Chapter 5. Extending Aperture

In the previous chapters, we have looked at some of the advanced ways of importing, sorting, and processing the images inside of Aperture, but what if you need to do some editing that you can't achieve within the application itself? Luckily, Aperture has a robust plugin architecture, and a good ecosystem of third-party plugins. It also makes it easy to work with third-party software. In this chapter, we will take a look at how to extend the application. We will look at some essential plugins that every Aperture user should aim to have, and I will also share my favorite third-party tools. We will also take a look at working with third-party RAW converters, at working with Photoshop, as well as some inexpensive Photoshop alternatives.

Aperture's plugin architecture doesn't just support image editing plugins. There are plugins for exporting images to specific services, as well as third-party book modules plugins. However, in this chapter...