Following the announcement of Apple’s new Retina Display-equipped MacBook Pros, new updates for several of the company’s OS X apps have been seeded. Final Cut Pro, Aperture, and iPhoto for Mac have all been updated with Retina graphics for the new MacBook Pro. The updates include several more improvements, including a shared photo library between iPhoto and Aperture.
Final Cut Pro 10.0.5 is available in the Mac App Store now. The update “improves overall stability and is enhanced for the MacBook Pro with Retina display.”
Release notes for Aperture 3.3:
• New unified photo library for both iPhoto (v 9.3 or later) and Aperture; no import/export required; Faces, Places, slideshows, albums and web sharing work across both applications
•Support for AVCHD video has been added
• Aperture now lets you use camera-generated previews for faster browsing of RAW files immediately after import
• Highlights & Shadows tool has been updated to deliver higher-quality results and work with extended range data
• A new Auto Enhance button has been added to the Adjustments panel
• White Balance tool now includes Skin Tone and Natural Gray modes to simplify color balance
• Auto button has been added to the White Balance tool for one-click color balancing
• Set Desktop command has been added to Share menu so you can set a desktop background from within Aperture
• A new Manual option allows you to drag and drop projects to customize sort order in the Projects view
• New preference allows you to set the background brightness of the full screen browser
• Facebook, Flickr, and MobileMe albums are now displayed as thumbnails in the main window when accounts are selected in the source list
• Minor terminology changes, including “Original” instead of “Master” and “Info” instead of “Metadata”
• Source list includes a new “Recent” section, showing Last Import and recently-viewed projects
•Raw Fine Tuning is no longer displayed in the Adjustments panel by default
• Faces can now be named by dragging them from the Unnamed Faces browser to existing snapshots on the corkboard
• The Faces corkboard now includes a menu that allows you to set the order of face snapshots
• Newly designed monochrome source list and toolbar icons
• Addresses numerous issues related to overall performance and stability
Release notes for iPhoto 9.3:
• iPhoto can now open libraries from Aperture 3.3 or later
• AVCHD video is now supported
• The Description field now automatically expands as needed when entering text
• You can now flag a photo in Magnify (1-up) view by clicking a Flag icon displayed in the upper left corner of the photo
• Keywords and titles are now preserved when exporting files with embedded GPS location data
• A new Export option allows you to automatically organize exported photos into subfolders by event
The new shared library feature means that you don’t have to export and import tons of photos between Aperture and iPhoto anymore. Yay!
iTunes 10.6.3 was also released today for Mac and Windows users. The update brings support for the iOS 6 beta alongside other improvements.
