Funny - My exact feeling on Illustrator for years, but now I fly on it.
There was hate when Adobe killed Freehand, but I got over it
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Aperture vs. Lightroom
- Thread starter Westside guy
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Funny - My exact feeling on Illustrator for years, but now I fly on it.
There was hate when Adobe killed Freehand, but I got over it
You do realize there is reason to the madness when it comes to the UI? A dark, flat, colorless UI allows you to make balanced decisions on colors, exposure, etc.. It's not possible to do that with a bright, colorful UI as the brightness and colors influence how you perceive the photo you are working on and the adjustments you make.
You may not like the UI, but it is a deliberate and proven design decision for a color managed workflow.
That's funny. You need to inform Adobe trainers of this as well. One of Adobe's videos has a trainer stating at the end he switches into a white background to see what the image looks like without the clutter (not his words) and with a background most people view with.
You know what's really funny, for years I wanted the contextual menu from, say mail, to Export to Aperture, as well as iPhoto. Never happened.
So now they kill Aperture and in Yosemite Beta, the contextual menu has.... wait for it .... Export to Aperture.
Too little too late.
Killing Aperture was the best thing that ever happened to me. Migrating was painful, but this time I did much better job with my schema, so to speak. LR5 does have a much better editor. Integration, well I'll miss that, but the flexibility of having everything in the filesystem overrides that. Publishing in LR5 needs a little work, I actually think Aperture did a better job syncing with Flickr and Facebook, but there are some tricks with Smart Folders and such to solve that.
Having used a post production editor like Aperture for years, you know what you want, so figuring out the LR5 equivalent was really pretty easy.
Also, I won't wait, I would bet Photos will have no library functions at all, Apple wants to organize your data their way, also they are pushing sharing with Apple devices only, so publishing to non Apple users could go away, I mean look at Apple Photo Steam.
Lastly, the professional support on Adobe is so much better. That's biggest benefit, there are just tons of resources Aperture never had, I have come up to speed in just a couple weeks.
Having used a post production editor like Aperture for years, you know what you want, so figuring out the LR5 equivalent was really pretty easy.
Also, I won't wait, I would bet Photos will have no library functions at all, Apple wants to organize your data their way, also they are pushing sharing with Apple devices only, so publishing to non Apple users could go away, I mean look at Apple Photo Steam.
Lastly, the professional support on Adobe is so much better. That's biggest benefit, there are just tons of resources Aperture never had, I have come up to speed in just a couple weeks.
Yeah I know what you mean, however for my main Aperture library I didn't use referenced files. I only used referenced files for sharing with non Apple applications. I don't recall why I made that decision, it was Aperture 2, long time ago.
Now, I think I just prefer my own organization, for example I have directory trees for Exports and Catalogs. You get a better view from the Finder of multiple Catalogs at the same time, especially with Finder Quick Look.
Its a well thought out editor. But take a good look at your initial renders, LR needs more work and the tools are available. Aperture initial renders need no noise reduction. There's also "air" or depth to the Aperture images, lacking in LR. The rest of the toolset is basically the same other than the gradient tool.
No problem with PhotoStream publishing to non-Apple users. Do it all the time. Share via a web link, one of the built in choices.
Agree there's a lot more support available for LR. However, the average user tends to be at a far lower level than the average Aperture user. The discussions can be quite tedious and the video's quite laborious. Not to mention the "my way or the highway" mentality that permeates all Adobe products.
Not knocking LR as it saved my butt for 2 years when Apple did not support my Fuji's. However, its poorly written code and, for me, a miserable work environment that's not conducive to focusing on the edits with the app not getting in the way. Not to mention its slow on imports and slow in the GUI without a lot of CPU thrown at it. I've clocked D800 and Fuji imports and Aperture can import up to twice to three times faster. With the large files we have today, that's important.
People look for Aperture refreshes too much and tend to overlook the fact its still a very well thought out app, tighter code and better integrated into OSX. As old as it is and as long as Apple has ignored it (not us as I don't take it personally).
The only way I would move back to LR is if I started using Photoshop heavily again. No chance of that happening. If I did, I'd probably pair it with Bridge instead of Lightroom like I used to. I think in terms of sessions/projects/jobs. Not having smart albums integrated with the file browser is more clutter that sits there for decades and simply makes moving around and finding anything slower. So Bridge works fine without the clutter.
People tend to adopt Lightroom because its well known, stable, and usually the first app mentioned when it comes to image processing and management. That does not mean its the best. Or we would not all be sitting here with Apple computers.
The kicker with Apple solutions is they provide great integration, a decent editor and easy publishing, then they change their mind. I've used iDisk, .Mac, MobileMe, the list goes on. Every time I turn around Apple decides out with the old and in with the new.
I agree with you about updates, I'd be happy with Aperture in its current state, update the Raw Compatibility and that's it. The problem with Apple is too "frequent" refreshes, meaning OS X, iOS, that impact all the applications.
The target for Apple photography is not people posting here, its the users that don't organize their photos, they only know how to show them on their iPhone or iPad, just regular folks who are perfectly happy with the phones camera. Sadly that's 98% of the people taking photos these days, the upside for Apple is digital photography has grown exponentially in the last decade so that 98% is a huge number, and they're definetly going after that market.
So its Adobe for better or worse. Think about it this way, they don't have a choice but to support us, if Creative Cloud dies they close the doors, for Apple its just a small fraction of their portfolio.
I've had complete Apple solutions for a long time at my home, something most my customers refused to do, namely put all their eggs in one basket. I am finding they're right, I need need to diversify more and I am.
Yep - It's a walled garden with a few strange organizing decisions made without your permission, but many like it that way.
Totally agree. I don't care where I get my solutions from, as long as they work for me. For now Aperture. Potentially Capture One develops a half way decent catalog, then there, or who knows? "better or worst" does not work for me.
Absolutely, we don't call it "Care and Feeding of", we call it "Capturing" the market.
To make such a statement you need to get to know aperture extensively enough. Lightroom algorithm it's not even close at n half to the aperture one. But I guess you know little about programming.
I don't look at the programming, I just look at the resulting image that I get. Which is the point...
That's like saying open source better because you change or verify the code. I don't give a flying f about the programming. I care about functionality and image results. If slapping my screen would yield better results I'd be whipping it until I couldn't move no more.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. The exposure control in Aperture is far better than the one in Lightroom and is one of the reasons many people (me included) switch from Lightroom to Aperture.
Aperture's exposure slider is capable of reading more data from the raw file than Lightroom's. I'm not saying that just to voice my preference against yours. This isn't my opinion - it's verifiable. And, fortunately, it's very easy to test. Try this:
Grab your camera and head outside. Take an over-exposed photo that has sky & clouds in it. Over-exposing by 2 or 3 stops should do it. When you look at the preview on the back of the camera, you should see most of the sky flashing. That's good - the preview, histogram, etc are based on the jpeg, not the raw. The raw file contains far more data than the camera preview shows you.
Now head back indoors and open the image in both aperture & lightroom. Don't touch any controls or apply any presets, just let both apps create their default preview. Now, using only the exposure slider, underexpose the image by 2 stops. You'll immediately see that Aperture brings back more highlight detail and retains more fine gradations in the sky & clouds.
Lightroom leaves the brightest highlight areas blown out and creates a horrible grey halo around a lot of fine gradations. It can also struggle to bring back natural colour details in the light areas where the sky nears the horizon (often adding a yellow hue to the blue sky).
You may prefer using Lightroom, and that's absolutely fine - its a great piece of software. But Aperture's underlying algorithm is just better. For some reason, it's able to extract data from the raw file that Lightroom simply can't (as you'll see when it generates a JPEG preview from the info in the raw file).
Lightroom has some good tools, but the fact that it can't use all the information contained in the raw file essentially limits what you can do with your camera.
I've had a look at your site - your photos are really fantastic. You clearly know what you're doing so I really hope this reply doesn't sound conceited - I certainly don't mean it to.
I hope that helps. Just give it a try, and keep up the great work!
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I'm afraid you're mistaken. The exposure control in Aperture is far better than the one in Lightroom and is one of the reasons many people (me included) switch from Lightroom to Aperture.
I'm not saying that just to voice my preference against yours. This isn't my opinion - it's fact. And, fortunately, it's very easy to test. Try this:
Grab your camera and head outside. Take an over-exposed photo that has sky & clouds in it. Over-exposing by 2 or 3 stops should do it. When you look at the preview on the back of the camera, you should see most of the sky flashing. That's good - the preview, histogram, etc are based on the jpeg, not the raw. The raw file contains far more data than the camera preview shows you.
Now head back indoors and open the image in both aperture & lightroom. Don't touch any controls or apply any presets, just let both apps create their default preview. Now, using only the exposure slider, underexpose the image by 2 stops. You'll immediately see that Aperture brings back more highlight detail and retains more fine gradations in the sky & clouds.
Lightroom leaves the brightest highlight areas blown out and creates a horrible grey halo around a lot of fine gradations. It can also struggle to bring back natural colour details in the light areas where the sky nears the horizon (often adding a yellow hue to the blue sky).
You may prefer using Lightroom, and that's absolutely fine - its a great piece of software. But Aperture's underlying algorithm is just better. For some reason, it's able to extract data from the raw file that Lightroom simply can't (as you'll see when it generates a JPEG preview from the info in the raw file).
Lightroom has some good tools, but the fact that it can't use all the information contained in the raw file essentially limits what you can do with your camera.
I've had a look at your site - your photos are really fantastic. You clearly know what you're doing so I really hope this reply doesn't sound conceited - I certanily don't mean it to.
I hope that helps. And keep up the great work!
Thank you for your honest comment and you did not sound conceited at all
I used to love Aperture and I did all my best to keep my workflow going with Aperture as long as possible. The revelation that Lightroom was better for me came after a wedding reception shoot. Due to a dark ceiling, all of my pictures were very underexposed. Editing with Aperture gave horrible result, multiplying noise level and giving horrible colors to the pictures. Whereas Lightroom gave me clean pictures with acceptable colors.
That said, I mostly use the exposure slider to bring out more light in darker pictures and if you try it yourself, you'll see that Lightroom does it way better with much less noise. Part of this is because Lightroom handles noise much better than Aperture. And that's also a fact.
Aperture is better than Lightroom in many aspects, one that comes to mind quickly is CA control but that usually is not an issue for me.
I would love to check out your pictures but my work PC blocks your websites
Thank you for your honest comment and you did not sound conceited at all
I used to love Aperture and I did all my best to keep my workflow going with Aperture as long as possible. The revelation that Lightroom was better for me came after a wedding reception shoot. Due to a dark ceiling, all of my pictures were very underexposed. Editing with Aperture gave horrible result, multiplying noise level and giving horrible colors to the pictures. Whereas Lightroom gave me clean pictures with acceptable colors.
That said, I mostly use the exposure slider to bring out more light in darker pictures and if you try it yourself, you'll see that Lightroom does it way better with much less noise. Part of this is because Lightroom handles noise much better than Aperture. And that's also a fact.
Aperture is better than Lightroom in many aspects, one that comes to mind quickly is CA control but that usually is not an issue for me.
I would love to check out your pictures but my work PC blocks your websites
Glad to hear Lightroom works for you - you're certainly getting great results with it. And you're absolutely right that lightroom handles noise way better than Aperture!
I should probably have explained in my last post that I don't actually do my image processing in either Aperture or Lightoom. I only use the raw converter to manage my files and generate a starting image - every shot delivered to the client is processed through photoshop. (Many photographers think that's overkill, but with a selection of actions & droplets I find it's easy to get an automated batch workflow.)
I haven't directly compared Aperture and Lightroom for lightening a photo in the way you suggest. Instead, I'd usually do that in photoshop by using a screened layer and adjusting the blending mode to brighten shadows without changing highlights. I'll definitely try an example like the one you suggested, though.
Not sure why my sites would be blocked - all images are SFW. If you get an opportunity to look later, I'm open to constructive criticism
All the best!
Glad to hear Lightroom works for you - you're certainly getting great results with it. And you're absolutely right that lightroom handles noise way better than Aperture!
I should probably have explained in my last post that I don't actually do my image processing in either Aperture or Lightoom. I only use the raw converter to manage my files and generate a starting image - every shot delivered to the client is processed through photoshop. (Many photographers think that's overkill, but with a selection of actions & droplets I find it's easy to get an automated batch workflow.)
I haven't directly compared Aperture and Lightroom for lightening a photo in the way you suggest. Instead, I'd usually do that in photoshop by using a screened layer and adjusting the blending mode to brighten shadows without changing highlights. I'll definitely try an example like the one you suggested, though.
Not sure why my sites would be blocked - all images are SFW. If you get an opportunity to look later, I'm open to constructive criticism
All the best!
Ah you're one of those that use Photoshop, my girlfriend does that too! I don't have the patience for it lol.
My work blocks almost everything (Everything social, email, games related and personal websites). I'm pesonally shocked MacRumors isn't blocked.
