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Why Aperture?

Bigtree

Bigtree

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 7, 2007
333
110
I have Photoshop and iPhoto. I edit my photos in PS, thru iPhoto. It works very well; (except saving the edited photo back into iphoto, with a different name). It seems everyone swears by Aperture. Why? I like to keep it simple, why spend 200 bucks? I already have the Cadillac; I'm I missing something?
 
If you have to ask, you probably don't process enough photos per day to know any better.

Secondly, I use photoshop along with Aperture too. At any given wedding I shoot almost a thousand pictures. Try doing a thousand photos your way!:eek:
 
If you don't need Aperture and are satisfied with iPhoto, by all means stick with iPhoto. Aperture is a professional app that can do a lot, lot more than iPhoto, but is also more complex. If you need any of these functions is another question, you seem happy with what you have. But I couldn't fathom going back to iPhoto.

If you want to see what the buzz is all about, download the 30-day trial and use it.
 
It's for your huge workflow.

Although I use lightroom they are roughly the same - but after a model shoot I have about 800 images to process. It allows for a lot more fine tuning than iphoto allows for and it is very powerful.
 
Bigtree said:
... It seems everyone swears by Aperture. Why? I like to keep it simple, why spend 200 bucks? I already have the Cadillac; I'm I missing something?
Click to expand...

No, you aren't missing anything. I always recommend people use iPhoto until they have a good reason to switch. For most, iPhoto is just right.

Why switch?

1) You have 100,000 photos in your library and you typically do shoots with 250 images and you ar finding that iPhot is to slow. Aperture is quite a bit faster when you have many files

2) You have a notebook and desktop and need to move parts of your library between the two

3) you like the extra image adjustment controls Aperture has or you need to work with IPTC metadata

4) Aperture allows for more complex folder/project/album configurations. It's pretty much unlimited that way.

5) "Vaults" are nice. If you like to keep multiple backups and have an easy way to sync them while you work. Many other backups systems require you to wait
 
Bigtree said:
I have Photoshop and iPhoto. I edit my photos in PS, thru iPhoto. It works very well; (except saving the edited photo back into iphoto, with a different name). It seems everyone swears by Aperture. Why? I like to keep it simple, why spend 200 bucks? I already have the Cadillac; I'm I missing something?
Click to expand...

If you think you have the Cadillac, keep on driving...

Have you watched the aperture videos on the apple site? - they will give you a quick introduction into why Aperture is far more powerful than iPhoto. If you shoot and edit any significant amount of photos versioning and organization alone are worth the price. Unless you're doing pixel level editing, Aperture can probably do 80-90% of most editing nondestructively for many shooters, not requiring TIFF files to be created from the RAW. Vaults, highlight recovery from RAW, keywording....

I guess if you're happy, keep on driving, but iPhoto compare to Aperture is like a gocart compared to the Cadillac to which you refer earlier.
 
i personally like lightroom a lot better. :) it's a lot better for work flow and everything - lightroom gives you a LOT of editing optoins that iphoto can't even touch.

Bigtree said:
I have Photoshop and iPhoto. I edit my photos in PS, thru iPhoto. It works very well; (except saving the edited photo back into iphoto, with a different name). It seems everyone swears by Aperture. Why? I like to keep it simple, why spend 200 bucks? I already have the Cadillac; I'm I missing something?
Click to expand...
 
My top 3 reasons:
  1. Organization. Aperture has far more powerful search, much more complete EXIF (EXIF support on iPhoto is a joke), and better photo management hierarchy.
  2. RAW editing. iPhoto has zero RAW post processing capability (converts RAW to JPEG). Although you can use Photoshop for RAW post processing, the workflow is awkward, particularly if you are processing a large batch.
  3. Editing. While one must use Photoshop for more advanced editing, Aperture covers a wide range of editing needs, far more so than iPhoto.

Top 3 reasons to stick with iPhoto:
  1. iPhoto is cheaper/free. Aperture costs $200.
  2. Your camera is point & shoot consumer camera. Although I prefer to use Aperture for superior management, iPhoto is good enough for JPEG and unlike Aperture, it can manage video clips as well.
  3. Basic photo editing needs. iPhoto has a set of editing features that are easier to use for casual photographers, such as simpler noise filtering.
 
You'll know when you're ready for Aperture.
Totally agree with what most of what the others have said already.

The power of it just makes life so much easier.
 
Thanks for all the great replies!!!! I don't do bulk editing, and I'm not really fawned of iPhoto; though it did organize my photos ( in windoz I had nothing like it). As for my "Cadillac" comment, I was referring to Photoshop, and not iPhoto!

BTW.... I edit the way Scott Kelby's 7-point system has taught me. Works very well for me.

So... is it worth it just to organize photos better? I have over 10,000 photos.

Thanks again for taking time to comment.
 
I'll tell you what made it worth it for me - versioning. Everytime on my pc system I would re-edit a file, I would have to keep track of filenames and make sure I wasn't overwriting my old file or original. with aperture all that is transparent. Make as many new edits as you want and they're all stacked together. That and quick searches for photos. The editing stuff is just gravy, but those features are what sold me. I actually bought my entire mac pro (1st mac purchase ever) just to get aperture and away from all the rating/sorting/versioning disaster that the PC world had to offer at the time.

Since then Lightroom has come along, and now the PC world has a very viable alternative to Aperture, but I'm still glad I made the switch.

Cheers
 
Bigtree said:
Thanks for all the great replies!!!! I don't do bulk editing, and I'm not really fawned of iPhoto; though it did organize my photos ( in windoz I had nothing like it). As for my "Cadillac" comment, I was referring to Photoshop, and not iPhoto!

BTW.... I edit the way Scott Kelby's 7-point system has taught me. Works very well for me.

So... is it worth it just to organize photos better? I have over 10,000 photos.

Thanks again for taking time to comment.
Click to expand...

Just download the trial and try it out yourself. No one can answer the question for you "will I like it better"
 
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