Maperture is a nifty little plugin for Aperture that lets you geotag photos in your library. We've covered quite a few different geotagging apps for the Mac, but this is the first one that works so well with Aperture as a plugin.

Basically, Maperture integrates an interface to Google Maps which allows you to easily place your pictures on a map, saving the location information as metadata in the photos. Since it's a front end for Google Maps, you get its built-in features like the satellite and hybrid views, etc. In addition, Maperture will automatically place images already containing location information on the map for you. Now the only problem is remembering exactly where you were when you took the picture!

Maperture is a free download from Übermind and requires Aperture 2.

[via Macworld]

Back in January, the folks from Creaceed released version 1.0 of Hydra -- a Leopard-only, GPU-powered photo application for creating High Dynamic Range photos that competes with the much-renowned Photomatix Pro. Just in time for the Apple Design Awards version 1.5 of Hydra is available. With more tone-mapping options, an image-navigation HUD, RAW importing (should you wish not to convert to 16-bit TIFF before importing), a plethora of Aperture options (more on those in a moment), and many more new features it's certainly a compelling release.

As mentioned before, there's plenty of Aperture integration with this release. As well as being able to import photos from (and export photos to) Aperture, Hydra is now available as an Aperture plugin (beta) - based on the all-new Aperture 2.1 Plugin SDK - that allows you to create HDR photos from within Aperture.

Unlike the cross-platform Photomatix Pro, Hydra's UI is the epitome of OS X slickness -- replicating much of the look and feel of both Aperture and other iLife applications. We'll be taking a look at both Hydra and Photomatix Pro in the near future to see whether Hydra's charms are merely skin deep.

Hydra 1.5 costs $59.95, and is a free update for those we already have a license.

When Aperture 2.1 was released last month it added a plug-in architecture allowing third-party developers to add editing tools. While some of the bigger names have already been working on such plugins, Apple has now released the SDK so you can too (provided, that is, you can write sophisticated image editing code). The architecture basically allows the plugin to request an editable version of a picture from Aperture and then send back the result as well as adding metadata and manipulating image data, all within a custom interface.

The Aperture 2.1 SDK is available for download from Apple, through you do have to have an ADC account.

[via Infinite Loop]

When Apple released Aperture 2.1 last week the big news was that the editing API will allow selection based editing in Apple's flagship image management application. But what good is an API without developers? So it's heartening to see how many are jumping on board. Rob Galbraith has a good post on what the editing API plugin means and also reveals that a number of well-known image plugin developers are hard at work on Aperture. Perhaps most exciting, to me at least, PictureCode is working on Noise Ninja, but Galbraith lists many more including Nik Software, dvGarage, Digital Film Tools and others.

One interesting thing about these developments is that most of these third-party developers offer these tools as Photoshop plugins. It's possible that getting some of these more advanced tools into Aperture will allow some users to get free of Photoshop. Given the recent developments with the next version of Photoshop CS4 being 32-bit only, this may mean that Apple will be more willing to step on Adobe's toes (or allow others to do so).

[via Daring Fireball]

With murmurings of Aperture 2 maybe, just maybe, arriving on the scene 'very soon', this morning's store down-time left one blogger hoping not for new hardware (I picked up a new Black MacBook just last weekend) but that Aperture 2 would arrive.

I've been a huge, huge fan of Aperture since I picked up a MacBook Pro in January last year, leaving the then-beta Adobe Lightroom out in the cold. Ever since the launch of Leopard, Aperture has been one of the few applications I've had minor stability issues with -- and the now-resolved incompatibility with Time Machine made me choose my photos over my backups. Others were less impressed with Apple's apparent dithering on Aperture, with a number of customers venting their frustration on certain message boards. Thankfully, if the compatibility issue with Time Machine has now been resolved, and a much-updated Aperture 2 has arrived.

So what on earth is new with Aperture 2.0, and what are our first impressions here at TUAW? Read on...

Just in time for Aperture 2, a minor support update has just been issued for iLife '08. The update, to quote the Apple description page, ."..supports system software components shared by all iLife '08 applications to improve their stability and performance," as well as fixing providing bug fixes for compatibility with Aperture 2. The update is available for users running OS X 10.4.9 and above and is available via Software Update or directly from Apple's download site.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!