Brief Hands-On Report--Apple released Aperture 1.5.1 Update and 30-day Trial Version

Aperture 1.5.1 Update is available for download via a stand-alone file from this Apple Web page (requires Aperture serial number). According to Apple,

Aperture 1.5.1 addresses numerous issues related to overall reliability and performance in all areas of the application, including:

- Keywords
- Loupe
- Cropping
- Previews
- Metadata presets
- Versions
- File renaming
- iPhoto Library import
- Watermarks

Finally, Apple has released a 30-day trial version of Aperture. Prospective buyers, mostly serious amateur and professional photographers, have had access to public betas of Adobe's similar product, Lightroom, for many months and it's great that now they will also be able to try out Apple's product. According to Apple, the trial version can not be updated with Aperture 1.5.1 Update.

We downloaded and installed the trial version of Aperture 1.5 after Apple sent us the serial number. Despite Apple's note, after an unrelated restart Software Update presented the Aperture 1.5.1 Update and we installed it. Unfortunately, doing so invalidated the trial version so just dismiss Software Update if presented with Aperture 1.5.1. We reinstalled the trial version and all was well.

We imported our iPhoto collection of 78 rolls and 1202 saved images. That took nearly 10 minutes but Aperture kept on working in the backgound producing thumbnails and previews of all 1202 images, taking another 20 minutes. During that time Aperture hogged the CPU, even with Aperture placed in the background--this slowed everything down. The fans in our MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo ran at full tilt.

We tried retouching few photos. The Red Eye tool works great. We'll have to work with Aperture for awhile to become proficient at it. [Bill Fox]