Timeature 1.0.1 RC 1 Released!

Hot on the heels of the Timeature 1.0 release comes 1.0.1 Release Candidate 1. This version adds the following improvements to the application:

• Image Dates persist after Aperture Library Rebuild
• Added EXIF date adjustment
• Date Picker valid range is now beween 1902 and 2037
• Timeature switches to the Library during image processing to ensure that the changes are saved properly

This biggest fix is that the edited image dates now persist after a library rebuild, a common task when upgrading to the latest version of Aperture. The EXIF date adjustment option allows you to reset the values for the image date to what was originally imported by Aperture. As far as I can tell, Aperture does not look in original file when you make a call to retrieve the EXIF “Image Date” tag.

Finally, the app runs a lot more smoothly now that it doesn’t ask you to click to another project/album to complete the update process. Timeature will automatically switch to the Library to complete its changes. Sadly, there’s no easy way to programatically switch back to a specified album or project.

In all honesty, I’m sure that Apple will add such functionality to a future version of Aperture. It’s probably best that they do it, since Timeature is in effect going under Aperture’s walled-garden API and directly setting values in the SQL layer. This is a different approach than Annoture, which uses the SQL database for lookup only and the AppleScript API for all of the heavy lifting of copying annotations to and from iView MediaPro.

For the time being, however, Timeature fills a gap in Aperture’s list of features. For those photographers who need to get work done now and don’t have the time to wait for version 1.6 or 2.0 of Aperture — likely six months to a year from now — Timeature may prove very timley (pun intended).