With a digital camera and a hefty memory card it's possible to shoot without thinking and delete later. If you have enough storage space, you can return home from a holiday with thousands of shots; some good, some not so good. With the time to sit down and sort out the wheat from the chaff you can go through selecting and perfecting each shot individually, but it's a lot easier to fall back on dedicated management software.

Now in its third version, Apple Aperture 3 won't be too steep a learning curve for those who are familiar with iPhoto 09, especially as it pools in a lot of new features from this sister software program. As well as offering you a way to organise large photo libraries it also gives you the means to carry out image editing tweaks quickly and easily without having to venture into a program such as Photoshop.

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There's a number of photo management software programs on the market at the moment, the most popular alternative being the slightly more expensive Adobe Lightroom. Where Aperture 3 would be an advantage is if you're already accustomed to using iPhoto 09 for the Mac.

Loading up Aperture 3 for the first time it was encouraging to see a thorough batch of walkthrough videos. Although clean cut and clear, being greeted with an empty interface can be a little daunting, so it's worth spending some time sitting through the tutorials.

The latest version brings with it the addition of Faces and Places tagging. This is just one example of why Aperture 3 suits the home user more than it does the professional. Making sense of large photo libraries and giving you more opportunity to track down images quickly and easily means you will have a more organised photo library.

For the most part we managed to allocate Faces to our imported library with success. As well as being able to assign face names manually, the program is intelligent enough to search through your library and associate existing names with faces it recognises in shots. The more face names you enter manually, the better Aperture 3 is at tracking down people in your photographs.

Sometimes we found Aperture asking us to assign a Faces name to random shots. In our trials it was adamant the steelwork framing of a bridge was a real person and it spookily tracked down face elements in graffiti art. However, we're of the mind that it's better to be over zealous with the tagging rather than miss important people. After all, it's easy enough to skip a suggested ‘Face' if it hasn't been entirely accurate.

It's also possible to assign your photos to a global location using the new Places feature. With your photos selected you can search for locations and assign a pin in a map. We were impressed with how detailed you can be with your location tags. Testing some shots captured in Archway, London, not only were we able to assign this location quickly but using the responsive map it was even possible to move a location pin to a specific street.

As well as locations, a quick search will also throw up popular landmarks and buildings. Alternatively, if you're uploading images captured on a GPS-enabled camera or phone then Aperture 3's Places will automatically pinpoint the location the photograph was taken.

If sharing images is important to you then you may be pleased to hear Aperture 3 makes light work of exporting shots from your library to your email client, Facebook, Flickr or MobileMe. The beauty of exporting directly from photo management software is that you don't have to spend time resizing. With a few simple clicks we found it easy to publish to the likes of Flickr and were impressed with how effortlessly Aperture 3 managed to integrate with these external sites, giving us the means to adjust privacy settings. It even auto-created separate libraries within our Library tab, making it easy to remember what had been exported and to where.

Of course, as well as organising shots Aperture 3 offers a way to enhance and adjust images with the aid of a dedicated Adjustments section. It's possible to tweak settings such as White Balance, Exposure and Levels manually but there are also options for applying Presets for quick fixes.

Anyone who has ever dabbled with image fixing in Adobe Lightroom may be disappointed by how awkward and clumsy these Preset modes are. Unlike Lightroom, Preset previews are slow to pop up and it's not as easy to browse through different effects casually as Preset categories mean you can't quickly mouse over all your options.

Aperture 3 brings the introduction of a Brushes feature designed to apply effects such as Dodge and Burn or Blur directly onto your images without using layers or masks. Once you have selected your brush you're given the option to allow the software to automatically detect edges so you can apply effects a little quicker without being too accurate with your brush strokes. Just as long as the edges were clear and well defined it managed this pretty successfully, with easy sliders to adjust strength and brush size.

Unlike Adobe Lightroom's successful and useful Local Adjustment Brush we found it a little more complicated than it should have been to edit brush applications. So although it's handy for quick fixes, if you like to have a little more control over accurate adjustments you may find this feature frustrating.

Where Aperture 3 really comes into its own over competitor photo management software is with its slideshow function. As well as being really easy to select the images you want to include into a slideshow it offers up the ability to be able to integrate video footage as well as stills into the show.

With so many digital SLRs also capable of shooting video, more and more photographers are taking a hybrid approach to captures so this feature has a real place in the creative workflow. Apple managed to take the lead with this approach, pipping Adobe to the post as that company also plans to offer this in the imminent Adobe Lightroom 3.

A great solution for keen photographers, Aperture 3 offers easy and fun tools for sorting, rating, tagging and fixing large image collections. The new features introduced to this latest version are significant enough to warrant an upgrade if you are already familiar with previous versions or have relied on iPhoto 09 in the past. We particularly appreciated the ease with which it was possible to export images to sites such as Flickr as well as the ability to create professional looking slideshows with integrated video quickly. But because its image adjustment features are a little clunky, professional or semi-pro photographers will find more use in Adobe Lightroom.