac.

If you’re looking for a similar option, but would rather save the $2, PhotoSync offers similar functionality, albeit without automatic background syncing. For me, the set-it-and-forget-it aspect of Syncomatic justifies the extra expense.

My iPhone camera roll has always been a mess, but thanks to Syncomatic, I have little excuse not to get in there and clean it up once in a while. This is a must-have for mobile photo geeks, especially until iOS 5 arrives this fall, and likely beyond because of its customization options.

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Step 1: The Preferences Panel

After opening Aperture’s Preferences window and choosing the Import tab, you can adjust a few rudimentary options. The biggest decision you will have to make is whether Aperture will open when a camera is connected. If you do not use an iOS device in addition to your digital camera this can be an easy choice: set it to open Aperture. Your decision can get a little complicated if you do use an iOS device. OS X detects iOS devices as cameras, so every time you sync your device, Aperture will also load. This can get annoying, so I load Aperture manually when I plug in my camera (or SD card).

The Default Import Location allows you to choose between a New Project or another selected location in Aperture. I’ll get into this a little deeper in later, but in my case I’ve accepted the defaults here.

Autosplit into Projects lets you adjust the time frame on how Aperture auto-creates projects (One project per day, One project per week, Two-hour, or eight hour gaps). This is going to depend on your shooting style. If a day-long shoot for you constitutes true event or project, like a wedding shoot, you’ll be well served with One Project per Day. On the other hand, if you shoot a lot of little things all week but wouldn’t call it an event, you can set it to “One project per week.” I fall into that category, so that’s the setting I choose.

Step 2: Importing Photos

Once Aperture has loaded, click the Import button at the top of the screen. This will bring up the Import window. By default, all images on the camera are checked for import. If you don’t want that, simply click Uncheck All and you can select what ones you do in fact want to import.

By default, Aperture wants to import the photos into a new, Untitled project. By clicking in the field next to Project Name you can change the name of the newly-created project. Also, if you click an existing project in the left pane the photos will be imported there.

Again, what projects you import to will depend greatly on your shooting style. If I’m shooting a true event, like a concert or show, where I’ll have an empty SD card at the start of the shoot, I’ll create a project based on that shoot (the band name and date of the event). However, most of my shoots tend to be onesey-twosey shoots, or nothing that coherently falls together in a project of any stretch. For those, I have a generic dumping ground project called Imports where I put the shots while I sort through them.

There’s no hard and fast rule on assigning projects, and your method will change over time. The good news is, assigning photos to a project isn’t a one-time affair. If you’re not happy with where a photo is assigned, you can just drag it to a new project.

Step 3: Cleaning Up and Taking Out the Trash

Arguably the most important part of the import is accepting that not all your photos are fantastic shots. It’s important during the import to give your capture a critical eye and unless there’s a good reason to keep it, trash it. Don’t litter your library with substandard shots if you can help it. That said, sometimes the only shot of a memorable event is a poor shot, in which case a bad photo is sometimes better than none, but try and take a critical eye to your art.

Another good habit to get into when you import photos is to geotag them as well as assign keyword. If your camera doesn’t have a GPS, and you have an iPhone, you can use your iPhone to geotag the photo. Just take one photo on site with your iPhone and in Aperture, go to Places, and then choose “Import GPS from iPhone Photos” from the GPS button.

Keywording is one of my OCD habits. I like to assign photos some common tags (Boston, Outdoors, Night,) so I can easily find them later.

That’s my basic guide to importing photos with Aperture. If you shoot RAW, or if you want to get more complicated, your process may become much more involved. If you feel like I’ve missed any major tips for new users, please include them in the comments.

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I’m sure I know what you’re grumbling right now: “iPhoto/Aperture does that, what’s the big deal?” Well, if you want to get right to the good stuff — all the good stuff — without scrubbing through the chaff first, there may be a better way to address the situation.

The situation as I see it, looks something like this:

• Over time, I’ve used iPhoto, so I have some photos there.
• I also, and exclusively now, use Aperture.
• I’ve got random video clips from the point-and-shoot camera that are scattered around Finder and iPhoto.
• I’ve got Flip video in the Flip version of iPhoto.
• I’ve got photos and HD video from my iPhone 4 in Aperture.

I realize that maybe I’m just sorely disorganized (ok, I know I am), but I’m guessing similar conditions probably exist in many a household out there in reader-land. Sharing all of this from my Mac is one thing. At least it’s all right there, so even if I have to switch apps and dig a little bit, I can get to it. But then there’s the real kicker: How do I elegantly get all of the good stuff synced to my mobile iDevice to share on the go?

My Solution

The solution I came up with isn’t necessarily the best (please share your own in the comments for the good of the community!), but it has certainly proven to suit my needs. Basically, I siphon all of the photos and personal video from their various locations (older iPhoto libraries, various Aperture libraries, Flip Video, Finder, and so on) and drop them all into a single iPhoto library (which I’ve named ‘sync’).

If you’re unfamiliar with creating a new iPhoto library, it’s quite easy. When you launch iPhoto, hold down the Option key, and a dialogue will ask you if you want to select a different library, or create a new one. Once I created the new library and dragged all my media in, I made sure it was organized in a way that made sense for me to show it off. So I’ve got ‘Family 2009′, ‘Family 2010′, ‘Photography’, and ‘Home Movies’ albums for easy access to everything. Of course, you may want to drill down to specific events like iPhoto and Aperture do, so do whatever makes most sense for your needs.

The beauty of this particular solution is that since Aperture is my main photo application, iPhoto is left untouched. Therefore, leaving the ‘sync’ library as the default in iPhoto means it’s always available for syncing to my iPhone. And of course if I’m at home I can pull up iPhoto on the MacBook or big screen to easily share the content that I want without having to sift through tons of other media that isn’t nearly as interesting.

The downside here is that whenever you have new photos or videos, you have to manually drag and drop them into your new ‘Sync’ iPhoto library. Although with a little time and know-how, Automator could be utilized to solve this problem as well.

If you’ve run into the same problem, and developed your own workaround, we’d love to hear your solution as well.

In this TechUniversity Aperture 101 screencast (subscription required), we’ll take a look at a number of areas of the application to help you get up and running right away.

Topics that we’ll cover:

• Importing photos
• Organizing photos
• Editing photos
• Sharing photos
• Exporting photos

Below is a sample of the video. The full screencast clocks in at just under 17 minutes.

iTunes

The first time you noticed a smart “anything with a purple icon” was probably in iTunes. Besides OS X, iTunes is the only piece of software to ship with several built-in smart items. You’ve seen them before, specifically the 90’s Music, Classical Music and Recently Played playlists, to name a few. If you’ve read our previous articles, you know how those work now (and can just right click them to edit their criteria).

But when it comes to iTunes, one thing that invariably also comes to mind is an iPod. If you have at least one iPod, chances are you probably have several iPods. As such, you can set each iPod to sync specific music, playlists or even smart playlists. But since oftentimes our music libraries are larger than the capacity of our iPods, Apple has built in a few unique twists in smart playlist support for iTunes to “shuffle things up.” Here’s a few ideas to get some unique use out of them. (Keep in mind, you can sync multiple playlists, allowing you to mix and match some of these unique smart playlists with your own favorite content.)

Random Tunes

If you have a small iPod, such as an iPod shuffle, you might try a smart playlist that just pulls a random sampling of your music.

Music I Never Listen To

As Apple (perhaps secretly?) wants iTunes to become the Google of your media collection, it has built in tracking of how often you listen to your content. You could create a playlist that showed you all items with a play count of less than 1 for a jam list of music you’ve never heard.

My Top 10

If you are one to tag your songs with star ratings, you could create a playlist of your all time 10 best tunes, based on rating and frequency of play.

iPhoto

The iPhoto equivalent is, as you might have guessed, called Smart Albums. Similar to iTunes, iPhoto provides support for specialized criteria for searching, including criteria based on camera settings and support for Faces and Places. Here’s some ideas for unique iPhoto smart albums.

Group Shot

Keeping track of family photos is easy with faces. If you want to easily see all the photos from your own family, create a smart album that shows pictures based on the faces of any of your family members. (Make sure to set this one to “match any” instead of “match all.”)

European Vacation

In addition to tagging your photos by location (or GPS, if your camera is equipped), you could create a smart album that automatically grouped any photos taken in the countries you visited.

Those Pesky Movies

Newer cameras support the ability to record film, and for lack of a better place to store them, iPhoto imports them right along with your photos. But they’re all mixed up in albums and there’s no simple way to pick them apart. Just create a smart album that looks for the usual video extensions in any text. This should find them by their filename and let you view them all in one place.

Holiday Photos

If you have lots of family and friends who all love to take and share photos, you could create a smart album based on the date photos were taken. For instance, all photos that are in the range of December 20 through December 28 are likely my holiday photos. As more people send you their photos from the event, provided their camera tagged them with the correct date, they will automatically populate the album.

Aperture

Apple’s high-end photo management application also takes advantage of smart file management. Similar to iPhoto, you can use criteria based on EXIF metadata (aperture, ISO, shutter speed, etc.). Despite the fact that Aperture doesn’t support Faces and Places like iPhoto, there are a number of additional options that can make photo management even easier.

A word of caution with Aperture, however. When creating a smart album, Aperture will only search the root level of the location where you store the album. For instance, if I’m viewing my entire library and create one there, it’ll search all photos. If I am in a particular project, however, the smart album will only search photos within that project. As usual, remember that deleting a photo in your library will also delete it from the smart album. You’re just “reorganizing” the same content with smart albums and not actually making a duplicate. (This applies to all smart items: folders, albums, playlists, etc.)

Missing Captions & Credit

Aperture provides extensive support for IPTC data (the metadata you add to your photos after the camera is done with them). You can use this to create albums that show which of your photos are missing captions or copyright information, should you wish to make sure all of your photos are properly tagged.

Need the Ratings

If you’re a photographer who loves to use Apple’s star system to rate your photos, consider a smart album that is based on showing you photos without a rating. It’s a quick and easy way to find any of those photos that slip through the cracks.

Apple’s own apps are certainly not the only to take advantage of “smart” organization. 1Password and NewsFire are just two examples of a growing breed of third-party applications that really harness the power of OS X’s database infrastructure to deliver content organized on the fly by your rules. If you’ve found interesting uses of smart playlists in iTunes or Smart Albums in Aperture or iPhoto, share them with us below.

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Through the past three quarters, Aperture users (like myself) have only seen two updates to the pro-level photo processing and organization application from Apple — and those have really only been stability type releases. About a year ago we saw Aperture’s consumer-level sibling get places and faces and some of us figured Aperture wasn’t far behind. Seems we may have figured wrong. I think Aperture users have been patient enough — we want a meaningful update already!

First, to clear the air: I like Aperture, and it works well for me. But it’s application envy that’s got my level of rile slowly compounding, as I watch the ‘little brother’ (iPhoto) get powerful features, and the competing Adobe Lightroom continue to wow and delight users. And at a $200 investment in the software, I feel like I need to stay committed to it and get my money’s worth. But I wonder at what point those of us using Aperture have begun suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, and are defending our captors rather than breaking free for greener pastures.

As a potential conflict of interest, I co-manage a Denver area Photoshop and Lightroom user group. It came about mostly out of my enjoyment of mingling with other shutter-happy folks, but has resulted in slowly painting me green with envy. Lightroom does some seriously awesome stuff! Starting with the fact that it’s 64-bit (which is huge when handling large image processing tasks), and it can handle area-specific color editing with brushes, and so on. It’s a super solid photo processing and organization tool. To boot, Adobe is very public about making its beta release of the upcoming version 3 available for anyone to try. It’s getting harder and harder to rationalize my devotion to Aperture.

Look, I realize Aperture isn’t broken, but neither was my last MacBook when I replaced it. I think we’re all guilty (at some level — I’m closer to the top, I’m sure) of wanting more. More power, more bells and whistles, more better! But If Apple’s going to offer a pro-level tool, it needs to give it care and feeding, thusly, showing some love to those who’ve shelled out good money for it. Here are some features I think Aperture needs to keep current users happy.

64-bit

Snow Leopard supports it now, so what reason is there not to offer this? I had a post similar to this ready around Snow Leopard launch, and trashed it because I figured it was a no-brainer that we’d see an update along these lines to Aperture in the following weeks. I am Jack’s broken heart.

Faces & Places

Aperture should at least keep up with its consumer level sibling. Faces and places are very useful tools — and it drives me batty having to manually tag my Aperture photos with this information.

Fix Tethered Shooting

To my knowledge, it’s probably limited to the Canon 40D, but Apple broke the ability to shoot in tethered mode for my dSLR a while back. This is lame. I want a fix!!

Focused Editing

Taking a page out of the Adobe book, I’d like to see the ability to apply edits to only select parts of a photo. Sometimes you only want to lighten, darken, or change color of a specific part, not the whole thing. I realize this is more an image editing feature, and not processing, but I’ve seen it in Lightroom, and I desire it.

These are just a few ideas, things that are ultimately important to me (though I think they’re general enough that others would agree). But what else? Let’s hear from the Aperture users, or potential Aperture users. What would you need to see in a hopefully sooner than later update to Aperture, to keep you happy and on board with Apple? What would cause you to jump ship and pursue other solutions?

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