Aperture, Photoshop and me.

[capoeirista]

Hello all, I have a question and am after some info. The backstory is this...

I am leaving uni in a few weeks and as a present to myself I am thinking about buying a new base 13"MBP. As I'm leaving I will no longer have access to the computer I have been using previously which had CS3 installed. I've gotten quite handy at editing RAW files using PS and Bridge, and have used the clone etc tools to fix some pictures I took for a friends book cover shot.

I was wondering whether Aperture would do the job for me going forward? I can't afford to buy a copy of CS4/5 or LR, and I can get Aperture at a discount through uni. Whilst I can obviously use it to change levels and such, how is it at blemish removals for instance?

Also how does it run now? I remember reading excitedly about it when it came out, but it seemed to have a lot of bugs... Are they fixed now? I did try the demo, but it was on my core duo macbook and was painfully slow. My photo library is currently quite small <200 pics.

Cheers! (Oh and I did check out the Aperture site and mroogle)

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Aperture is mainly for organization and light editing. The "light editing" has become more powerful with each new version and should be good enough for your uses. On my 15" MBP 2.66GHz C2D with 4GB memory, it's pretty fast. However, I'm a light user and I don't quite push Aperture to it's limits.

 

[emorydunn]

As was mentioned Aperture is primarily for organising photos and doing small edits. That being said, I have found that I can do 95% of my editing in Aperture and only really send files to Photoshop when something really complex needs to be done.

Aperture will do a fine job removing blemishes and other small imperfections. Now if you need multiple layers or any serious masking then you need Photoshop.

The biggest problem with Aperture is it is quite slow. The whole application isn't slow, but usually rendering effects and viewing lots of photos at once will be a bit slower. I have a 15" MBP with 4GB of RAM and it's pretty slow and that will probably be a bit worse on the 13".

 

[tekmoe]

As much as I'd like to use Photoshop, I still find myself using Aperture a lot more. I don't think I possess the creativity to utilize PS to its fullest potential. I sometimes get frustrated with PS because I can't achieve the results I am looking for. There are things I would love to do with my photos that I know I cannot do with Aperture but at the same time I like to try and keep things simple and not mess with my photos too much. Aperture 3 was a huge leap from Aperture 2 and is much more comparable to LR. I use Aperture to remove bits and pieces from my images with the Retouch brush. It actually works pretty well. It's not as feature rich as PS but I'm also not a professional so it doesn't make too much difference to me.

I do find Aperture 3 to be somewhat of a performance hog. I'm running it on my 17" i7 with 4gb RAM and it bogs down after heavy usage for more than an hour. I usually have to quit and reopen it. I really hope Apple can fix these issues. Other than that it works really well.

 

[MattSepeta]

Aperture

I run Aperture 3 on a 24" iMac with 4GB and 2.8GHz core 2 duo and its pretty slow. Aperture 1 worked lickety split, but 3 is a hog.

That aside, I love it. I rarely use Photoshop anymore now.

 

[Jose Febus]

I am a Wedding Photographer and about 90% of the photos to be used in the album are corrected using Aperture...the rest with PS...

Keep in mind that Aperture is extremely slow exporting...

 

[termina3]

I would not suggest running Aperture 3 on a base-level 13" MBP. Also, for such a small library, what does Aperture have that iPhoto doesn't?

As to everyone who complains about how Aperture 3 is slow--you're right. It's ridiculous. However, I recently tripped across iDefrag, a defrag utility for OS X. I ran it on the drive that holds my Aperture library and, like magic, Aperture is quick again. It's a for-purchase app, but well worth the $30 price.

 

[OreoCookie]

I suggest that you get more RAM. Ever since I upgraded to 8 GB of RAM, Aperture has been working like a charm, molasses no more! Keeping an eye on Activity Monitor, I figured out I need 6 GB RAM most of the time, sometimes more.

I suggest you look into getting more RAM. If you want to be sure, launch Activity Monitor and keep an eye on the amount of page-outs. If it is in the 500+ MB range, you need more RAM.