Aperture 3 arrived with a splash earlier this month, but user reports soon surfaced about shortcomings (eg, crashing or excessive resource use) in areas such as face recognition and the conversion of existing Aperture libraries.

A couple of weeks down the track, Apple has released the Aperture 3.0.1 update, which is "recommended for all users of Aperture 3." That recommendation is not surprising when you see how widespread the changes are.

Let's start with importing: there are improvements in handling Aperture 1 and 2 libraries, iPhoto libraries, and bringing in photos directly from cameras.

Face recognition processing has been improved, as has printing, viewing, editing, and the Places feature.

If you don't use any of those, why would you buy Aperture?

What else is new? Find out on page 2.

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There are also improvements to the handling of libraries stored on network volumes, and switching between masters when working with pairs of RAW and JPEG images.

In related news, Apple has also updated Aperture 3 and iPhoto 09 RAW compatibility to include the Hasselblad H3DII-50; Leica M9 and X1; Olympus E-P1 and E-P2; Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1; Pentax K-7 and K-x; and the Sony Alpha DSLR-A500, DSLR-A550, and DSLR-A850.

Both updates can be most easily obtained for a single computer via Software Update. If they are to be applied to multiple computers, the standalone updaters can be downloaded via the links in this article.