Which is better, Aperture or Lightroom?

[beansbaxter]

I dont use either, but I will be adding a new Apple MacBook Pro to my aresenal so Aperture is now on the radar. I have Lightroom installed on my Vista machine, but it hardly ever gets used.

What do you use? What do you recommend between these two, or maybe you have another option?

[Motorcycle Man]

I have Aperture, but I haven't used it yet.

[eric]

Lightroom. I have used both. Lightroom is awesome. Particularly if you shoot RAW, like to take pics of the snow and have issues with white balance...

[eric]

I should add that if anyone hasn't tried Lightroom they absolutely should. I'd say 95% of photographers could use it for 95% of their work, or all of it. All your photo edits are non-destructive (great for new peeps,) it's quicker and easy, processing RAWs is simple and you can save awesome presets.

I know a lot of pros who now use it exclusively. Try it.

[motorzen]

Originally Posted by eric

Lightroom. I have used both. Lightroom is awesome. Particularly if you shoot RAW, like to take pics of the snow and have issues with white balance...

Have you used Aperture 2.0? It's supposed be much better competition to Lightroom than the previous versions. Just curious.

[SeattleVet]

If you have a Mac, you at least have to try Aperture. They have a 30-day free trial (fully functional) available at the Apple web site. I downloaded it yesterday and did some stuff with it last night ... WOW!

I was going to update to iPhoto '08 and Photoshop Elements 6, but Aperture 2 does everything I normally need, all in one package, and *very* well integrated. Totally non-destructive editing (the original is never changed - just a work copy) and the speed (and memory usage) have been vastly improved over their original release. They also lowered the price from V1. I can see how this will help me cut some steps out of my usual workflow for sending photos for publication.

(The best part is that, as a gov't contractor, I can get it for something like $166. If you order through the Apple Online Store, go to the bottom of the first store page and see if you can qualify for any of the other 'stores' they have on the pulldown menu. They have fed and state/local government, education, etc., and the discounts can be very helpful. That's how I got my entire system a couple of years ago.)

[SeattleVet]

OK, I've been using Aperture 2.1 for about 1.5 months now, so here's an update:

The more I use it, the more I like it. I can't make full use of the tethered mode, but it's easy enough to transfer from the card to a laptop if I want to see something a little bigger on location.

When I loaded my iPhoto library into Aperture everything came across perfectly. It has definitely cleaned up my workflow - it takes a fraction of the time it used to for me to go from shooting to burning the images to a CD to ship off, and has made my recordkeeping and image-tagging a lot easier, too, by letting me pre-select a set of keywords and EXIF data to tag the images with. You can search and sort on pretty much anything - it made putting together a set of photos for a mini 'gallery display' that I have hanging now very easy.

It's a big, complex program with a lot of power, but the ease of use makes it seem like it's a lesser program than it really is. The highlight recovery is amazing - in an image with blown-out highlights you can run a slider to bring back some detail. I have been very pleased with the results I have been getting using the various functions.

I have done NO spot-retouching or any other manipulation other than making sure the white balance, color, and exposures are right. It is amazingly fast (after working with Photoshop Elements in the past). From talking to others who have used Aperture 1.5, 2.0 (now 2.1) is a VERY good upgrade, much faster, and the new features alone were worth the price of the upgrade to them.

As I said above, they do have a 30-day free trial, so if you have a Mac give it a shot!

(Since I haven't used Lightroom I'm not voting in the poll as to which is 'better', as I have nothing to make a valid comparison... but I *really* like Aperture!)

[eric]

I finally got around to installing Lightroom 2. It's even better. Honestly, I haven't seen a non-gimicky photo posted here yet that couldn't have been created in Lightroom. On another photo forum I frequent there's a Kirkland based wedding photographer who charges about $5k-$8k per wedding and now does 99% of his shots in LR.