American Photo has named Aperture 2.1 its Editor’s Choice 2008 award winner in the Imaging Software category. “Faster overall,” report editors Jonathan Barkey and Russell Hart, ”Aperture 2.1’s revamped RAW engine significantly reduces noise, improves detail, and fine-tunes color.” “Yet its biggest advance may be the ability to host third-party plug-ins” for selective adjustments, simulated filters, fisheye straightening, and numerous other imaging tasks.

When you want to insert special characters in a document, display the Keyboard Viewer in Mac OS X Leopard to learn the combination of keyboard characters you can use to enter a grave accent, copyright symbol, registration mark, epsilon, Euro, and many other special characters. Find out how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

It only takes a few minutes to create a new event in iCal — and just one or two more to share that event with friends or colleagues. In fact, iCal does most of the work for you, as you’ll discover by reading the latest Pro Tip of the Week.

On assignment for Sports Illustrated Kids, photographer Bill Frakes visited the Kona Skatepark to capture moves made by the latest generation of young athletes at the world’s oldest skateboard park. As part of his all-Mac production, Frakes processed his still images in Aperture, exporting his select to Final Cut Pro. There, he mixed in music created in GarageBand and added video and audio tracks recorded on scene.