I’m about to start on the last chapter in my new eBook, entirely titled “The ApertureExpert’s In-Depth Getting Started with Aperture 2 – a beginner’s guide”. Here’s the introduction…

Over many years of working with Aperture, and helping other people with Aperture, I’ve noticed one very common trend—no matter how much they love Aperture now, most people had a hard time getting started. This guide is designed to get you on your way. It doesn’t really matter too much where you’re coming from to use this guide; be it any other photo management application or none at all. This guide aims to get you moving efficiently, and possibly more importantly, to set the stage for a lot more learning. There are loads of free videos on apple.com that show you the basic of basics—I’m more interested in getting you started with a very solid understanding of what your choices are. So while some of the basic instructions like “Importing Your First Photos” takes up a seemingly bizarre six pages, after reading it you’ll truly understand what’s happening to your photos and what options you have.

Here’s the table of contents as it currently stands (if you look at the page numbers, you’ll see where I am in writing it!). I think even some experienced Aperture users will find nuggets of goodness in this one.

Chapter 1 - A Primer, Understanding Aperture, Definitions, Chapter 2 - Importing Your First Photos, Insert memory card, Create a new project, Choosing where to store your files, Naming your files, Adding Metadata, Import them already!, Chapter 3 - Navigating Aperture, Viewer and Browser Panes, Inspector, Toolbar & Tool Strip, Chapter 4 - Making Those Photos Look Their Best, Rotate, Adjustment Bricks, Exposure, Enhance, Highlights & Shadows, Straighten & Crop, Chapter 5 - Sharing Photos Online & In Print, Emailing Photos, Making a MobileMe Gallery, Printing at Home, Ordering Prints, Chapter 6 - What Else Is There?