Dynamic range in Lightroom vs Aperture

[jerwin]

I still use Aperture 3, and am dragging my feet over switching to Lightroom (or gasp, Photos). I have no real plans to upgrade my D7000 any time soon. I'm more likely to get some more "pro" lenses.
When I try to recover shadows or blown highlights, Aperture seems to limit my options to +/- two stops. When I see videos of people working with lightroom, it looks like they have a much wider range to play with. +/- 5 stops?
Is this real? Or just a quirk of the interface? I shoot lossless 14 bit NEF.

 

[phrehdd]

Can you get a trial of Lightroom? If so, best to see for yourself if Lightroom has better ability to recover detail in shadows and highlights (as well as handling noise respectively). You may also want to check out (though more costly) Capture One Pro.

 

[MCAsan]

And in fall, likely late Sept, On1 will release their new product Photo RAW. They have built their own raw converter engine and it renders onto the screen in very near real time. No huge delays such as we have in Lr waiting for preview generation...etc.

 

[zioxide]

Lightroom's highlight and shadow recovery blows Aperture's out of the water. That was one of the main reasons I switched (before Aperture was even EOL'd).

 

[OreoCookie]

You should switch away from Aperture one way or another since it has been officially end-of-lifed by Apple. Hence, the discussion is somewhat moot.

 

[fcortese]

The basic tools to process your images are so much stronger in Lr as compared to Aperture, IMO. I made the complete switch over a year and a half ago and have never looked back. There is another option for you. Keep your Aperture Library but start using some other option (Lr, On1, etc) for all of your new photos going forward and get used to using that app. Aperture still works with the present apple OS (I have no clue if it works well with Windows 10) and keep it active until a future generation of operating system stops recognizing it. With Lr you can play with a trial version as noted already. But with Lr you will eventually need to make a decision whether to buy the latest version of Lr or participate in Adobe's subscription plan (~10/month for Lr + Photoshop). Many people don't like the idea of the subscription model but you do get a constant upgrade of processing adjustments that are not necessarily upgraded in the single purchase option. And the present thinking goes that in the end it will cost about the same as buying the next major upgrade of the purchased model. (i'm not sure about that part but I personally opted for the subscription).