Okay, you've had a while to play with the gold build of Lightroom. Should I drop Aperture, and $200, and use Lightroom? Does it somehow integrate with PSCS2 or PSCS3 in ways that Aperture does not? What's your opinion?
I only used Aperture for a short while. I did not like the redundancy and the overall setup of the data base. For me, LR is far better and provides useful editing tools without going into PS. There are editing tools I prefer in PS and to open the pic in PS is only a couple keystrokes away. I've used LR since the beginning of the Beta program and their 1.0 version made great improvement over Beta 4, especially speed. I use it on an intel Mac and a Win XP PC and have had no problems. No integration issues between either verion of PS. By the way, if you can find a teacher or faculty member to buy it for you, the education version is only $89 - $99 at academic superstore. I don't know how long that promotion is on, but the education version is the full version.
Can you please elaborate on the "redundancy" yoiu referred to. Unless you're cataloging your Aperture images in the Aperture Library, it's no more redundant than LR. I've played with both since Aperture 1.0 and LR Beta 1 and can definitely say that Aperture provides a superior interface for DAM work. On the flip side, I do like the develop process tools in LR, as well as the results, over that of Aperture. Since I have Aperture, I think buying LR would be redundant if you already own PSCS2 and plan to upgrade to PSCS3. ACR 4 will provide the same develop options in CS3 that LR uses now and will be out by the end of March.
Just the opinion of someone that doesn't like buying a program just because it's new. With the proper workflow. Aperture and CS3 w/Bridge3 will work very.
FYI, I have full versions of Aperture and LR (received free, as I had an existing license for RSE.)
I really can't speak to the use of Aperture. I'm using Lightroom (have been since the 1st beta) and I've used iView Media Pro in the past.
Wayne may have a point about the DAM features, as I really had iView down to a science, but find myself stumbling a little with Lightroom's DAM management (In my case I think this is a learning curve issue). If you are doing a large amount of keywording Lightroom can slow down quite a bit.
I really do like Lightroom for a number of things. You can do global colour and tone corrections very easily, and the Greyscale conversion is fairly useful. The dust spotting tool works well also.
The nifftiest thing, for me at the moment, is that all the adjustments you do in Lightroom are done to the file Metadata, and so they aren't permanently affixed to your Master image. You can stack and have vitual copies of the same image with various adjustments done without taking up a ton of drive space with acutal, physical files.
I still use CS3 to do noise controll, sharpening (input and export), and regional tone/colour controll. But I find the interface in Lightroom much more intuitive than ACR. I bought the little tutorial on Lightroom over at LuminousLandscape and found it somewhat helpful. If you've not used Lightroom before it would probably give you a good idea of what its all about.
If you have Apeture, there is no need to drop the money on LR, unless you just want to. Apeture is far superior to metadate capabilities and catelogging. LR's editing tools, all are in CS3. There are some neat features in LR, but like Wayne said, all is perfect with CS3 & Bridge and ACR4. Both Apeture and LR intergrate the same, both resource hogs, some things are similar, some different.
I didn't like importing/exporting/editing/re-importing into Aperture library and also I didn't like the closed library. It often led to several copies of the same file just so I could keep track of edits and originals. I too don't like buying a program just because it's new but I do believe in using one that fits my workflow and Aperture didn't do that.
Discussion
5 repliesCan you please elaborate on the "redundancy" yoiu referred to. Unless you're cataloging your Aperture images in the Aperture Library, it's no more redundant than LR. I've played with both since Aperture 1.0 and LR Beta 1 and can definitely say that Aperture provides a superior interface for DAM work. On the flip side, I do like the develop process tools in LR, as well as the results, over that of Aperture. Since I have Aperture, I think buying LR would be redundant if you already own PSCS2 and plan to upgrade to PSCS3. ACR 4 will provide the same develop options in CS3 that LR uses now and will be out by the end of March.
Just the opinion of someone that doesn't like buying a program just because it's new. With the proper workflow. Aperture and CS3 w/Bridge3 will work very.
FYI, I have full versions of Aperture and LR (received free, as I had an existing license for RSE.)
I really can't speak to the use of Aperture. I'm using Lightroom (have been since the 1st beta) and I've used iView Media Pro in the past.
Wayne may have a point about the DAM features, as I really had iView down to a science, but find myself stumbling a little with Lightroom's DAM management (In my case I think this is a learning curve issue). If you are doing a large amount of keywording Lightroom can slow down quite a bit.
I really do like Lightroom for a number of things. You can do global colour and tone corrections very easily, and the Greyscale conversion is fairly useful. The dust spotting tool works well also.
The nifftiest thing, for me at the moment, is that all the adjustments you do in Lightroom are done to the file Metadata, and so they aren't permanently affixed to your Master image. You can stack and have vitual copies of the same image with various adjustments done without taking up a ton of drive space with acutal, physical files.
I still use CS3 to do noise controll, sharpening (input and export), and regional tone/colour controll. But I find the interface in Lightroom much more intuitive than ACR. I bought the little tutorial on Lightroom over at LuminousLandscape and found it somewhat helpful. If you've not used Lightroom before it would probably give you a good idea of what its all about.
Cheers,
Alex