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Aperture vs. Lightroom
- Thread starter Westside guy
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For those that 'need' LR on the iPad I'd guess probably already have a CC sub.
Last week I was just a LR5 owner, now I've subscribed to CC. For the last year i've tried to use alternatives (Pixelmator mainly) - and to be truthful, they aren't as good as Photoshop - hence my return. I do hate software by subscription, but for £8.78 Photoshop and LR5 it's a bargain - I may change my mind at renewal time though - lets see if Adobe have learnt any lessons.
Nope. Adobe has been reported record profits for the last 2-3 quarters since the subscription move. I think they are sticking with it.
Yeah, why wouldn't I be happy to pay Adobe twice for Lightroom? Makes perfect sense to me now. I just needed to have it explained what a bargain I'd be getting. Thanks for clearing that up.
:sheesh:
I wonder if the newish "Photoshop Photography Program" is gonna entice any Aperture owners over to LR, especially with the release of LR Mobile. If you don't already have LR and Photoshop I think it's a great deal at $10US/mo. It would have enticed me over (the LR and PS parts; the LR Mobile is not very useful IMHO).
That being said, I still think both Aperture and Lightroom could have better features for one person working on multiple platforms. Many now work not only with desktop, laptop and/or tablet, but also with images that are stored off their SSD on a NAS or external drive. It's doable, of course, but could be better.
In addition, I wonder whether anyone will come up with an application and/or app that works with all wifi cameras, which are becoming more prevalent. Be pretty cool if you fired up LR/Aperture on an iPad, used it to remotely take a photo, did some editing on the resulting RAW, added metadata, and then saved it, knowing it would sync to your other devices. All from within one application or app. That sort of thing is available now sorta with some rather high end tools, but technically it's not feasible for someone with a $150 point and shoot.
That being said, I still think both Aperture and Lightroom could have better features for one person working on multiple platforms. Many now work not only with desktop, laptop and/or tablet, but also with images that are stored off their SSD on a NAS or external drive. It's doable, of course, but could be better.
In addition, I wonder whether anyone will come up with an application and/or app that works with all wifi cameras, which are becoming more prevalent. Be pretty cool if you fired up LR/Aperture on an iPad, used it to remotely take a photo, did some editing on the resulting RAW, added metadata, and then saved it, knowing it would sync to your other devices. All from within one application or app. That sort of thing is available now sorta with some rather high end tools, but technically it's not feasible for someone with a $150 point and shoot.
Depends how you look at it, last year it was £17 for just Photoshop, now it's £8.78 but you get LR with it. Now I don't need LR5 as I have it, so in my case I'm paying twice, but I'm actually paying half what I paid last year.
It's not great, but what options do we have? The alternatives may offer some functionality but on the whole they are crap compared to PS and LR.
Really, no options for the long term anyway. It's not like the team at Apple are moving Aperture forward in any meaningful way. IMO, integration between Lr and Lr Mobile (however poorly implemented in the first version) should be a shot across Apple's bow. Instead, we have iPhoto and iPhoto Lite, while Aperture languishes.
The reality is that I'll probably have to jump on the Adobe subscription at some point (probably when Lr 6 forces the issue), I'm just not happy about it.
Well you haven't paid anything for Lightroom iPad, but you think you should get it and the syncing service for free?
I don't totally disagree with you I prefer updates to subscription model - but in the case of LR/PS I have decided to buy in. I hadn't upgraded to LR5 or PS6, so for me the cost of the subscription will probably work out less than the cost of the upgrades. In your case, I'd probably wait till the next version of LR is released and then re-appraise how you want to pay for that upgrade.
I certainly believe that Aperture is DOA as well. But even if Apple were to release Aperture (4 or X) why would anyone bother? It has been more than 4 years since A3 was released and based on this experience one would expect a new release to languish as well. LR and Capture One have steadily improved and will continue to do so.
I would have loved to see Apple sell Aperture to the Pixelmator guys, the tight integration between the two would have been amazing.
Anyway it is fun to speculate but... ...I made the switch to LR5 and am delighted, I just wish some enterprising soul would created a converter to let me bring my Aperture edits to LR5
Sorta free. I would prefer to pay $20 once, and then sync for free over USB, LAN, or WLAN. Oh wait, that's Photosmith.
And frankly LR Mobile isn't much different than a bunch of apps that ARE free. Maybe they'll improve it to make it useful, but right now I don't see it, unless perhaps you only use your iPad to edit and not as a digital asset manager. I really don't need or want Yet Another cloud service, so their Behance/online storage thing is a non-starter for me.
For those, like yourself, that haven't upgraded it might make a lot more sense. For those of us already with LR5, PS, and workflows with the iPad it isn't really competitive. That may change when there's a paid upgrade to LR6, if it's even offered with a forever license.
LR to Aperture
I started off on a PC many years ago with Lightroom. Two years ago when I moved from PC to Mac at home, I stayed with LR. But now that I am using more and more of the apps in the Mac ecosystem, like Maps to put GPS on old images, I want a Mac friendly photo management tool.
So yesterday I purchased Aperture from the app store, and imported 56,002 images as referenced files (the originals stay where I put them using LR). The older files from the 90s and early 2000s were jogs that gave no problem. Aperture also imported all my DNG files that had been created from Canon CR2 originals. My Olympus E-M1 raw files that I had converted to DNG were a problem. So the few of them I had were exported as TIF and Aperture could bring them in. The last couple of days I have been importing my E-M1 raw files into LR as native ORF raw files. So Aperture had no problem importing them. Given the quantity of files....a lot less problems that I would have guessed.
My Aperture library is approximate 50GB. Not too bad given it reflects 56,002 photos. I also created an Aperture Vault as library backup. And of course Time Machine backups up everything.
For the time being I will have fun using both LR and Aperture. Either can open/use the commonly referenced originals. And if Apple does deliver a big upgrade to Aperture this year, I just might drop LR completely.
Why drop LR for Aperture? Subjective UI differences..I like Aperture design better. Also the easy of integrating Aperture library contents with other Apple apps like iMovie, Maps, Keynote..etc. But folks will say....but Aperture does not have the editing tools that are available in LR. Correct. But if I am seriously editing a photo, LR does not have the tools I likely want either! If will use LR or Aperture for basic edits. But if I need serious work done, I will have the file in some combination of the Nik Collection, Perfect Photo Suite 8, Pixelmater (rarely), or Helicon (if I need to focus stack).
So let's see what the rest of 2014 brings. Very likely we will see killer new versions of both LR and Aperture. It is always good to have options.
I started off on a PC many years ago with Lightroom. Two years ago when I moved from PC to Mac at home, I stayed with LR. But now that I am using more and more of the apps in the Mac ecosystem, like Maps to put GPS on old images, I want a Mac friendly photo management tool.
So yesterday I purchased Aperture from the app store, and imported 56,002 images as referenced files (the originals stay where I put them using LR). The older files from the 90s and early 2000s were jogs that gave no problem. Aperture also imported all my DNG files that had been created from Canon CR2 originals. My Olympus E-M1 raw files that I had converted to DNG were a problem. So the few of them I had were exported as TIF and Aperture could bring them in. The last couple of days I have been importing my E-M1 raw files into LR as native ORF raw files. So Aperture had no problem importing them. Given the quantity of files....a lot less problems that I would have guessed.
My Aperture library is approximate 50GB. Not too bad given it reflects 56,002 photos. I also created an Aperture Vault as library backup. And of course Time Machine backups up everything.
For the time being I will have fun using both LR and Aperture. Either can open/use the commonly referenced originals. And if Apple does deliver a big upgrade to Aperture this year, I just might drop LR completely.
Why drop LR for Aperture? Subjective UI differences..I like Aperture design better. Also the easy of integrating Aperture library contents with other Apple apps like iMovie, Maps, Keynote..etc. But folks will say....but Aperture does not have the editing tools that are available in LR. Correct. But if I am seriously editing a photo, LR does not have the tools I likely want either! If will use LR or Aperture for basic edits. But if I need serious work done, I will have the file in some combination of the Nik Collection, Perfect Photo Suite 8, Pixelmater (rarely), or Helicon (if I need to focus stack).
So let's see what the rest of 2014 brings. Very likely we will see killer new versions of both LR and Aperture. It is always good to have options.
Good points; I too keep Aperture around and have had both LR and Aperture for many years. There are a bunch of Mac apps that can access Aperture/iPhoto libraries to find photos, which is nice. Some do LR catalogs through iMedia browser.
But both sort of lag IMHO if you need to keep track of lots of different images that don't necessarily come through cameras, i.e. aren't photos. So I still need to use Finder alternatives, and that means keep referenced libraries/catalogs with both.
But over time I gradually found I used LR more and more. One of the biggest reasons was that it uses the same file structure as my Pictures folder, and makes it super easy to create, move, delete, rename and synchronize folders that then become visible to the Finder and other Mac apps. It's just a nuisance in Aperture.
It seems ironic that the Aperture libraries are more visible to some Mac apps, and yet the folder structure LR uses is ultimately accessible to all applications, and easier to keep in sync. It seems to me iPhoto and Aperture were always designed more for someone who didn't reference photos, as opposed to LR. A subtle bias, but when you've got lots of folders of changing images and need to manage that folder structure in sync with your photo management application, LR comes out on top.
Not to mention Adobe is faster with RAW support, and seems to be updating LR more predictably than Apple does with Aperture. Sheesh, they even made a least a medicre effort to sync with iPads; Apple still hasn't (and don't even suggest iCloud is that).
I think if Aperture did come out with a much more efficient way to synchronize between devices, both in iOS and OS X, it might be worth switching back. But I'd be surprised. But with no trial version, no word of a new version on the horizon, and Apple's direction in this area being unknown, I certainly would lean towards LR; I'd certainly wait for a new Aperture before I plunged into it.
And meanwhile you can always check out GraphicConverter. It has a nifty browser, and although it can't do everything Aperture or LR can, it does have facility in some areas those don't, especially for those of us who use graphics in other formats and need to make batch changes.
But both sort of lag IMHO if you need to keep track of lots of different images that don't necessarily come through cameras, i.e. aren't photos. So I still need to use Finder alternatives, and that means keep referenced libraries/catalogs with both.
But over time I gradually found I used LR more and more. One of the biggest reasons was that it uses the same file structure as my Pictures folder, and makes it super easy to create, move, delete, rename and synchronize folders that then become visible to the Finder and other Mac apps. It's just a nuisance in Aperture.
It seems ironic that the Aperture libraries are more visible to some Mac apps, and yet the folder structure LR uses is ultimately accessible to all applications, and easier to keep in sync. It seems to me iPhoto and Aperture were always designed more for someone who didn't reference photos, as opposed to LR. A subtle bias, but when you've got lots of folders of changing images and need to manage that folder structure in sync with your photo management application, LR comes out on top.
Not to mention Adobe is faster with RAW support, and seems to be updating LR more predictably than Apple does with Aperture. Sheesh, they even made a least a medicre effort to sync with iPads; Apple still hasn't (and don't even suggest iCloud is that).
I think if Aperture did come out with a much more efficient way to synchronize between devices, both in iOS and OS X, it might be worth switching back. But I'd be surprised. But with no trial version, no word of a new version on the horizon, and Apple's direction in this area being unknown, I certainly would lean towards LR; I'd certainly wait for a new Aperture before I plunged into it.
And meanwhile you can always check out GraphicConverter. It has a nifty browser, and although it can't do everything Aperture or LR can, it does have facility in some areas those don't, especially for those of us who use graphics in other formats and need to make batch changes.
But folks will say....but Aperture does not have the editing tools that are available in LR. Correct. But if I am seriously editing a photo, LR does not have the tools I likely want either! If will use LR or Aperture for basic edits. But if I need serious work done, I will have the file in some combination of the Nik Collection, Perfect Photo Suite 8, Pixelmater (rarely), or Helicon (if I need to focus stack).
I have been a professional photographer since 1975. I only say this so you know where I am coming from. Editing Tools and RAW interpretation are the primary considerations when I use a digital image editing program. Lightroom is much more advanced than Aperture, which I used since it came out until a little more than a year ago. Lightroom 5 is way ahead of the game. And its filing system works very well for me, although admittedly Aperture's is better.
Phase One's Capture One Pro might suit you more. You should used Photoshop if you are serious, and Aperture or LR can't do it for your photos. I haven't had to use PS in many years, as I can get most of what I need out of LR. Nik is good but also very limited. The best tool are their sharpening and noise reduction tools as well as their b&w Silver Effex program.
Editing tools are the most important aspect of any editing program, and of course the way the program develops the RAW image. Everything else is not as important. LR5 is way ahead of Aperture as Capture One Pro7.
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I can't use Micro four/thirds in my work ..
LR5 is miles ahead of Aperture, which I gave up on more than a year ago. Apple has lost many professional photographers and video professionals over the last few years .
I am one of them. I still have my old libraries in Aperture with hundreds of thousands of photo, but one day I will export the raw images out of the internal Aperture libraries and put them in simple catalogues on my hard drives that all my editing programs can access. I will save all the edits that I have made in Aperture and export them out as jpegs in corresponding files to my new RAW folders for Lightroom.
Even if Ap comes out with a new version, I doubt I will go back to it. Apple has abandoned its customers too many times. From iWeb to iDisk to Final Cut Pro and to Aperture. Their machines are great. But I feel that Apple management, outside of honoring their warranty (which they do very well) does not really care that much about their customer base. But that is another subject and another thread.
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I certainly believe that Aperture is DOA as well. But even if Apple were to release Aperture (4 or X) why would anyone bother? It has been more than 4 years since A3 was released and based on this experience one would expect a new release to languish as well. LR and Capture One have steadily improved and will continue to do so.
Well said!!!! I won't bother going back to Aperture. (Even if it is a blow away program, because I just don't trust Apple cares about these pro-level image-editing products.)
Thanks neversink. As you note, would anyone buy Aperture 4 knowing Aperture 5 won't be here till 2018?
And speaking of Nik, just discovered the Analog efex Pro 2 plugin crashes Aperture, but not LR5. Not my fav plugin, but when I saw the upgrade had to try it. Maybe it's Nik/Google's fault, but maybe not. In any case, why mess with software that is likely to become deprecated?
And speaking of Nik, just discovered the Analog efex Pro 2 plugin crashes Aperture, but not LR5. Not my fav plugin, but when I saw the upgrade had to try it. Maybe it's Nik/Google's fault, but maybe not. In any case, why mess with software that is likely to become deprecated?
Could a software product be a "killer" when it's update cycle is every 4 years? With no guideposts to future development? I can't trust that. Apple will not abandon those with iPhoto or Aperture libraries, but this isn't how critical software is done. Too bad.
It could for me. I am retired. Photography is cost for us, not a revenue. I don't have an emotional investment in any software tool or camera. We just sold off all our Canon DSLR equipment for the smaller size, weight, and cost of M43.
There are no killer features in LR for me. So I will see what LR6 has to offer and the new Aperture also. It should be very interesting in the next 9 months or so.
There are no killer features in LR for me. So I will see what LR6 has to offer and the new Aperture also. It should be very interesting in the next 9 months or so.
Yes, that is the most important thing with software, because users invents hundreds of hours in it they need to know that it will continue to be available. Apple gives no indication that Aperture will have along future.
That said, I'm looking for a DAM that allows me to keep all media files in the same library, audio, still images and video. I want it to allow access by multiple users and have access controls and tone distributed so that data can be on several disk and computers. Offerings I've seen are primitive. Apple's Logic and FCPX and Aperture need to be much better integrated
Aperture/iPhoto/Photos - A window into Apple and digital imagery
For those of us who are curious and furious about Apples treatment of photographers as opposed to iphonographers here is some factual information. If you only enjoy ranting and complaining, dont read this. While there is a lot of good news, the information will not answer the questions Is iPhoto Dead or Where is my Aperture 4. It sheds light (no pun) on Apples fundamental direction regarding digital imagery and from it one can be bit more informed about the range of possibilities for not only Apples digital imagery products over the coming months, but those who develop Apple image applications to run on Macs, iPhones and iPads and whatever else the company might produce.
See https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/ (on Safari only)
See the title: Advances in Core Image and play the video.
Apple previews improvements in its Core Image. This is the framework across all Apple OS and ios for image processing iPhoto, Aperture, Photos, Preview, Safari, etc. While the video is geek speak, perhaps some of you with experience in developing applications will grasp its impact. For those who may be more interested in what it all means the last 20 minutes of the video provides some insights on a few areas photographers are talking, complaining, comparing, or ranting about - filters, lens correction, raw processing, and dual GPU processing (like dual GPUs on the Mac Pro, not the discrete kinds in MacBook Pro).
Core Image contains 115+ image processing and editing filters. Now with changes in ios 8 and Yosemite not only are these filters made available to developers, but also added is the capability for developers to author third party filters. Apple has made Core Image considerably easier to work with. Both ease of use and the more open framework are radical and disruptive moves on Apples part, that photography application developers like Apple, Pixelmator, OnOne, PhaseOne and even Adobe must be most excited about and portends a large baseline for exceptional new or improved applications rather quickly.
A development platform called Raw Expose is used to demo the notable improvements. The raw processing accomplishments shown are available to both raw and JPEG formats on ios and OS X environments. The development team demoed a new highlights and shadow filter that was impressive. They also announced that the newest version of DNG is incorporated into Core Image. Noise reduction was shown and results seemed quite impressive. No question they are feeling the heat brought on by Iridient, DxO, Camera Raw and a host of others. Lens correction is vastly improved. However no parameter adjustments for lens correction were shown, so here there are wide gaps of unknown information.
For those using a Mac Pro, they demoed two possible use cases for incorporating the second GPU into an image processing workflow speculative rendering and background rendering. On the surface they make sense and open vast areas of opportunity for developers of applications across as aspects of imagery development.
Finally, note that iPhoto and Aperture are mentioned so right now, this week, those products seem to continue to exist. What Apple does with all of this improved functionality in their current product line up brought forward by Core Image is speculative, and there is quite a bit of that already going on in other threads. Here area some facts, make of them what you wish and keep shooting. Bottom line Apple is hardly ignoring imagery, quite the opposite in fact. How they are going to treat us camera users (as opposed to smartphone users) remains a question.
Like others who regularly post here, I am holding my 50 gb Aperture library and learning Lightroom. New imagery is imported into both. I have discovered Lightrooms Library module is an utter mess to work with and requires a vastly different way to think about image organization and management. But right now this remains the approach until Apple announces specifics on its product line-ups (who knows when) and Adobe makes its plans known on June 18.
For those of us who are curious and furious about Apples treatment of photographers as opposed to iphonographers here is some factual information. If you only enjoy ranting and complaining, dont read this. While there is a lot of good news, the information will not answer the questions Is iPhoto Dead or Where is my Aperture 4. It sheds light (no pun) on Apples fundamental direction regarding digital imagery and from it one can be bit more informed about the range of possibilities for not only Apples digital imagery products over the coming months, but those who develop Apple image applications to run on Macs, iPhones and iPads and whatever else the company might produce.
See https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/ (on Safari only)
See the title: Advances in Core Image and play the video.
Apple previews improvements in its Core Image. This is the framework across all Apple OS and ios for image processing iPhoto, Aperture, Photos, Preview, Safari, etc. While the video is geek speak, perhaps some of you with experience in developing applications will grasp its impact. For those who may be more interested in what it all means the last 20 minutes of the video provides some insights on a few areas photographers are talking, complaining, comparing, or ranting about - filters, lens correction, raw processing, and dual GPU processing (like dual GPUs on the Mac Pro, not the discrete kinds in MacBook Pro).
Core Image contains 115+ image processing and editing filters. Now with changes in ios 8 and Yosemite not only are these filters made available to developers, but also added is the capability for developers to author third party filters. Apple has made Core Image considerably easier to work with. Both ease of use and the more open framework are radical and disruptive moves on Apples part, that photography application developers like Apple, Pixelmator, OnOne, PhaseOne and even Adobe must be most excited about and portends a large baseline for exceptional new or improved applications rather quickly.
A development platform called Raw Expose is used to demo the notable improvements. The raw processing accomplishments shown are available to both raw and JPEG formats on ios and OS X environments. The development team demoed a new highlights and shadow filter that was impressive. They also announced that the newest version of DNG is incorporated into Core Image. Noise reduction was shown and results seemed quite impressive. No question they are feeling the heat brought on by Iridient, DxO, Camera Raw and a host of others. Lens correction is vastly improved. However no parameter adjustments for lens correction were shown, so here there are wide gaps of unknown information.
For those using a Mac Pro, they demoed two possible use cases for incorporating the second GPU into an image processing workflow speculative rendering and background rendering. On the surface they make sense and open vast areas of opportunity for developers of applications across as aspects of imagery development.
Finally, note that iPhoto and Aperture are mentioned so right now, this week, those products seem to continue to exist. What Apple does with all of this improved functionality in their current product line up brought forward by Core Image is speculative, and there is quite a bit of that already going on in other threads. Here area some facts, make of them what you wish and keep shooting. Bottom line Apple is hardly ignoring imagery, quite the opposite in fact. How they are going to treat us camera users (as opposed to smartphone users) remains a question.
Like others who regularly post here, I am holding my 50 gb Aperture library and learning Lightroom. New imagery is imported into both. I have discovered Lightrooms Library module is an utter mess to work with and requires a vastly different way to think about image organization and management. But right now this remains the approach until Apple announces specifics on its product line-ups (who knows when) and Adobe makes its plans known on June 18.
Only 50GB? I think my referenced masters is just under 2TB. I have had LR for years and am just learning Aperture.
Seriously, much thanks for the WWDC video link! It does show Apple does indeed have a firm grip on a new image processing architecture. This should make for a very interesting fall.
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I watched the vid and saw some interesting commentary as well. The thrust was that regular ol' users with huge photo collections (a much, much huger set these days than pro or prosumer photographers) are super frustrated that photos are spread all over, and video is sort of left out entirely. They saw in Apple's changes in cloud storage a focus on getting all that managed. I appreciated the info about filters, but the key here is management, and right now unless you are so disciplined as most here are your photos are all over: iphone pix, shared photos, emailed photos, videos, photos on mac, family photos on local networks, etc etc. Apple has to make a run at getting that mess under control for it's great mass of users; after that, something for "pro users" should be easy peasey.