On the one hand, you have the application designed from the ground up to make working with RAW images as easy as working with JPEGs. On the other, you have the fastest, most feature-rich family of Mac computers ever.

Bring Aperture 1.5 and the new Macs together, and you have the ultimate photographer’s workstation. The ideal systems on which to run the photo workflow application that delivers all the speed you need to work with and manage photos of any type. RAW, JPEG, or TIFF.

Aperture — enthusiastically adopted by some of the world’s finest professional photographers — set the standard for professional photo management applications. And the latest version, Aperture 1.5, introduces a wide range of new features. They include more flexible photo management options that let you store images wherever you’d like. XMP metadata export. An advanced Color adjustment tool. A new Edge Sharpen tool. Metadata presets that automatically add such critical data as copyright, credit, and captions. New options for the Loupe that make a great tool even better. Adjustment presets. And many other new and enhanced features.

Aperture 1.5 also provides RAW support for more than 70 camera models — from Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, and other leading manufacturers.

Supporting every member of the Mac family, Aperture 1.5 runs on every desktop — from Mac mini to iMac to Mac Pro — and every notebook — including both the MacBook and MacBook Pro. So you can run Aperture at home or in your studio. And you can take all your photos with you on location or to a client’s office. Aperture and the Mac make one unstoppable team.

1. Flexible Library Management
With Aperture 1.5, you decide how and where to store your images. Import them into a managed Aperture library and let Aperture take care of keeping track of your images. This option lets you keep all your images in one location and offers a simple backup mechanism via the Vault.

 
Or store your photographs wherever you’d like — on any number of hard drives, network volumes, CDs, or DVDs, and have Aperture “reference” them. No need to copy the entire collection into a single managed library, simply point to them and let Aperture catalog them in place. You can even reference the images in your iPhoto library, using them in Aperture without having to move or copy them anywhere.

However you store your images, Aperture 1.5 keeps track of all the metadata you add and versions you create. And because your RAW originals don’t have to be online for you to browse or search through them, you can take your entire library with you wherever you go. On your MacBook, for example.

2. Seamless Integration with iLife ’06 and iWork ’06
 
Now you can browse your entire Aperture Library — including both offline and online photographs — using the Media Browser in iLife ’06 and iWork ’06. That means you don’t have to leave iWeb, Keynote, iDVD, Pages, iPhoto, iMovie, or GarageBand to incorporate photos from your Aperture Library. You can also browse photos by Album or Smart Album, importing them with a simple mouse click. You don’t even have to be running Aperture at the time. That makes it quick and easy to incorporate your images in Keynote slideshows, a card or calendar in iPhoto, iWeb galleries, iDVD slideshows, and other Mac projects.

3. Export Metadata Automatically
 
When you export RAW images, Aperture 1.5 automatically exports the associated IPTC data and ratings, storing them in an industry-standard XMP sidecar file. That means any application that supports XMP files — such as Photoshop — can access and use the exported metadata.

4. Advanced Color Controls
The new Color adjustment controls in Aperture 1.5, let you fine-tune color with much greater precision than previously possible. Using them, you can adjust hue, saturation, and luminance on a color-by-color basis via separate Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow controls. And, thanks to the Range slider, it also offers significantly more adjustment flexibility. Using the new Color controls, you can intensify the blue in the sky without affecting other colors in the image and without exporting the image to an external image editor.

5. Hone Images with Edge Sharpen
When it comes time to sharpen images, you can now reach for Edge Sharpen. With luminance-based sharpening applied in three passes, it delivers results of the highest quality.

 
6. Speed Metadata Entry with Presets
A great time-saver, Aperture 1.5 lets you create pre-filled IPTC presets for copyright, captions, and other fields. Once you’ve created them, you can assign them instantly when you import images or perform batch changes. Aperture 1.5 lets you create different presets for different projects, and before assigning the metadata, you can decide whether they should be added to or replace existing metadata.

 
7. A Loupe...with Onscreen Controls
Making a great tool even better, Aperture 1.5 offers new Loupe options, including onscreen controls. Using the Scroll Button in Mighty Mouse, you can easily control loupe size and smoothly increase magnification from 100% to 1600%. The Loupe’s “centered” mode lets you verify sharpness in precisely the area you’d like to check. You can even position the new Loupe off-image, set it to “Focus on Cursor” mode, and move the mouse to the area of an image you’d like to check. The area you mouse over will appear in the loupe at whatever magnification you set and without the Loupe blocking any other parts of your image.

 
8. Create Adjustment Presets
Find yourself making some adjustments over and over again? Now you you can save individual exposure or white balance adjustments as presets in the Adjustments Inspector and Adjustments HUD. Once saved, they can be quickly applied whenever needed.

Minimum System Requirements
One of the following Macintosh computers:
Mac Pro
Power Mac G5 with a 1.6-gigahertz (GHz) or faster PowerPC G5 processor
MacBook Pro
MacBook
15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4 with a 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor
iMac with 1.8GHz or faster PowerPC G5 or Intel Core Duo processor
Mac mini with Intel Core Solo or Duo processor
Mac OS X version 10.4.8 or later
Memory:
1GB of RAM required
2GB of RAM required for Mac Pro
One of the following graphics cards:
ATI Radeon X600 Pro or X600 XT
ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition*
ATI Radeon X850 XT
ATI Radeon X1600
ATI Radeon X1900 XT
ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
ATI Radeon 9600, 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650
ATI HD 2400 XT or HD 2600 Pro
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600
ATI Mobility X1600
NVIDIA GeForce 5200 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE or 6600
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce FX 8600M GT
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
Intel GMA 950
5GB of disk space for application, sample projects, and tutorial
DVD drive for installation

Recommended Configuration
Mac computer with 2GHz or faster Intel Core Duo or dual 2GHz of faster PowerPC G5
Mac OS X version 10.4.8 or later
2GB of SDRAM
One of the following graphics cards:
ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition
ATI Radeon X1600
ATI Radeon X1900 XT
ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
5GB of disk space for application, sample projects, and tutorial
DVD drive for installation

Available Options:

1 Year Download (+$9.99) 1 Year Product Support (+$9.99) 90 Day Download (+$4.99) Backup FlashDrive Shipped (+$9.99)