Aperture over Lightroom - Anyone?

[rrrize]

I am VERY curioius... I registered at Apple for an Aperture workshop. I did the workshop tonight and found Aperture to be a VERY impressive application. I stayed after the workshop and had a lengthy conversation with the instructor and asked millions of questions. I wanted to, but didn't dare ask him if he felt Aperture was better than Lightroom because I KNEW he would not give me a non-biased answer, being an Apple employee, leading an Aperture workshop!

So, my question to you all is:

Is there anyone on this forum who CHOSE and is currently using Aperture over Lightroom? If so, please elaborate as to why. I've discovered that most people on this forum (and probably in most of digital photography), use Lightroom. But, I know Aperture has its merits and since I did this workshop, I think it's an incredible tool and I strongly feel I should use it... but I have yet to take an Adobe Lightroom workshop, so I can't properly compare or make an informed choice.

People experienced and knowledgable on this subject, please voice your thoughts.

[PixelMagic]

I suppose the market - especially pro photographers - has spoken for now anyway.

See http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/10/aperture_vs_lightroom.html

[Peter Pawinski]

I've worked with both programs, and in the end I chose Lightroom. They're still both imperfect programs, but I think Lightroom has a lot more flexibility.

Aperture, in my opinion, has a better user interface. I don't like Lightroom's modular setup. Why are the Library, Develop, Print, Slideshow, and Web, five different interfaces? Makes no sense to me. With Aperture, everything is accessible from the same basic screen.

Aperture has a very nice loupe. That's one of my favorite things about it. Just hit the tilde on the Mac and you can browse through your thumbnails and check critical points for focus on the fly. That is GREAT. You don't have to open the entire image up and zoom in like you do in Lightroom.

However, there's a lot of things Aperture doesn't do so well, in the way that I work.

First, you don't have curves. While Lightroom's curves are pretty basic, I find them much more intuitive that Aperture's 3-point or 5-point levels interface. I feel that Lightroom's curves allow more fine-tuning.

Aperture does not have the equivalent of Lightroom's clarity slider or recovery slider. Aperture does have highlight/shadows, but it doesn't work in the same way Lightroom does. Lightroom takes into account, from what I can tell, the raw data, so when you slide the recovery slider, it will pull raw data in from what look like blow highlights and add detail to them. Aperture, if your highlights are blown, seems to only work from the data that's on the screen. Therefore, if you're at 255,255,255 RGB, highlights will not gain additional detail in the way they do on Lightroom.

Also, Aperture's straighten tool is awful. Absolutely unusable. In Lightroom, you just draw a line that you want to be horizontal or vertical and Lightroom rotates the canvas to fit. In Aperture you have to rotate the entire canvas, and the interface is very buggy and jumpy. This is one of the main reasons I cannot use Aperture, because the rotating interface is so bad.

Another thing, and I'm assuming they'll fix this by Aperture 2.0, is that there's no global develop settings like in Lightroom. In Aperture, every category of image manipulation has its own setting. So you can't make a global setting that will, say, auto-adjust the exposure and black point, gray-scale the image, and apply a split-tone to it. In Aperture, this would be three separate settings, one for the auto-adjust, one for the grayscale, and one for the splittone. In Lightroom, any and all changes can be saved under a single preset. Why Apple programmers decided to split all the changes up is anyone's guess.

Also, from what I've played with, Lightroom is much friendlier to JPEG manipulation than Lightroom. If you try exposure adjustments with Lightroom, it will move the histogram to approximate what -1 or +1 exposure comp would look like. Aperture just seems to move the entire histogram one stop to the left or right, meaning that whites just become gray rather than stretching out the histogram to approximate the relevant exposure compensation.

All in all, I prefer Aperture's interface, but Lightroom is much more flexible and useful to me.

[Peter Pawinski]

Oh, I should add one more point in favor of Aperture: the dual monitor support on that is great. You could have your thumbnails all on one monitor and a second monitor dedicated to full-screen image display. That is pretty cool. So, the layout, the loupe, the dual-monitor support, and the more logical cropping tool is what I prefer about Aperture. However, overall, because of the reasons outlined in my last post, I use Lightroom.

[Permagrin]

I own both programs as well and would agree with Peter across the board.

[Screamer]

I own both and have chosen Aperture for my workflow. Like Peter said both have merits and drawbacks. I've owned Aperture for over a year and was given a copy of LR as a Pixmantic Pro (Raw Shooter's Pro) customer. Two sticking points for me

1. No multi-mon support in Lightroom. This one was the one that did LR in for me. Given the modularity of the application, this is a major failure making it useless in my mind. Aperture allows you to assign different monitors different functions. With two 30" Cinema Displays, I bought them to use them. :)

2. Curves - Although Aperture doesn't have a curves adjustment...you can just right click on the image, enter CS3, and make your curves adjustment there. Simpy save the file Command + S and it shows the changes in Aperture as a working version.

[frankgindc]

My only beef with LR is that it is not yet offering a complete sharpening and noise reduction routine (for making finished files at high ISOs) -- so I end up having to put exported files through a second program like Photoshop or Bibble. I am hoping this will change soon when 3rd parties start producing plugins for this type of thing. Not sure where Aperture falls there. Another factor to consider is that LR seems to be on a much quicker update and release cycle. For me, and for now at least, LR is also alot less resource intensive on my old PowerBook -- maybe not a factor for others but something I have to deal with for now.

[jnev]

in my experience aperture is a much better DAM application than lightroom is, but lightroom I feel has more advanced editing capabilities. that, plus the fact that using aperture ties you to the Mac platform, is what made me choose to use lightroom.

[cdifoto]

LR here. I'm on PC.

[Glenn Wolsey]

I just did the opposite switch, Aperture to Lightroom. I can get through my workflow ten times faster in Lightroom. The app is much faster, and presets save me hours of time.

[rrrize]

I am trying them both out tonight. I imported my entire iPhoto library into Aperture (which is a great feature) and I picked 1 photo to edit in both Aperture and Lightroom. The photo is a .jpg. Right off the bat I felt more comfortable in Aperture's interface. I guess it just felt a little more clean. NOT a lot more - just a little. Basically, I found the controls on both interfaces very easy to find and work with and so my observation here is only an aesthetic one.

The very next thing I noticed though was how fast Lightroom was in just about EVERYTHING! From moving the sliders to dropping down menus to scrolling through the library of pictures. It's inexplicable, but Apple's Aperture truly fails here and it only gets worse when you're on a roll and need speed to apply your changes on the go. Oh, and Peter was insanely right on regarding the straighten tool! WOW! It is virtually impossible to use in Aperture! Now, I am not using a blazing-fast Mac though. It's a 1.5GHz G4 with 2GB RAM. But, again, I am working on a small .jpg and when using the identical .jpg in Lightroom, the straighten tool is a total pleasure to use in comparison to Aperture's.

One final observation I've made, in Lightroom's favor, is the ability to move (hide) all of the tool menus by simply pressing the tab button (just like in Photoshop). I am still trying to figure out how and if it is possible to move the tool menus out of view in Aperture.

Another feature I have to concur with Peter on is the 5 blasted modules in Lightroom! I don't get it. Especially, the Library and Develop modules. What truly is the purpose of seperating them? Especially should those 2 be together. Breaking them up like that simply does not lend to simplicity, in my opinion.

But that's as far as I've gotten thus far. I will continue to play with both and compare them over the next few days in an effort to make a better judgement call. But as of right now, I'd have to - like some many have - side with Lightroom. In my case, it's mostly because of Aperture's speed (or lack of speed actually). It just seems like a heavy behemoth trying to wade through traffic where Lightroom zips on like a BMW on steroids! I really want to like Aperture more. I hope Apple is listening to the users and investing in Aperture's future.

I will keep you all posted on my observations as I make them and I invite you to continue to post yours as well as your experiences with both. Thanx!

[carolina_yankee]

I use Aperture, originally on a Powerbook G4 1.67ghz with 1gb RAM. It sarted off OK, but became barely functional. I could fix a soda waiting for the straighten tool to work.

Apple store reps said Aperture eats RAM and Video RAM. Because of this (and size envy), I upgraded to a Macbook Pro 2.2ghz with 2gb RAM and notice a huge difference. Aperture now functions almost as swiftly as iPhoto did on the old Powerbook. The sliders move quickly enough, but the straightening tool is still maddenly coarse. I find inputting the angle is fastest and most accurage, rather than dragging and rotating the image.

If I had known LR was less of a RAM/Processor hog, I would have tried it before the switch; but hey, I have a new computer, I'm happy now with Aperture, and my partner is enjoying my old Mac. :) I'm likely to hang on to see what any Aperture upgrade brings before making any further explorations into LR.

Dirk

[Sauk]

I used aperture for about a month but eventually moved all of my images over to lightroom.

I like the interface better and presets.

[Croasdail]

Ap. works just fine for me and my machines are hardly the top of the line models. I am confused by people saying it is slow for actions like straightening images. Mine pretty much does everything in real time. I also like it's raw converter the best. I get the most noiseless images from it - almost never use any noise reduction software at all with images processed by it.

Perhaps LightRoom is way better.. I haven't looked at it since it went production. But since I have gotten used to Lightroom, I find Ap, I found LR clunky. I almost never use Photoshop anymore. I will use photoshop usually only if I am sending something off to my printer since they have been calibrated together.

Just my experience.

[Peter Pawinski]

I am confused by people saying it is slow for actions like straightening images.

I have never seen the straighten tool work well on any Apple machine. A buddy of mine has the 8-core MacPro with 8 GB of memory, and the straighten tool is jumpy and very difficult to use even on that beast.

[Croasdail]

Guess I am just lucky.... mine is smooth both my iMacs and MacBook.... go figure. I think I will leave things along or might muck it up.