Whither Aperture?

One of the most exciting parts of Apple's announcements last week was the overhaul of the picture uploading capabilities to the company's subscription Mac.com service. Web gallery offers a bevy of new features to Mac.com subscribers including uploads directly from iPhone, better themes, slideshows, downloads, sharing and others. A sample gallery is available.

The problem is that I converted to Aperture (US$300)–Apple's all-in-one post-production tool for pro photographers–a little over a year ago, dumping iPhoto in the process. Aperture's Web Gallery themes are pretty generic by comparison offering only the six basic themes (pictured above) since the program was launched in October 2005.

Granted, many features that are new to iPhoto '08 have clearly trickled down from Aperture (keywords come to mind). I just hope that Apple hasn't forgotten their professional customers (who paid US$300, no less) and that they release Aperture 2 in short order. Aperture should have every feature that's available in iPhoto '08 and then some.

Update: While it's true that you can use iWeb '08 to create Web galleries from Aperture 1.5.x I'd prefer to publish galleries directly from Aperture to the Web. Preferably to my own FTP server, not just to a Mac.com account.