Aperture - vs - Lightroom (Trial)

[Mantat]

Ok, as an avid Aperture user, I think I should clarify some of your points.

First, managed vs referenced files. Only managed files will benefit from the vault. That is working as expected since you dont want to backup 2x the same thing.

Second, meta data: Once you have a clear naming scheme, the capitalisation of word shouldnt be a problem and I found out that Aperture is far better than LR in that mesure. Which bring me to my third point:

I dont know if you are aware of it, but you could have solved a lot of your workflow problems by using smart folders/albums. If you look at the criteria available for a smart something, there are the most popular ones, but you can also use more advanced EXIF data such a camera name, time, etc... I shot 2200 pics when in Vietnam and I created 34 smart folders, one for each day. Then I created another smart folder for my best pics (rated 1+) and another for those with the book tag. Now, I just have to tag one day at the time and everything is well sorted.

Speed: my dual 1.8G5 with 1.25gig of ram was OK but I have seen some improvement with 3gig, my bottleneck now are my harddrive.

Output options: I prefer the books/website choice from Aperture than the ones in Lr, but that is a personal choice I guess.

To help you out, here is my workflow (for either models or bird shots):
- import card into Aperture in a new folder, if needed add keywords at the time of import (ex: name of model or place if shooting birds)
- do a first pass to reject all the bad (out of focus or no interest) pics at the same time, I will rate 3 starts pics that are standing out from the others and rarely a 5 to something that is awesome. I also give the metadata tag 'deco' to any pic that isnt that good, but that can be cropped in a non conventional way to be used as a webpage border, avatar, etc...
- delete rejects
- second pass. This time I adjust rating, rating 1 = a good pic that worth keeping, 3 = very good pic, 4-5 = going straigth to the portfolio (I have a smart album that get all the 4-5 from all my projects)
- delete everything that isnt rated or as the tag deco
- meta tag everything
- run the sync with the vault

The goal of this process is to reduce the amount of pics that I will have to meta tag. I do intensive metataging. Each of my travel pics have at least:
- location, ex: Vietnam/Central highland/
- theme, ex: war, country, work
- dominant color (useful for books)
- people in the pics if I know them
- type of animal (if any)*
- any other buzz word that could be useful, ex: brick, rice, rubber

This take a while but totaly worth it IMHO.

Personnaly, I think Aperture and LR are quite equivalent, but Aperture has higher system requirements (why?!?). The difference is mostly on how the metadata are managed (Aperture wins) and selective color adjustement (LR wins there thanks to Adobe experience with PS). For me, it was more important to be able to manage my picture library so LR won, but I guess its different for everyone.

I advice that you investigate a bit more on the features of Aperture because there are a lot of incredible stuff you can do with it that isnt that obvious or that is hidden under 3 levels of menus.

LR is more of an application while Aperture is more a workflow thing. If you are creative with your workflow, Aperture will follow you while LR will have you stick within its library concept.

* I have a smart website that gather all the unknows animals that I can later show to friends/on the net for identification. Very useful!

 

[-hh]

Ok, as an avid Aperture user, I think I should clarify some of your points.

First, managed vs referenced files. Only managed files will benefit from the vault. That is working as expected since you dont want to backup 2x the same thing.

That is an explanation of its behavior, but I don't really see that as a wholly rational justification for why it should get fussy and make this differentiation, instead of letting me choose.

Second, meta data: Once you have a clear naming scheme, the capitalisation of word shouldnt be a problem and I found out that Aperture is far better than LR in that mesure...

Personally, I loathe systems that are case-sensitive and would like there to be some way to go in and disable case sensitivity. I've already seen some instances of the same word with/without capitalization that has "snuck" in that I'll have to go fix. The auto-complete can also be a PITA at times, but there's nothing new about that, no matter what application we're talking about.

I dont know if you are aware of it, but you could have solved a lot of your workflow problems by using smart folders/albums. If you look at the criteria available for a smart something, there are the most popular ones, but you can also use more advanced EXIF data such a camera name, time, etc... I shot 2200 pics when in Vietnam and I created 34 smart folders, one for each day. Then I created another smart folder for my best pics (rated 1+) and another for those with the book tag. Now, I just have to tag one day at the time and everything is well sorted.

I've already found & used smart folders for a project last year. Overall, I think that my biggest management problem has been a general laziness of not bothering to add any metadata upon the photos' original import, so there's a lot of work where I'm behind the power curve to clean up house. Presently within iPhoto, I'm using the date options to find things.

Output options: I prefer the books/website choice from Aperture than the ones in Lr, but that is a personal choice I guess.

I liked the one book that I've put together in iPhoto so far; I don't have a particular problem is exporting a set of 100-200 images from whichever tool back into iPhoto to do the layout work there.

To help you out, here is my workflow (for either models or bird shots):
- import card into Aperture in a new folder, if needed add keywords at the time of import (ex: name of model or place if shooting birds)
- do a first pass to reject all the bad (out of focus or no interest) pics at the same time, I will rate 3 starts pics that are standing out from the others and rarely a 5 to something that is awesome. I also give the metadata tag 'deco' to any pic that isnt that good, but that can be cropped in a non conventional way to be used as a webpage border, avatar, etc...
- delete rejects
- second pass. This time I adjust rating, rating 1 = a good pic that worth keeping, 3 = very good pic, 4-5 = going straigth to the portfolio (I have a smart album that get all the 4-5 from all my projects)
- delete everything that isnt rated or as the tag deco
- meta tag everything
- run the sync with the vault

The goal of this process is to reduce the amount of pics that I will have to meta tag. I do intensive metataging. Each of my travel pics have at least:
- location, ex: Vietnam/Central highland/
- theme, ex: war, country, work
- dominant color (useful for books)
- people in the pics if I know them
- type of animal (if any)*
- any other buzz word that could be useful, ex: brick, rice, rubber

This take a while but totaly worth it IMHO.

Agreed. For the most part, I've still not really progressed from the old film "shoe box" storage method, where I'd use a lightbox to sort through my slides right after I shot them and pull out the keepers. Particularly with the higher frame count in digital, this is the bad habit that I have to break.

Personnaly, I think Aperture and LR are quite equivalent, but Aperture has higher system requirements (why?!?). The difference is mostly on how the metadata are managed (Aperture wins) and selective color adjustement (LR wins there thanks to Adobe experience with PS). For me, it was more important to be able to manage my picture library so LR won, but I guess its different for everyone.

Agreed. I've been using Photoshop since at least v4, so I'm quite used to how Adobe designs their interfaces. I do like what Adobe has done with LR's "Develop" controls.

I advice that you investigate a bit more on the features of Aperture because there are a lot of incredible stuff you can do with it that isnt that obvious or that is hidden under 3 levels of menus.

This has been something that has surprised & disappointed me: for an Apple product, it has a very steep learning curve because it is so non-intuitive.

LR is more of an application while Aperture is more a workflow thing. If you are creative with your workflow, Aperture will follow you while LR will have you stick within its library concept.

Funny, I at least perceive LR as being more "workflow" oriented, because of the "Library - Develop - Slideshow - Print - Web" dialog in the upper right.

I do agree that Aperture appears to have effectively the same thing in the upper left, but it is organized as "tiny yellow icon", "tiny blue icon", "purple", "pink", etc, and my system is incredibly sluggish to bring up the text-based descriptors of what each is supposed to be.

Hopefully, I'll get a bit more time to work with both of them this week before I have to go on the road next week on business.

-hh

 

[PieMac]

-hh,

Just curious...which one did you choose? I'm in the midst of making this decision myself, and so far, Aperture wins out.

 

[-hh]

-hh,

Just curious...which one did you choose? I'm in the midst of making this decision myself, and so far, Aperture wins out.

I ended up choosing Lightroom.

It might have been not enough time using Aperture to get up the learning curve, but I was finding its interface to be frustrating at times.

Plus on my SP 1.8GHz G5 tower it was simply way too boggy, even after I freed up the CPU as much as possible by quitting all other Apps, etc. Granted, new hardware would probably resolve some of that problem, but I personally don't consider the introdution of the 8-core Mac Pro to really be a major revamping of the Mac Pro line, since the rest of the product line didn't really change its priceerformance. As such, I figure that I'm still 6-18 months out from buying an Intel-based Mac Pro, so the relative performance of LR vs Aperture is a factor.

A final factor that I've not checked 100% into yet is that Adobe is generally pretty good about allowing you to use a single licence on both your desktop and laptop, which would also be a factor in favor of Lightroom.


-hh

 

[koobcamuk]

A final factor that I've not checked 100% into yet is that Adobe is generally pretty good about allowing you to use a single licence on both your desktop and laptop, which would also be a factor in favor of Lightroom.-hh

That's the real pain in the ass about Aperture.

 

[CptnJustc]

I think some of the issues here come from an inadequate rush to conclusions (I apologize if that is not the case). I think evaluating either program from a 'cold start' without much study of manuals, video tours or what have you doesn't do them justice. If anyone here is interested in Aperture, I highly recommend putting an hour or two into the quicktours at http://www.apple.com/aperture/quicktours/

I believe Adobe has just a few videos up, but it's true, LR is generally a bit easier to figure out. Still, I've found Aperture's learning curve not nearly as steep as has been reputed -- watching just those videos can eliminate many hours of trial and error.

In regard to referenced files and the like:

That is an explanation of its behavior, but I don't really see that as a wholly rational justification for why it should get fussy and make this differentiation, instead of letting me choose.

Well, for one thing, referenced files may be stuck on backup hard drives that may not be online when you update your vault. So when you tell Aperture to update your vault, it can't guarantee all your referenced files will be included, then you'd have to keep track of which referenced files were backed up when, etc. With managed files, encapsulated in the Aperture library, it can be sure. All this means is that, if you have your referenced files in their own directory structure, you have to back it up yourself, which shouldn't be too difficult (just copy it somewhere). There is still a benefit to using the vault with referenced files -- it archives your Aperture database, previews, etc.

I'm not sure you understand what the vaults are, exactly. They aren't the main Aperture database, and it isn't necessary to update a vault to use the main Aperture database. It's just a backup copy of the database, and doesn't have to be constantly updated -- heck, you don't even have to have a vault. And generally, it doesn't update unless you tell it to -- which is probably why the number of items needing to be added to the vault didn't change.

 

[CptnJustc]

That's the real pain in the ass about Aperture.

You can use just one license for laptop and desktop with Aperture (at least, that's how I've been doing it ). You just can't use both simultaneously or you get the 'another computer on the network is using this license' message. Just quit out of the program on one before you use the other. A minor inconvenience, but I think not a horrible or Draconian way of achieving their objective.

Edit: Incidentally, I think it's easier to sync laptop and desktop databases with Aperture -- though I haven't spent a lot of time with LR, so it may be just as good on both.

 

[PieMac]

I ended up choosing Lightroom.

A final factor that I've not checked 100% into yet is that Adobe is generally pretty good about allowing you to use a single licence on both your desktop and laptop, which would also be a factor in favor of Lightroom.


-hh

if you check the ELUA for Aperture
at http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/aperture1.pdf

you would see under section 2

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on one Apple-labeled
desktop computer and one Apple-labeled laptop computer so long as both computers are owned and used by you

Just FYI-but it sounds like this is a moot point as you've already made your decision.

I found Aperture much more intuitive than Lightroom and much more free flowing ...LR felt almost claustrophobic at times. Aperture has also been running very well on my Mac-but then again I have a new 5 month old 2.16 MBP Intel core 2 duo with 2 GB RAM.

It really is all about which program suits you. Both are excellent programs.

 

[-hh]

I think some of the issues here come from an inadequate rush to conclusions (I apologize if that is not the case). I think evaluating either program from a 'cold start' without much study of manuals, video tours or what have you doesn't do them justice. If anyone here is interested in Aperture, I highly recommend putting an hour or two into the quicktours at http://www.apple.com/aperture/quicktours/

I don't think that I had mentioned it previously, but I had gone through all of those pages & videos before getting started with Aperture. They did help with the learning curve, but still "not enough" from my personal perspective.


-hh

 

[-hh]

if you check the ELUA for Aperture
at http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/aperture1.pdf

you would see under section 2

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on one Apple-labeled
desktop computer and one Apple-labeled laptop computer so long as both computers are owned and used by you

Just FYI-but it sounds like this is a mute point as you've already made your decision.

It is a moot point. In any case, its good to see that this provision is within Apple's EULA.

It really is all about which program suits you. Both are excellent programs.

Exactly. For me, my experience is probably influenced by a decade of working with Photoshop, from at least v4 to present.


-hh

 

[PieMac]

As another poster on MacRumors said-it really is another Canon vs Nikon kind of debate...it's a matter of personal choice in the end and you really can't go wrong with either one.

 

[CptnJustc]

I don't think that I had mentioned it previously, but I had gone through all of those pages & videos before getting started with Aperture. They did help with the learning curve, but still "not enough" from my personal perspective.


-hh

Hrm, strange that you seemed to confuse the vault with the main database, then.

But I do completely agree with your complaint about the metadata stamping, which could be more intuitive (in both programs), and the fact that some changes don't apply to all versions unless you have the stacks opened.

For me, choosing Aperture was almost a coin flip, but I sided with its more natural-feeling sorting and management features, and multi-monitor support. I'm sure the next versions of both will make a lot of the points raised in these discussions moot, though.