Aperture vs. Capture One Pro

[Jebaloo]

Hello!

I did a seardh but found nothing, so I apologise if this topic is old already.

I've been looking at aperture for months now deciding whether to get it when I turn pro to photography, and I was almost set on it being the answer to all my needs, when recently I assisted on a shoot and saw Capture One Pro in action.

I don't know which one to get, and this is because I've not actually had any hands on time with either of them properly, and don't know the comparisons between the two.

Has anyone here had experience/have opinions on both/either?
I'm looking for something to work with both on and after a shoot, but I also want a program that can help me store, reference, and catalogue my photos.

Thanks!

 

[JeffTL]

Be sure to give Adobe Lightroom a shot, as well; there's a 30-day trial.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Well I would take the time to download the demos and work with them for 30 days. Buying a program based on the recommendation of someone else is fine, but how I work may not be how you work. You get my drift? What is good for me means that I prefer Lightroom. However, the consensus is to use Aperture of course. I think if I lined up 10 photographers that I know the majority have moved to Aperture. I have not. I used the demos and found Lightroom to suit my needs at this point.

PS I'm not sure but it seems like the rent on your flat is so tempting that I wish I could fly there and stay the month! It seems wonderful. O/T but it was something I noticed.

 

[Abstract]

I don't know what the answer is, but just remember that people at this forum seem to have a considerable bias towards Aperture. This is a Mac forum though, so what did you expect? It's like asking whether the Creative Zen is better than an iPod.

At dedicated photography forums, you will probably get a different answer with respect to which software works best. At MR, it's always "Aperture or Lightroom", when at other message boards, they talk about all types of other software, Capture One Pro being one of them. Consider iView Media Pro as well. Yes, they were bought by MS, but the product seems to have been untouched by the MS people, so that's good.

 

[M@lew]

The best thing to do is to keep your options open and try them both out. I used Aperture (and contemplated Lightroom, fiddling around with the trial) but a couple of days ago switched to Lightroom definitely as I've found it has some features that I find really useful.

Whilst Aperture is great and I'll still use it a bit, I'll be using Lightroom to organise my photo's from now on unless a large update comes out for Aperture that makes it much more Macbook friendly.

 

[savesteve]

Ok so I'll throw my hat in here.

I demo'd both Aperture and Lightroom for 20+ days. I found stuff I liked about both. I'll give you some of the pros least for me:

-- Aperture --

-Good image file management
Great control over were they go and what Aperture does with them.

-Import process nice and clean
For me at least it seems a little more straight forward

-File browser is great
I found the gallery/thumbnail view in Aperture a little better than Lightroom. Just my taste really the both get the job done.

--Lightroom--

-Image correction
I found the image manipulation in Lightroom did a much better job for me. At least on the couple test photo's I played around with during the trial.

-Image management
No crazy DB or other madness like Aperture, just files/folders. I like this whole plan better. Aperture can do this but it creates reference links to the files rather than just importing them in place. It almost seemed to me like they added this ability as an afterthought.

-Lean and mean
I have a pretty decent Mac, but Lightroom's performance seems better for me. Granted I only have about 2,500 photos so far.

So a couple things pushed LR above Aperture for me. I didn't need to manage billions of pictures for hundred of clients across multiple projects. I'm a humble man with a DSLR that likes to take random picture of plants and my kid. So I don't really need the more advanced image management of Aperture. (Not that you can't go crazy with that in LR, but you don't have to if you don't want to.) Also as I mentioned my "skillz" with the camera are not that of a professional. That said the better adjustment quality of LR was a big plus for me.

(Disclaimer: In no way am I saying that Aperture doesn't do a great job with photo adjustment on par with LR. I'm merely saying that for me, LR produced better results.)

And the final pushing point was Amazon had LR on sale hehe.

In the end, really give the 30 day trial a shot. I found both products very good, you can't really go wrong either way.