I recently began using Aperture to manage and edit photos. The program makes working with large quantities of photos much easier and faster. It's not intended to replace Photoshop, but does offer a nice set of photo editing tools 

One of the nice things about Aperture is the growing number of plug-ins available. Plug-ins add features to the program, and most often help it connect with other programs or web services. 

Many of the plug-ins for Aperture focus on making it easier and faster to move photos to the web. Before the plug-ins were available, I'd have to export a batch of photos to a folder (choosing the size needed for uploading) then either use another application for uploading, or the website's upload interface. That's a lot of steps.

Then I discovered that plug-ins existed for many of my favorite photo sharing sites. With the plug-ins, I could select the photos, choose "export to Flickr," choose a size for the photos, and click "upload."  Four steps became one step... much better.

I've grabbed plugins for Smugmug , Flickr , and Google's Picassa photo-sharing service. There's even a plug-in for sending photos your Facebook page. Once installed, these plug-ins appear in the "export" menu.

If you use Aperture and would like to check out the current list of plug-ins (and download them -- most are free), zip over to  Aperturepluggedin.com and enjoy.