Life after Aperture..? Where next..?
Life after Aperture..? Where next..?
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Buffalo

Original Poster:

5,482 posts

284 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
quotequote all
Some advice needed.

I use Aperture (v1) on my mac book pro. The computer is a 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo 1, which has 2GB RAM (the max that this model can take).

I'm starting to "go off" Aperture. It often hangs the machine and I get the coloured ball of thinking, sometimes for quite a while. Also you can only do one process at once with Aperture, which means it can be quite slow to deal with a number of photos. I am still nervous about the way Aperture holds the files in it's own system (can they be stored as original files outside of Aperture, like iTunes can have an external library vault..?) but I can live with it for the mean time.

I was wondering what next. I suppose I use Aperture for a file storage system (despite my misgivings about the way in which it stores the files) and I do only light tinkering with photos - i.e. just crop, lighten/ darken, etc, as necessary. It's not that I am not into the whole post-processing stuff, just I have never really had a go at it.

What is on the market that can do what Aperture does, but smarter..?

Thanks in advance

Famous Graham

26,553 posts

255 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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Adobe Lightroom

carlosfandango

92 posts

271 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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Is Picasa available for Macs? If your needs are pretty straight forward it's worth a look. And it's free...

Buffalo

Original Poster:

5,482 posts

284 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
quotequote all
Famous Graham said:
Adobe Lightroom
How far is Lightroom from Photoshop..?

Would I eventually want to move from LR to PS..? (just thinking if i change, i may as well change once)

AndWhyNot

2,359 posts

229 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
quotequote all
Buffalo said:
Famous Graham said:
Adobe Lightroom
How far is Lightroom from Photoshop..?

Would I eventually want to move from LR to PS..? (just thinking if i change, i may as well change once)
Lightroom is more like Aperture than PS - for processing rather than out and out manipulation. I've been using Ap2 for about 6mths and still haven't got fully to grips with it's Library structure etc. Mind you, before that I used a 30 day demo of LR and iirc didn't really figure that out either. IME they do similar things but sometimes in quite different ways.

As for PS, I'm sure there are Aperture plugins but you'd have to imagine the two Adobe products integrating more fully. What is it you think you might need PS for that you can't do in Ap or LR?

DHA

340 posts

247 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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As a mac user I went for aperture, but also ran the LR trial at the same time. I am by no means any good with photo software but I found LR more useful for basic editing compared to aperture. The only thing it misses is the ease of use that the OSX based menu system aperture has.

Buffalo

Original Poster:

5,482 posts

284 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
quotequote all
As I shoot my photos in RAW, they are obviously rather large, so I hold my Aperture library on an external drive. I suppose this may contribute to the programmes' sluggishness. How do other users of Aperture find this..? It really annoys me and is contributing to my thoughts of changing.

At the present time I am only looking to administer slight tweaks to photographs, I haven't yet got excited by post-processing, hence going with a programme like Aperture/LR. I too went with Aperture because it was mac software (I had only just converted to Macs at the time so wasn't sure about the whole platform so stuck with the "easy" choice).

Does anyone know the differences of Aperture 2..?

toppstuff

13,698 posts

277 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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I could'nt pretend to be a heavy user, but I upgraded to Aperture 2 when I upgraded hardware, and I must say that it is a lot better, in that it does not hang in the way that I , too, noticed in V1.

Suggest you download a trial of Aperture 2 and see what you think.

lonny

445 posts

273 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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beano500

20,854 posts

305 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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Buffalo said:
What is on the market that can do what Aperture does, but smarter..?
Upgrade your hardware? Why not stick with what you know, and both the software and your hardware will be upgraded in time.....

I love Lightroom, but 'til I upgraded to a good solid 4Gb Ram even that can be a dog when you feed too much into the top of the mincer!

LR is your most serious competitor, I reckon! yes

jimothy

5,151 posts

267 months

Sunday 29th November 2009
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Aperture 2.0 is a lot faster - give the trial a go!

Famous Graham

26,553 posts

255 months

Monday 30th November 2009
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Buffalo said:
Famous Graham said:
Adobe Lightroom
How far is Lightroom from Photoshop..?

Would I eventually want to move from LR to PS..? (just thinking if i change, i may as well change once)
It does more or less everything I need it to now, particularly with the addition of the Mogrify plugin (from an external developer) which I use for borders and watermarks.

Spot cloning/healing
Cropping
Levels
Tone curve (plus individual sliders for highlights, lights, darks and shadows)
Resizing (on output, mind)
Noise reduction (although not to the same degree as Noise Ninja or Neat Image)
Sharpening
Adjustment brush
Gradiated post filters

You name it, really.

The only thing I use PS for now, and I do mean the only thing, is for more extensive cloning/healing, such as a telegraph wire or something. LR only does it in spots.

The poster above is correct about memory though - it is a bit hungry.

It's not just the development side of things I like, it's combining that with a good library function too. Much like Aperture really, but miles above PS + Bridge.

Using v2.5 at the mo, by the way.



Edited by Famous Graham on Monday 30th November 05:31

Buffalo

Original Poster:

5,482 posts

284 months

Monday 30th November 2009
quotequote all
Hmm... might see if i can get hold of a trial of Lightroom to try and wait to see what Aperture X rumours bring. Unfortunately, much as I have been eyeing up a new MacBook Pro with 8Gb of RAM and an SSD (even got as far as pricing it), I can't justify it until I know what the new year brings...

I don't mind Aperture, although I don't find it particularly logical to work through sometimes. I have just read an article comparing LR to Aperture (2 i think), and the author said there wasn't much in it, but that he was more used to LR and found that the layout helped him into a logical workflow. I liked the idea of that...


Job38

1,973 posts

266 months

Monday 30th November 2009
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I had similar problems with Aperture 1 and a MacBookPro.

Upgraded to Aperture 2 and an iMac and all the images on a hard drive - the difference is night and day.