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Finally!

CUPERTINO, California—February 12, 2008—Apple® today introduced Aperture™ 2, the next major release of its groundbreaking photo editing and management software with over 100 new features that make it faster, easier to use and more powerful. With a streamlined user interface and entirely new image processing engine, Aperture 2 also introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, color vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning, and lets users directly post their portfolios on the .Mac Web Gallery* for viewing on the web, iPhone™, iPod® touch and Apple TV®. At a new low price of $199, anyone can easily organize, edit and publish photos like a pro.

• Press release
• Overview of Features
• New in Aperture 2.0

My favourite photo tool Apple Aperture has been updated.
Aperture 1.5.3 addresses issues related to overall reliability and performance in a number of areas, including:

• Generation of thumbnails for adjusted images
• Entering and exiting Full Screen mode
• Working with large sets of keywords in the Keywords HUD
• Restoring from a vault

Among the specific issues that have been addressed:

• Previews now update properly when images are sent to an external editor.
• Leaf Aptus 22 and Aptus 75 images are now imported with the correct orientation.
• When folders are imported as projects, the folder structure is now correctly preserved when identically named subfolders are included in the hierarchy.
• Reconnecting referenced images that have been externally edited now works more reliably.
• Setting the ColorSync profile in the Aperture Print dialog now correctly suppresses color management settings in the Mac OS X Print dialog.

I also noted the addition and update of several UI-interface element, among those a toolbar button for quickly printing a Contact Sheet.

However, I can’t find a way to get it into my toolbar. (You can of course still print contact sheets by selecting a few thumbs and hit Apple+P)