Apple May Be Working On Bringing Aperture To iPad

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Screen shot 2011-05-19 at 2.00.14 PM

The professional photographer’s dream of using Aperture on the run with his iPad may finally be within reach.

Apple has just been granted a patent for an interface to Aperture on touch screen devices.

The patent is interesting for two reasons. The first is the obvious: it strongly hints at Aperture for iOS, which has so far been just wishful thinking for most professional photographers.

More interesting, however, is that Apple’s patent describes ways in which a pen or stylus might be used to offer finessed editing controls over an Aperture product.

Depending on how you read that, it means that either Apple is considering an official stylus or pen-input mechanism for iOS after years of claiming that “If you have to pull out a stylus” on a touchscreen device “you’ve failed,” or it means that Apple is instead working on how to get Aperture working with styluses under OS X

Perhaps the latter is more likely, all things considered. Aperture is a notorious CPU and GPU hog, and the iPad isn’t anywhere close to being able to handle all of Aperture’s capabilities anytime in the next few years.

Still, at least it shows that Cupertino is working on bringing more advanced photo-editing techniques to the iPad, as soon as they possibly can.

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