[clawhammer]

I've even considered going the whole hog and getting a Mac Pro with dual quad-core Xeons.... but that would be ridiculously over the top, wouldn't it?

Of course not

[falconeye]

One thing I had forgotten about was how long it took Lr to import photos.

Actually, what takes long in LR when importing is rendering the previews, esp. if you choose them to be 1:1 which is a big time saver down the road.

My question then is: Can you tell Aperture to import and pre-render 1:1 previews as well?

[davemdsn]

Yes, you can set up Aperture to render any size previews you like on import.

[pentaxkat]

I have a macbook and originally bought Lightroom as Aperture 1.5 was meant to be really really slow on a macbook. However, I've been using the trial of Aperture 2 and am very impressed and tempted to switch.

Reasons I prefer Aperture;
-integrates much better with the rest of OSX. If I'm doing a presentation I can access my aperture library without opening aperture and take raws from the library and they will be automatically created into JPEGs with default settings when I drag them into my presenation. This is meant to be a leopard feature but it seems to work in tiger as well (at least within mac programs like keynote, vectordesigner, iphoto etc.) As an academic who hates faff this is invaluable. I hate the export thing in Lightroom. It does my head in for some reason.
-organises photos better; smart folders rule!
-dodge and burn plug-in; I don't have photoshop so the ability to do adjustments on parts of photos is what I want. Its very easy and intuitive.
-sharpening is better than lightroom (not hard)
-default settings with *istDS RAW->JPEG settings quite good.
-lighttable and quick preview are fantastic

Things I prefer about lightroom
-when actually editing images lightroom is much quicker and more stable. Aperture is still a tad overspecced for my little macbook. Macbook pro has a much better graphics card so either should work.
-loads of very cool presets; you can instantly click on different styles to quickly edit your photo. Initially I thought this was a gimmick but its actually great fun and provides you with a good starting point. In aperture you have to create your own library of these by saving different edited photos and using lift and stamp. Faff.
-same as on a PC so more tutorials online available and can learn off other people more easily
-cheaper with education discount
-I really like the slideshow feature; I've not played around with aperture one yet, but the lightroom one was a joy to use; rate your photos, two clicks later you are showing your colleagues you best photos fullscreen from a trip (no more boring people to death with rubbish photos).

Anyone know if its possible to sell adobe software (legally) and transfer the license if I do switch? I don't want to pirate it, but I don't want to use both lightroom and aperture (too complicated), so if I switch I'd like to give it to a friend, but they need to register it on installation and I don't want them or me to get into trouble???

[pentaxkat]

aperture does not have any correction for PF or CA

Neither have distortion correction either but there are plenty of third party programs that do that (lensfix and lenstweaker spring to mind).

[davemdsn]

It is legal to sell and transfer an Adobe license. However, I tried to sell my Lr license when i got Aperture 2 but had no luck. Don't know why.

The only thing I miss from Lightroom is the Web Module. However, Aperture's integration with the rest of the OS more than makes up for that. I do kind of miss the global presets, but I didn't really use them all that often anyway so it is only a small issue.

Both are good programs. It all depends on which one fits your workflow style. I really liked Lightroom. I love Aperture.

[Pentaxke]

One question that springs in mind: if you switch from LR to Aperture (or vice versa), don't you loose your library? I have rated and tagged thousands of photo's in LR. Would be a drag to do it all over again...

[Derridale]

Good to see this discussion.

Now for my (gulp) admission: I just bought a Macbook Pro and Aperture 2.1. Given that I already have Lightroom, and that it is dual format (Win/Mac) I've also installed it on the Macbook Pro and then installed LR 2 Beta as well. So now I'm like a kid in a candy store - Aperture and both Lightrooms on the one machine.

I got the Macbook Pro with the same specs as my friend's, plus I went for the hi-res screen of 1920x1200. Amazing machine I have to admit.

And the other thing I have to admit, after only 2 or 3 hours of playing with things, Aperture is really starting to grab me by the nuts! It just works, and works well.

I had about an hour playing with Aperture last night, just after installing it. Then I went to Lightroom, and the modal way of working suddenly became intrusive and a pain. And this is how I've been working all the time on the PC...

I haven't even had time to scratch the surface of Aperture yet, let alone explore the ways in which it interacts with the OS and with iPhoto.... pleasures yet to come.

As a long-time Picasa user for quick and dirty JPG work on snapshots (as opposed to RAWs and "proper" photographs), it's a pity that Picasa isn't available for the Mac. iPhoto is good, but the one-click fixes, including the one-click sharpening, in Picasa, are very good. It's just a little more trouble in iPhoto - or at least in the short time I've had to look at it so far.

Overall, I can see the attraction of the Macbook Pro (fully specced up) and Aperture. I can feel a switchover coming on.......

[Unlocker]

Just found this thread so thought I would add my 2 cents!

We both decided after having our K10's for a few months, that with the new computer purchase we might as well 'do it properly'

Lots of researching and playing in Apple stores ended up with us getting a MacPro & 30" Cinema screen which on its own is a wonderful (not cheap, but worth it by gum!) machine. Again, wanting to do it properly, we added to that a further 8GB RAM to make 10Gb in total, and replaced the standard drive with 4x 1TB Drives!

Software wise we upgraded our old PC copy of Studio MX to a Mac copy of Web Premium CS3, which was great since during that time Adobe & Macromedia merged, which effectively meant we got Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator & Acrobat 9 Pro for free! Also we tried both Lightroom & Aperture trials and decided on Aperture because it just felt better, not to mention it was half the price of Lightroom.

Have to say that whilst it may have 'broke the bank' it most definately is by far the best computing purchase I have made in my life, and the only regret is having not done it sooner. For all those sitting on the fence / undecided, all I can say is just go for it, even if you still are not sure after purchase, you can still put windows on it if you have to, so you will effectively get 2 computers for the price of one.