Creating New Versions

As you've already learned, in Aperture a new version is nothing more than a small text file stored in the Aperture library, so you can easily and quickly create lots of new versions without consuming disk space or waiting for Save As operations to complete.

At any time, you can press Option-V or choose Images > Duplicate Version to create a new version of the selected image (if you have multiple images selected, they will all spawn new versions). The new version will be placed in a stack with the original (if the original image was already in a stack, the new version will appear in that same stack).

When you create a duplicate version, any adjustments that were applied to your original image are copied to the new version. If you want to create a new version of your master image with no adjustments, press Option-G or choose Images > New Version from Master.

Use the Image Context Menu

Many of Aperture's commands are available from a context menu that appears when you right-click (or Control-click if you have a one-button mouse) any thumbnail or image (Figure 5.57).

Figure 5.57. You can open a context menu by right-clicking any image or thumbnail.

Once you know where the value sits in the histogram, you can more easily target it with the Midpoint or Quarter-Tone sliders. To dismiss the eyedropper, you can press ~ (tilde).