Aperture 2.1 Gets Burn and Dodge

Today Apple released Aperture 2.1 with enhanced plug-in architecture including a new burn and dodge tool. Those happen to be two of my most often used tools in photoshop. With the version 2.0 features and now the addition of plug-ins, Aperture is quickly becoming the only tool I need to process photographs except for those instances where I either want to do something exotic, or completely screwed up the image capture.

This is, apparently, just the beginning. Apple's site lists several developers that are already working on Aperture plug-ins including:

* Nik Software’s Viveza plug-in, powered by U Point technology, which provides a powerful, precise and easy way for photographers to selectively control and adjust color and light in their digital images;

* PictureCode’s Noise Ninja plug-in that delivers advanced high ISO noise analysis and reduction;

* Digital Film Tools’ Power Stroke plug-in that features a simple, stroke-based interface to quickly mask and intuitively perform targeted adjustments;

* The Tiffen Company's Dfx plug-in that provides an expansive suite of creative filters and effects;
dvGarage’s dpMatte plug-in, which is a high performance chroma key tool for creating seamless composites, and the HDRtoner plug-in that enables the selection of multiple photos to create a single high dynamic range (HDR) image; and

* Image Trends’ plug-ins that include Fisheye-Hemi to quickly and effortlessly correct fisheye lens distortion, ShineOff which automatically removes shine from faces and PearlyWhites that automatically whitens and brightens teeth.


They all sound good to me but I'm particularly interested in noise reduction since I'm not a fan of the flash often recklessly crank up the ISO.

You can get all the details at the Aperture Website.