1) We can now turn Black Point Compensation back on and use paper profiles. Goodbye purple!
2) Aperture sends the right tray info to my R2880 so no more Preview workaround!!!

Number 2 had me worried: it didn’t work the first time I tried it, giving me the same wrong paper error. After cancelling the operation I went into the Print Settings in my preset and it was showing the right tray (sheet feeder). Instinctively I re-saved the preset and that seems to have done the trick. Not sure if it was a fluke or if it’ll need to be done for each preset. Frankly, I don’t care – just glad this is finally fixed.

I’ve also heard that the quad-core iMacs have begun shipping. APX for christmas anyone?

UPDATE:
I’m having serious printing problems with my Epson R2880: when trying to print from Aperture (2.1.4) any paper I choose is apparently stuck at roll paper, giving a wrong source error when it reaches the printer. I now have to hit preview, select the correct page setup and profile and print from there. So far this seems to work. But it’s a pain and not what I want to be stuck doing for very long.

I had this problem before but only when printing to Manual-Roll. Now even Sheet Feeder options don’t work. This would all be fixed if we only had a proper Page Setup option in Aperture as in every other OS X application…

There’s also a color shift problem with all my Ilford and Hahnemuhle profiles. Fortunately this is fixed by disabling Black Point Compensation as discussed  in this KB article.

But I’m now considering going back to Leopard. Not sure yet.

UPDATE 2:
I’ve now tested and confirmed that when using the Preview option the generated temporary PDF file contains the Aperture print dialog’s sharpening setup. So for now it’s a functional workaround – not elegant but functional. I’ve created presets for all my paper sizes and profiles in Preview so I don’t have to recreate them each time I need to print. Of course, they don’t appear in Aperture’s solitary little world (!!!!!). I also need to add that I hadn’t printed since the 2.1.4 update, so the culprit might be that particular update and not 10.6.

For those wondering how Aperture 2 plays with the new Snow Leopard update: on the most part it seems fine from here. In fact, it feels a tad faster on my machine especially when loading projects and launching the adjustments pane. This is with the 2.1.4 update applied when it came out last week.

I say on the most part because Full Screen mode feels a little flaky: in testing the waters I had a repeatable instance of a pretty long delay when switching in and out of it. And Expose no longer functions while in this mode either (nor does command-tab but I think that was the case before). Same goes for Spaces (which I’ve just reactivated to test under the new OS). Keep in mind that I’m running all this on an aging 2006 iMac 24 – your mileage may vary. Interestingly, I’ve just read a few reports of users with decked out recent iMacs complaining of serious slow-downs when making adjustments under 2.1.4 and 10.6. So as always make sure you have a solid backup plan if you’re installing on a production machine.

Now for those still clinging to the 1.5x iteration: sorry, time to move on. And given the immense difference in both functionality and speed between versions 1 and 2, you’ll probably regret not having made the move sooner!

Now… can we get that shiny new box with a big 3 on it?