I got the trial for Aperture since I take photo's at drag races with my nikon but how is it for editing and like brightening up photo's?
Much depends on the skill of the user. Aperture certainly has all of the required controls for adjusting images.
What it's not good it and can't do is adjust the relative brightness of say one of those cars the the background. Yes Aperure does have the dodge and burn tool but it is limited compared to Photoshop. But for over all adjustments Aperture is hard to beat.
I ead the post above about Apertur/Photoshop integration. I don't know how it could be better. Aperture will sand a copy of the image directly to Photoshop, launching Photoshop f required and then when you save from inside Photoshop the image is sent right back to Aperture. It's all automatic.