I jumped onto the Aperture 3 upgrade bandwagon as soon as it was announced because I was anxious to take advantage of some of the long-awaited new features. But one that I didn’t expect was the ability to do “local adjustments” using brushes in Aperture’s characteristic non-destructive way.
It didn’t take long for me to grok the brushes thing. It’s incredibly cool, although there are some performance issues with them right now. But that could also be the result of me skipping a few hardware upgrade cycles. I’m still laboring away on the first Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro.
Here is a photograph that I took of Walter (my dog) on the beach a few weeks ago. I love this photo, but it has a huge range of contrast, and I thought I would play with using the Shadows and Highlights tools and their new Brushes augmentation. When you click on the photo, the Quicktime animation will first show you the original, then a version with Highlights and Shadows both set to about 40%. Finally, a version with the same amount of adjustment, but applied locally to the water and sky (Highlights) and parts of Walter (Shadows). What do you think?
I’m really excited to take my workflow to the next level with my favorite photography software!
