Aperture or Photoshop Elements 12

[ddublu]

Looking for advice on which program is best for decent photo editing (resizing, sharpening, adjusting hues/contrast/etc)....Not particularly a fan of iPhoto's organization method but want something that's easy to use and retina-friendly (mid-2014 rMBP). I have my pics in folders under my main picture folder, if that gives any insight into my organization (or lack thereof). I do zero graphics creation - it's all post-processing of photos. Thanks.

 

[pdjudd]

Given that Aperture has been discontinued, I would not go with that. I would not go with photoshop elements either since that’s not really a photography tool. If you want a photo post processing program, you would want to go with Lightroom as that is a tool specifically for photo post processing.

It’s literally the tool used by many pro photographers.

 

[bhtwo]

I would not go with photoshop elements either since that’s not really a photography tool.

I disagree.

 

[ddublu]

I disagree.

Go on....

 

[bhtwo]

Clue's in the title...

PS has more powerful editing tools than LR.

LR is great for tweaking, simple edits but it's real strength is a photo-organiser/cataloguer/library tool.

PS has always been a 'virtual darkroom'.

 

[lokster]

photoshop>Lightroom>aperture

Photoshop is great for heavy editing, but not for batch processing, lightroom is great for quick and light edits and process a large amount of photos.

 

[ddublu]

photoshop>Lightroom>aperture

Photoshop is great for heavy editing, but not for batch processing, lightroom is great for quick and light edits and process a large amount of photos.

Thanks. For a retina display on a MBP, should that be a concern for PSE?

 

[ddublu]

I am actually able to get a student/teacher discount so would I be better served picking up an older version of full Photoshop? I am used to using CS3 but only have the PC version. Thanks!

 

[theluggage]

PS has more powerful editing tools than LR.

I was going to defend PS Elements - it offers a really good subset of "full" Photoshop for the price... Adobe dumbed-down the interface round about version 10 or 11, but most of the features are still there.

However, I see a lot of people moaning online that even V12 still doesn't support Retina displays... so I wouldn't touch it until/unless that's fixed.

Also note that the App Store version is just the editor, and doesn't include the photo organiser tools that come with the disc version. However, you can choose it as the "external editor" in iPhoto.

Pixelmator is worth a look, and may even be better for just image editing. However, I do a lot of work that involves converting images and (particularly) PDF documents for the web and while Pixelmator has some features for that, Photoshop Elements runs rings around it when it comes to rendering PDFs, adjusting colour depth, DPI and format conversion.