Aperture vs Lightroom (for iMac)

[Mad Dave]

Evening guys,

I've just bought an iMac and i'm looking at the above two programs for my photo editing. Ive used Lightroom on PC for years (since before it was bought by Adobe in fact) and so i'm using a pretty old version I suspect. I have a library of probably 15-20k images on my old PC which i'd like to drag across onto my new Mac. Now, i've heard some pretty good things about Aperture and I imagine it integrates with the Mac OS much better than Lightroom? Has anyone here used both and able to comment on which is best? I do mainly portraits but a few landscapes also. Always shoot in RAW, on a Nikon D200 if that helps.

Any advice/opinions very welcome

Thanks

Dave

[big dub]

Unfortunately I can't comment on Lightroom, not used it, but I am thinking of getting it too, so this thread will be interesting for me too.

I do however use Aperture on my Macbook Pro. It's very good at basic adjustments and effects, but is quite limited (unless I'm not using it to its full potential)

[coxyuk]

Lightroom works fine on the Mac and LR4 is a good improvement on earlier versions. I'm not a fan of Aperture but you could download both of them plus Capture One and use the free trial period to evaluate which works best for you. I've stuck mostly with C1 probably because I'm I'm familiar with the editing workflow.

[Mutts]

I've found Lightroom runs much quicker on the mac, even more so with 12gb of ram.
plus exporting the catalog on the pc to my mac was another factor. Played with aperture on the mac, but still came back to Lightroom. Another option would be capture NX on OSX. Keep meaning to upgrade to LR4 at some time.

[toasty]

I tried Aperture but preferred LR. I could just do with a bit more RAM.

[tog]

Lightroom for me. I much preferred it to Aperture, and I think it has developed much more than Aperture since they were both introduced.

Capture 1 I want to like, as I hear so many people rave about it, but I've never given the demos enough of a go to switch - there is a fairly steep learning curve I feel as it is quite different to LR or Aperture.

LR for me is just a RAW processor and photo archive. For all my selecting, rating, organising, keywording, captioning, transmitting, etc, I use Photo Mechanic which is absolutely fantastic and so much faster than Lightroom. It doesn't have any processing ability however, so selects from that are then dropped into LR for tweaking and outputting as required.

[Mad Dave]

Thanks chaps. I think ill stick with LR then! I have used it for years and do really like it, but thought I'd see if I was missing a trick not switching to Aperture. Ill download a trial of LR4 - you never know, the serial number for my old version may even be valid!

Re RAM, I've got the 3.4ghz i7, 2gb graphics upgrade and fusion drive but I didn't bother with a RAM upgrade as apple charge exorbitant rates - should I be looking to upgrade the RAM too? It's the 27" model so is user upgradeable.

Thanks again for the advice

[Zod]

Aperture's not an editing programme really, but an organisation one.

[K12beano]

Long term LR user here.

I did try Aperchewer when I first got my MBP. Overall, it did quite well, but LR was easier to use. Added to that, the development of LR, especially stuff like lens correction, noise reduction and sharpening together with selective adjustments and the highlights and shadows controls all add up to a much better experience with LR, IMHO.

Aperture ain't bad, don't get me wrong. I just find LR superior.


(Running on 8Meggierams, with D800 RAW files, and find it all very agreeable ....!)

[Mad Dave]

Zod said:

Aperture's not an editing programme really, but an organisation one.

Well that seals it for me - I need it for RAW editing

[GnuBee]

Mad Dave said:

Well that seals it for me - I need it for RAW editing

It does that, its capabilities are very similar to Lightroom. However, it is fair to say it's not clear whether it's to all intents and purposes abandonware. Apple have made no significant updates to it - notable that they did not update when LR4 was released for example.

I've used both, chose Aperture but will probably switch back to Lightroom for the reason above.

[Zod]

Mad Dave said:

Zod said:

Aperture's not an editing programme really, but an organisation one.

Well that seals it for me - I need it for RAW editing

It will edit RAW files, but if you really want to do serious post-processing, you need Photoshop, not Lightroom or Aperture.

[Oldred_V8S]

I have tried both a number of times. Aperture is a far, far superior raw file converter; I wish it was the other way around as I like the features of LR.

For those of you unfamiliar with the work of Guy Gowan, he is a PS guru who has tried all raw converters; I have a video of his in which he uses Aperture and LR to convert the same file. The loss of highlight detail in the file converted by LR compared to Aperture is quite frankly amazing.

Like I said I have tried both and have no axe to grind either way; I have been a full time Aperture user who then flipped to LR4 as I love the benefits it brings but at the end of the day Aperture gives me a better starting point and is the reason I have returned to Aperture.

[K12beano]

Zod said:

... if you really want to do serious post-processing, you need Photoshop....

Yeah, no, maybe.

I manage something upwards of 95% in LR, I reckon. It's a real hard work job if I have to open up PS and re-learn how to do everything. I think I'd use PS more if I was starting with Aperture, mind.

But then I don't do much that requires a lot of layers, since I trust LR to be able to do most of the tweaking, cloning, dodging, burning, sharpening, noise reduction and stuff and if I need to be effectively blending different layers I use Photomatix.

[Mutts]

Mad Dave said:

Re RAM, I've got the 3.4ghz i7, 2gb graphics upgrade and fusion drive but I didn't bother with a RAM upgrade as apple charge exorbitant rates - should I be looking to upgrade the RAM too? It's the 27" model so is user upgradeable.

Thanks again for the advice

I put another 8gb in my imac, bought it from mrmemory. way way cheaper than Apple charge & dead easy to fit.
By far the best software for handling Nikon NEF's is Capture NX, but it wont work on the very latest version of OSX as they have taken out Rosetta(?)

[Oldred_V8S]

Zod said:

Mad Dave said:

Zod said:

Aperture's not an editing programme really, but an organisation one.

Well that seals it for me - I need it for RAW editing

It will edit RAW files, but if you really want to do serious post-processing, you need Photoshop, not Lightroom or Aperture.

But first of all you need a raw converter and that is where Aperture comes into its own. The Adobe raw converter used for PS and LR is pants compared to the Aperture one, fact! Like I said in my earlier post, no preference other than the best tool for the job.

Do not confuse pre & post production. Sure for Post production PS has no equals, but for the raw converter element, it is behind Aperture.

[K12beano]

Oldred_V8S said:

The Adobe raw converter used for PS and LR is pants compared to the Aperture one, fact!

Ah! Tell us more?!

[Mutts]

Oldred_V8S said:

Do not confuse pre & post production. Sure for Post production PS has no equals, but for the raw converter element, it is behind Aperture.

Which is still way behind Capture NX's RAW handling of NEF's.

[Zod]

Oldred_V8S said:

Zod said:

Mad Dave said:

Zod said:

Aperture's not an editing programme really, but an organisation one.

Well that seals it for me - I need it for RAW editing

It will edit RAW files, but if you really want to do serious post-processing, you need Photoshop, not Lightroom or Aperture.

But first of all you need a raw converter and that is where Aperture comes into its own. The Adobe raw converter used for PS and LR is pants compared to the Aperture one, fact! Like I said in my earlier post, no preference other than the best tool for the job.

Do not confuse pre & post production. Sure for Post production PS has no equals, but for the raw converter element, it is behind Aperture.

Agreed. I use Aperture for organising my photos and for RAW conversion. I don't use it for post-processing though.

[Oldred_V8S]

K12beano said:

Oldred_V8S said:

The Adobe raw converter used for PS and LR is pants compared to the Aperture one, fact!

Ah! Tell us more?!

Please see my earlier post wrt the Guy Gowan test. Unfortunately I do not think it would be allowed to share screen grabs from the DVD I have, but he basically processes two raw files, one in Aperture and one in LR and then opens them in PS. The Aperture one had far greater highlight and shadow detail than the LR one. I know he shares some videos on youtube, I did have a bit of a dig around on there to see if this was one of them but could not see it.

Mutts said:

Oldred_V8S said:

Do not confuse pre & post production. Sure for Post production PS has no equals, but for the raw converter element, it is behind Aperture.

Which is still way behind Capture NX's RAW handling of NEF's.

I have never used Capture NX so cannot comment on that one, but as above, Guy Gowan claims to have tested all the raw converters available today and still reverts back to Aperture. Genuine question, have you compared Aperture to Capture? I would be interested to hear your views as I've not heard too many opinions on it. it seems most people stick to Aperture, and Adobe raw converters.

Personally I wish LR had the Aperture raw capability as it has other features that are better but hey ho!