Set the Full Screen Filmstrip to work like the Mac OS X Dock. Use the Filmstrip Action pop-up menu to turn Filmstrip Hiding on or off. With Filmstrip Hiding on, the Filmstrip disappears, leaving the entire screen available for your image(s). To see the Filmstrip, hover the pointer over the area where you docked the Filmstrip and it will appear above the image. Move the pointer again to force the Filmstrip to hide.

Aperture displays a count of the number of images to the right of the Filmstrip Action pop-up menu when you review images in full screen. The count reflects the selected filtering options.

Watch more than 50 tutorials covering all aspects of Aperture 2 — from an overview of the new user interface to publishing photos in a .Mac Web Gallery. The tutorials make use of the four sample projects included with Aperture 2, so it’s easy to try the techniques using the sample images provided.

Below the histogram in the Adjustments pane, Aperture 2 displays values for shutter speed, aperture, ISO and lens focal length.

The clean new toolbar offers easier-to-use tools and pop-up menus. Choose Customise Toolbar from the View menu to add or reposition buttons to suit your needs.

Hide the main toolbar if you want to maximise space in the Viewer. Thanks to the new Adjustments strip at the bottom of the Viewer, you still have access to editing tools for making essential adjustments.

If you disabled warning messages in various parts of Aperture, a new Reset All Warnings button in the General pane of Preferences lets you reset Aperture to display them all again. You can, for example, make the main Welcome screen reappear at startup if you disabled it previously.

Navigate the Adjustments pane more easily using the roomier slider bars that highlight when you roll over them.

Direct Aperture to Show One or Show Multiple images in the Viewer when you select more than one image in the Browser.

Several adjustment bricks have been repositioned in Aperture 2 to reflect a logical top-to-bottom process. Start with White Balance adjustments, move on to Exposure and then apply image enhancements.

Hide or show the Inspector simply by double-clicking the divider bar. You can also grab the center handle and pull the Inspector out to reveal it when hidden.

Select an image and click the Lift and Stamp or Rotate buttons to perform the requested action.

In the General pane of Preferences, you can choose whether to “Show alert when import is finished.” For interruption-free imports, set the option once and forget it.

Now it’s easier to determine when operations are being performed on single images or groups of images. Click 1 to apply your metadata to the one primary selection instead of multiple images.

When you drag images in the Light Table, Aperture displays yellow guidelines that make it easier to align layouts and groups of photos. Using Light Tables

Hold down the Command key while dragging the Exposure, Recovery, or Black Point sliders or the black/white control points in Levels to display out-of-range pixels as a clipping overlay on your image. The color of the overlay indicates which color channel is being clipped and you can toggle between Color and Monochrome overlays.

Reset individual adjustment sliders to their default values by double-clicking them.

Hold down the Command key while dragging out a crop rectangle and the Crop tool displays a rule-of-thirds grid. The grid allows you to improve composition by taking the rule of thirds into consideration when cropping images. Toggle between hiding and showing the grid with the ? key.

In addition to improved performance, activating the Straighten tool on a cropped image displays the entire image, including the cropped-out area, so you can see which portions of the photo will be brought into view as you straighten.

Lift only the image adjustments you’ve made to a photo and, with one command, stamp them on one or more images without replacing the metadata in the stamped image. This greatly speeds up the process of copying adjustments to other images while preserving metadata values.

Display RGB values as either a percentage or an 8-bit value. Other options include LAB, CMYK, HSB and HSL. The menu also lets you specify the sample size.

Aperture 2 lets you “force-reconnect” images in the Managed Referenced Files window. Reconnecting to master images on a different drive is normally restricted to files that match in name, size, or date. If for any reason these attributes change in a way that makes normal reconnection impossible, you can hold down the Option key to force Aperture to reconnect to your masters.

Aperture 2 can handle up to 100,000 masters (plus any number of versions) in a single project.

There is no upper limit on the number of thumbnails that Aperture can display in the Browser, so more than 100,000 thumbnails can be displayed at a time.

Aperture 2 supports 16-bit print drivers for Epson and Canon printers, allowing you to produce high-quality output with smoother gradients and better color fidelity.

Apply sharpening in the Print dialog, using both the Amount and Radius controls. These settings (which can be saved as a preset) do not affect sharpening adjustments you make in the Adjustments pane.

Click the Show Loupe button at the bottom of the Print dialog to check the sharpening you applied.

The Preview area of the resizable Print dialog now identifies the page size — such as Letter (8.50x11.00 in.) — of the print being sent to the printer.

In addition to identifying the activity and indicating its status, the improved Activity window provides a more detailed description of the background tasks being performed.

The activity indicator (spinner) that appears when background tasks are underway now includes text that indicates which tasks are involved.