Still confused as to why they removed these adjustment options. really confused why Apple is making a lot of their Pro apps using terminology of their kit/toy apps and removing features ins tread of keeping/enhancing them. Although the new White balance feature is a VERY welcome additional and enhancement.

Will give this a try and see if the new Highlight/Shadow works any differently than the old one without using any of the additional settings. Curious to see if I can figure out of the old settings are no longer necessary or if Aperture just got dumbed-down.

I used the Highlights & Shadows adjustment brick quite a lot in 3.2. I experimented often with the other sliders; Radius; Color Correction; High Tonal Width and Low Tonal Width. They made so little difference in the image, they were soon abandoned in my workflow. The Mid Contrast slider is a different story. It makes a dramatic difference in the look. I suspect Aperture engineers figured out that the Mid Contrast slider was the only one of those being used by the vast majority of users and made the change.

Moreover, when the Advanced option was invoked, you would have to click twice to make an adjustment with the Highlights or Shadows sliders. I found this to be annoying behavior. I’m sure they figured out the same thing and set out to make a change.

This was a smart move on their part. They didn’t take anything way that was useful.

I’m no expert on this tool (either version) … but watching Joseph on the live hangout, it seems to me that the new brick is much more efficient and more accurate, even though it has fewer sliders. To me, that indicates the new version is far more efficient … not dumbed down … plus the old version can still be invoked from a preset or copied from an image that used the prior version. Sounds like a win-win.

I have to agree with Thomas. I tried the different sliders in the shadows adjustment group in 3.2 and the mid- contrast was the only one I ever used. This seems to just make it simpler to use.

Well, this has certainly made my day! I’ve been cursing Apple for the changes to this brick. It may have been my imagination, but I found that the old Shadows slider worked splendidly for easily lifting just shadows – especially since its range could be modified. The new Shadows slider just seems to bump everything, even highlights, up – useless.

Not withstanding some of the comments above, I have very frequently found that images were decidedly improved with low tonal and/or high tonal adjustment alone. I’m not sure why useful adjustments, at least to some, would not be retained. Instead of seven variables to work with, now only three are available. Shouldn’t these be retained as an option in the “add adjustment menu” so that they are available as a brick if wanted without having to go to a preset every time?

To belabor this, can anyone tell me how, using only 3.3 and it’s available tools, to adjust only high tonal levels?

One of the BIGGEST advantages of Aperture over LR used to be the ability to control how highlights and shadows were applied - often in LR either or both extend way beyond what I want them to, and I have no control over this. Now Aperture by default does the same as LR! I just tried to lighten shadows in the new version of Aperture, and the highlights immediately blew out! Is this progress?? Happily, thanks to your web site, I can, at least for the moment, restore the H/S adjustment to the way it used to work.

I wish the restore old Aperture vault info had been available 2 days ago - spent most of 2 days trying to get Aperture back the way I wanted it (mostly down to making the mistake of trying to integrate old iPhoto libraries with Aperture, which I have given up on).

I’m devastated the old H&S brick is gone. I used it a lot as it could create a VERY subtle HDR look if used correctly. It took me a while to figure this out and became part of my daily work flow regardless of whether or not I was going for that particular look. It was one cracking advantage over lightroom and now it’s gone. Mike Hessey couldn’t have said it better, the highlight and shadow control was far superior to Lightroom and now it’s pretty much the same. It was my favourite feature in aperture for normal or severe highlight or shadow manipulation, LR doesn’t even come close to the power of that brick.

I’m actually shocked to hear people say it did NOTHING, you obviously were’t using it to it’s full extent. It was a wonderful tool and I can’t get the download to install, which I’ve done numerous times with the presets you sell. It doesn’t need unzipping either.

I love Aperture but I don’t seem to have had a good run with it of late.

Thanks so much for the link to the download to add the old brick into effects. The download worked well for me.

Although the new “abbreviated” brick works for many pictures, in the past, the old one could do almost magical things on point-and-shoot camera photos. Now I will have that option again.

Ive recently upgraded aperture and found that this highlights/shadows brick had changed.. I make very few changes to raw images as i try and get it right when taking the shot but this brick was one of the few that i used.. Thanks so much for creating this, this has helped me so much getting my workflow back on track.. Thanks Matt