Crafting a gritty portrait within Aperture is fast and easy and lends itself very well to an Adjustment Preset. I don't typically post portrait work - I gravitate to landscapes and architecture. But after an impromptu photo shoot with my son, I came away with a shot I wanted to stylize with a gritty, urban feel.

Web searches led me to a great post by Mark Garbowski where he translates some Lightroom/Camera RAW settings to Aperture for that gritty, urban look. The technique dates back several years, but still works great. To stylize the photo in this video, I created a Gritty Portrait preset based on Mark's settings, and added Definition and a Vignette (suited my tastes). Once applied to the image, I did some further tweaks to finish it off.

Here's a video showing the technique. Enjoy.