Product: Getting Started with Aperture Estelle McGechie Publisher: Peachpit Press www.peachpit.com/appleprotraining ISBN: 0-321-42275-9 Price: $34.99 US Media: Book Level: Beginner to Aperture Rating: 4.5 out of 5 apples

This Apple Pro Training Series book of tutorials on Getting Started with Aperture lives up to its reputation for ease of understanding; Aperture contains lots of color graphics, and clear step-by-step lessons to get you up to speed quickly with Aperture. Designed for the professional photographer, Aperture is Apple's newest program for managing, editing, and archiving digital photographs, and can only be used with powerful Macs to take advantage of its enormous power.

The lessons in the book take the reader through efficient workflows using professional photos. The lessons are based on the official Apple Pro Training tutorials that come in PDF format with the Aperture program. They are guaranteed to enhance the beginner's knowledge of Aperture.

I saw several Aperture demos at Macworld San Francisco 2006, including one by Derrick Story and one by an Apple tech on the exhibit floor. When I got home and thought I was ready to work with Aperture at an advanced level, I had a rude awakening as to how much I had forgotten in ten days. I particularly wanted to remember how to apply exposure adjustments to six photos at once. Getting Started with Aperture has a great Index that took me immediately to the pages for the Lift and Stamp tool. The written explanations were accompanied with stunning graphics to further help the visual learner like myself. I used the Lift and Stamp tool to apply adjustments to many photos at once at the click of a button. With time to spare, I got busy writing my book review.

I also found the explanation for removing Red Eye helpful, not so much for solving my problem, but for reassuring me that I was doing it correctly and that it was Aperture that wasn't quite removing Red Eye in all my photos very well. I have to go to an External Editor like Adobe Photoshop CS2 or even to iPhoto '06 to get this task done. The Red Eye removal tool in Aperture works well with the main subjects but not with Red Eye on distant spectators in an auditorium setting.

The book has an extensive glossary and a thorough, informative Table of Contents. Estelle McGechie's writing style is clear and easy to understand. The book's 183 pages are non-threatening and readers will find it very manageable to read, especially because it's full of illustrations making it perfect for the beginning user of this advanced application.