Aperture - Worth Buying?

PeteyJ · 07-17-2009, 10:50 AM

Now that I have my K20D, it's time to buy some PP software. I have Photoshop and Bridge installed on my MacBook already, but I want something made specifically for digital photography such as Aperture or Lightroom.

My question is, would buying Aperture be worth it? I know Lightroom is the industry standard, as Adobe is pretty much the defacto brand for anything graphic and design related, but Aperture is less expensive and Apple's student discount drives the price down ever more on it. I know very little about post processing digital photos at this point anyways, so it's not like I'd have to reteach myself how to do everything. I guess I just want to know if Aperture is capable of doing everything that is expected from similar software, and if it can do it efficiently.

**Marc Sabatella** · 07-17-2009, 12:38 PM

If you qualify for Apple's educational discount, you presumably qualify for Adobe's, too - Lightroom sells for $99.

I've never used Aperture, and have only limited first hand experience with Lightroom, but from what I've read about them, I prefer Lightroom. Both from the image processing but also the cataloging standpoint, it seems like it offers more. But I certainly wouldn't take my word over that of someone who actually uses both.

jstevewhite · 07-17-2009, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by PeteyJ

Now that I have my K20D, it's time to buy some PP software. I have Photoshop and Bridge installed on my MacBook already, but I want something made specifically for digital photography such as Aperture or Lightroom.

My question is, would buying Aperture be worth it? I know Lightroom is the industry standard, as Adobe is pretty much the defacto brand for anything graphic and design related, but Aperture is less expensive and Apple's student discount drives the price down ever more on it. I know very little about post processing digital photos at this point anyways, so it's not like I'd have to reteach myself how to do everything. I guess I just want to know if Aperture is capable of doing everything that is expected from similar software, and if it can do it efficiently.

They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I like them both, and keep switching back and forth. I suspect that Lightroom is going to get more plugin support, but since lots of the people that write plugins use Macs, that could be off-base. If you have a Mac with an advanced video card ( not the intel embedded, in other words) Aperture is faster - it's all hardware accelerated. If you *don't* have one of the higher end video cards - for instance, if you have a Mac Mini or an original Macbook - Lightroom is much faster. So on my iMac I use Aperture, mostly. On my MacBook Pros I use both, and on the Macbook, Macbook air, or Mac Mini, I use Lightroom exclusively.

I suspect that Adobe is going to be first with the GPU accelerated matrix math plugins (a la CUDA in the Windows world), so that could make a big difference, particularly if you have the dual-GPU MacBook Pro (the early 2009 15" MBP, in other words).

Aperture is more "Mac-Like" in interface design, and will probably feel "more natural" if you're a long time Mac user. Lightroom isn't far off, though, and is fairly comfortable, particularly full screen. I like Lightroom's use of multiple screens better than Aperture's, so if you have two monitors, definitely try that.

In the end, get a trial version of each and play with 'em for a month each before you lay down your cash. I couldn't decide, and ended up with both.

tlwyse · 07-17-2009, 01:43 PM

Call me another one that ends up using both...

Personally, I prefer Aperature for image organization...it made sense to me immediately whereas I still can't get my head around Lightroom 2, despite getting Martin Evening's book on the software. Aperture has organizational tools that work the way I want to work, LR not so much.

But for image manipulation, LR wins hands-down in my opinion...or I should say Adobe Camera Raw wins hand-down because I still end up using Bridge+ACR+PS more often than not rather than go into LR.

So I use Aperture to sort of "triage" and organize my photos and then jump into Bridge+ACR for actual conversion.

I would suggest getting your feet wet with Aperture ($) and then decide on whether you want to move up to LR ($$) in the future.

Regards,
Terry

*WMBP* · 07-17-2009, 02:02 PM

I don't use Aperture so I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Aperture's selective editing tool can only be used on a jpeg (or perhaps tiff) - kind of like when you had to take a jpeg into Photoshop to do anything. Lightroom's selective editing can be done with the raw file directly.

**Marc Sabatella** · 07-17-2009, 02:02 PM

The deal-breaker according to my understanding of Aperture's organization facility is complete and total non-support for writing metadata to IPTC in DNG (not sure about PEF) files. Meaning all organizational work is locked up within Aperture and can't be made visible elsewhere. If I'm wrong about that, then I'd agree Aperture could be as useful as LR for organizing, although I can't say that LR's approach knocks me out either.

jstevewhite · 07-17-2009, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by Marc Sabatella

The deal-breaker according to my understanding of Aperture's organization facility is complete and total non-support for writing metadata to IPTC in DNG (not sure about PEF) files. Meaning all organizational work is locked up within Aperture and can't be made visible elsewhere. If I'm wrong about that, then I'd agree Aperture could be as useful as LR for organizing, although I can't say that LR's approach knocks me out either.

Aperture's organizational skillz are only great if you 'drink the coolaide' and let it store your images in its library in the Apple "one file to rule them all, one file to bind them" management style. Vaults and stuff aren't a BAD idea, I just find that I have to turn that crap off because it's not flexible enough for me.

Of course, my images are organized (by me, for me) with tags, mostly, because I can search those in spotlight. The physical organization is by image timestamp.

PeteyJ · 07-17-2009, 03:19 PM

I have the trial of aperture and like it so far, except I have the regular MacBook, so performance can suck at times. I'll give lightroom a try in the new future.

I'm relatively new to digital, so I have no idea how post processing is done. Anyone know of any free online tutorials? Something for Bridge and ACR would probably be most useful, as I already have the full versions of those.

*WMBP* · 07-17-2009, 11:48 PM

Originally Posted by PeteyJ

I'm relatively new to digital, so I have no idea how post processing is done. Anyone know of any free online tutorials? Something for Bridge and ACR would probably be most useful, as I already have the full versions of those.

There is a ton of info online. If you start searching, you'll find more than you can possibly read. You might save yourself some time and grief, however, by buying a book on the program you like. There are many books Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom, and I know I've seen books on Aperture, too. There are other programs worth looking at, like Bibble Pro, Silkypix, LightZone; these are less popular by a good bit but quite powerful and generally somewhat cheaper than Aperture and Lightroom.

The basic idea with postprocessing is fairly simple. If you shoot raw (and you should, I think), raw files tend to need some encouragement to reach their full potential. White balance might need adjustment (because the picture looks a bit orange, for example). You might want to tweak the exposure or enhance the contrast or boost the saturation. If the picture's unattractively noisy, you can remove the noise; and if the picture is a bit soft even after you've fiddled with contrast you may want to sharpen it a bit as well.

Those are some of the basic elements of the photo that you adjust when you process a photo digitally. Now, in truth, you have many more options than that and some of it can be pretty challenging. But the basic ideas are pretty simple.

Astroguy12s · 07-18-2009, 10:47 AM

I've used both a bit. In the end I've gone with Aperture. The organizational features of Aperture much more suited me than Lightroom. Lightroom on the otherhand excels with the photo editing, the main thing I miss in Aperture is the non-destructive masks for Dodge/Burn, etc. But, since you already have Photoshop then Aperture would probably fill your needs for 90% of image editing, those that need more you can simply do a round trip export to Photoshop. I'm hoping for version 3 of Aperture that they add non-destructive masks...if they do that then it will be the best of both worlds.

There are 30 day demo's of both programs, you should download each and go through the video tutorials (Apple has them on their website, not sure about Lightroom) and see which suits you best.

Aperture tutorial here: Apple - Aperture - Tutorials