Apple released a small update to Aperture yesterday, bring the current version to 3.1.3. It’s available from Software Update, or for those who purchased on the Mac App Store, you should see it in there under Updates.

Aperture 3.1.3. update on Software UpdateThe list of fixes at support.apple.com/kb/TS2518 is a bit more extensive. Here’s the full list, and I’ve highlighted some particularly interesting ones:

Aperture 3.1.3 Update

The Aperture 3.1.3 Update addresses overall stability and performance. This update is recommended for all users of Aperture 3. Minor issues addressed include, but are not limited to, the following:

Library

• Improves reliability of library rebuild and repair operations in Aperture Library First Aid. — fixes like this don’t tell us what’s really happening… we just have to hope that next time we repair, it’ll be better than the last time we repaired. Whatever that means.
• Aperture now automatically rebuilds image thumbnails after a library is restored from a Time Machine backup.

Import

• Resolves an issue that, in rare cases, could cause imports from iPhone 4 to not complete. — I haven’t personally seen this happen. If you have, and you notice it working better now, let us know!
• Fixes an issue that could cause Olympus E-5 image thumbnails to appear with black borders in the Import window.
• Metadata presets are now correctly applied to imported audio files.

Multi-Touch Gestures

• Pinch to zoom gesture can now be used to resize thumbnails in full screen Browser.
• Multi-touch gesture can now be used to rotate images in the Viewer. — That’s great! All modern MacBook users will be able to benefit from this. Yes, most modern cameras auto-rotate, but it’s still dead useful.
• Pinch to zoom gesture can now be used to resize the cropping rectangle when using the Crop tool. — VERY cool. I just tried this on my MacBook Air, and it works a treat. This kind of additional multi-touch support is the kind of thing that makes me want to get a touchpad for my iMac, and keep it to the left of the keyboard. Mouse+Touchpad, am I that ambidextrous?
• Gesture support can be enabled or disabled in Preferences. — This affects all gestures, including three-fingered swiping to load the next picture, and the new gestures listed above. If you find these new capabilities are getting in your way, it’s great to be able to turn them off.

Faces

• Fixes an issue that could sometimes cause the Faces view to be displayed without the Show Unnamed Faces button and zoom slider.
• Resolves various issues naming faces using accented, Japanese, Korean or Simplified Chinese characters.
• Profile photos attached to contacts in Address Book are now displayed with suggested names in the Faces auto-complete menus. — I pretty much stopped using Faces altogether, but I recall that at times you could get multiple matches from a face name that appeared to be the same person. This will hopefully help you to know which is which.
• Shift-clicking snapshots on the Faces corkboard now allows you to make contiguous selections.
• The Home key and End key can now be used to scroll to the top or bottom of the Faces view.

Places

• Fixes an issue that could cause the map in the Edit Location window to draw incorrectly when assigning a location to a Project in Full Screen view.
• In Places, the Show Unplaced Images filter now correctly maintains its state when the Back button is used to navigate the Places map.

Adjustments

• Scrubbing numeric fields with the Shift key held down no longer causes the Adjustments inspector to temporarily disappear when the HUD is docked on the side of the screen.
• Addresses an issue that could cause the Inspector HUD to be incorrectly positioned when exiting and entering Full Screen while the HUD is docked.
• Aperture no longer quits unexpectedly if a trackpad gesture is used to change the size of the Retouch brush during a brush stroke.
• Aperture now correctly displays the correct cursor type when switching between draw mode and erase modes when using brushes with a Wacom tablet. — Great! I’ve seen this before, and it’s annoying. Nice to see these little issues addressed.

Web sharing

• Published MobileMe, Facebook and Flickr albums now appear in a Web section in the Projects Inspector. — Simple little clean-up. Looks nice.
• Addresses a problem that could sometimes cause Aperture to became unresponsive while syncing to web published albums. — Anything that addresses “become unresponsive” issues is very welcome, indeed.

Audio/Video

• Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly when trimming audio in full screen mode.
• Resolves an issue that could sometimes cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly while browsing videos.

RAW+JPEG

• Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture to stop responding when using the Undo and Redo commands after switching from JPEG to RAW master with RAW+JPEG pairs.

General

• The keyboard shortcut to show Tooltips has been changed from “T” to “Control + T” to prevent accidental activation. — This was also noticed by one of our readers. I’m not sure I get the “prevent accidental activation”; if that’s the case, then perhaps ALL single-key shortcuts should be changed. But of course, that’s what makes those shortcuts so useful. Doesn’t make sense to me that this one was singled out. The good news is, you can change it back by making your own customized keyboard shortcut set. Or if you’re already working with a custom set, then the shortcut won’t change in yours (as reported by reader Thomas Emmerich, here).
• The Reset All Warnings button in the General Preferences now correctly resets all warnings.
• Fixes an issue that could cause a blank sheet to display when placing a book or print order.
• Addresses an issue that could cause the browser filmstrip to scroll unnecessarily when enabling or disabling various options in the Query HUD.
• Stacking or unstacking images that have been placed on a Light Table no longer Images placed on a Light Table now maintain their proper positions when added or removed from stacks.
• Fixes an issue that could cause the List View to display the incorrect sort order when switching between projects.
• Resolves an issue that could render images incorrectly when viewing them at magnifications of over 400% using the Loupe.
• Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture to stop responding on quit while updating previews.
• Folders in the source list now spring back closed after objects have been dropped into them, or dragged over and then away from them. — Hallelujah! I have a massive library of nested folders; this will, I believe be a very welcome change.
• Slideshow exports are now handled as a background operation and are listed in the Activity window.

Updating Library after update

Reader Steve Jackson reported in a comment on another thread that “I noted that post-install of the new A3 update (to v3.1.3), the whole A3 library cops an update “Updating library … n of n” (which takes a while).”, and goes on to question if this would resolve “The Processing… Processing… Problem” I had reported on a short time ago. It’s an interesting question, since I recently invested some serious time to hopefully get rid of that problem, and as far as I know I was successful—and when I launched Aperture following the 3.1.3 update, I didn’t get any kind of “Updating Library” dialog. In fact, what I did see was this:

Upgrade Complete—instantly!The standard “opening” dialog reads “Upgrade of Aperture Library 1997-current [that’s my full Library name] complete. Opening Library…”. Curious that it was complete before it even ran an update. Especially since this is such a large library. So maybe Steve is right, and it really did address the problem I reported?

Anything you’ve noticed not listed here?

It’s entirely possible — and likely — that there are more undocumented fixes in this release. If you notice anything else, or see anything not fixed that’s supposed to be, be sure to let us know in the comments, or open a new support thread!