Apple's Aperture was received with mixed feelings, but, as always, Apple has listened to the customer and has been improving the application to turn it into a better product.

The latest version of the application is being showcased at the Photography Marketing Association (PMA) show in Orlando, Florida. In addition to being Intel-native and offering a significant speed increase on both Intel and PowerPC machines, the latest version boasts a large number of improvements.

In terms of RAW handling, the program has seen significant improvements in the decode algorithms, with results translating into better noise reduction, sharpening and highlight recovery. In addition, the user can now adjust RAW decode setting using a set of RAW Fine Tuning controls. You even have the option to selectively decode using the RAW 1.1 algorithms or retain the 1.0 ones.

"What we did was invite pro photographers to submit their images to Apple," said Kirk Paulsen, Apple's senior director, market development professional applications. "We wanted problem images so we could really fine-tune the RAW performance. Now, there is a completely new RAW pipeline in Aperture that has been significantly improved."

Besides RAW handling, the 1.1 version offers dozens of other improvements.
The update will be freely available in March.