Apple has released a third update to its Aperture software for editing and cataloging photos, with improvements to stability and the chromatic aberration correction tool among dozens of changes. Aperture 3 added the ability to correct chromatic aberration–a color problem caused by camera lenses–and Apple believes version 3.0.3 should give better results with less effort. Indeed, my quick test, editing a dozen photos shot with various lenses, showed a vast improvement over the relatively weak performance in Aperture 3.0.2. It was faster and did a better job removing the color fringes. Another change concerns geotagging. Aperture lets you assign photo locations to photos by positioning them along a GPS track log it displays on a map. A hovering text box shows the time difference between when the photo was taken and the position of the GPS track on which you’re holding it. With Aperture 3.0.3, the text box shows that difference in hours, minutes, and seconds, rather than just hours and minutes.

Lightroom 2, the current version, provides some manual controls over lens correction. The automated corrections in Lightroom 3 promises to remove some drudgery from the photographic process and illustrates a new trend: Computational photography, in which computers step in to address camera weaknesses or expand their horizons. Image post-processing, whether in the camera or on a computer, is increasingly essential to the photography industry. Lightroom, like Apple’s competing Aperture, uses a nondestructive editing approach that overlays editing changes onto an unaltered original. The changes are stored as metadata that can be easily changed since the underlying original image is unaltered. But nondestructive editing is computationally difficult as multiple adjustments are layered in. Distortions are particularly complicated: When a photographer edits an image, for example by brightening a couple faces, the computer must apply those changes not to the underlying grid of pixels, but to the mathematically warped version that the distortion correction produces.

Adobe will supply support for a “handful” of lenses, but also will let users create and share their own profiles through Lens Profile Creator tool that the company plans to post on Adobe Labs, Hogarty said. In a video demonstration, Hogarty said the company will support a number of Canon, Nikon, and Sigma lenses. The demo showed 18 Canon lenses at one point, though, so it sounds like more than a handful to me. I’d also expect the company to add more support with Lightroom updates, the same way it adds support for new proprietary raw image formats from newer cameras. The video demonstration used Photoshop CS5, which has the same RAW-processing engine and features as Lightroom but a different interface. The lens correction features he showed will be in Lightroom 3, Hogarty said in the video.