Lightroom vs Aperture

I've decided I need either Aperture or Lightroom. I've yet to really study the differences. I took a quick look at Aperture at the Apple website: looked pretty snappy. But Adobe does PS and I would think that would help when using PS and Lightroom. I use a MacBook Pro and PS CS3.

One thing I've noticed about Apple is that they seem to always want to guide one back to buying other Apple products. Annoying.

Anyhow, I would enjoy hearing any opinions comparing Aperture and Lightroom.

Thanks, Tim Stenning, Forks, Washington

First, let me briefly qualify... We are full time professional photographers working primarily in the portrait and wedding industries. We examine and process thousands of images a week, so workflow is a big issue with us. When Aperture came out I jumped on it. It was a big improvement over the Image Browser and Bridge. I did not bother with the Lightroom beta (no time) but when the final release came out I picked up a copy. The refinements in 1.3.1 put it significantly ahead of Aperture for our workflow. Mind you, we use the Library and Develop modules almost exclusively. Occasionally I'll use the Slideshow module if I'm doing in-studio sales pitches. I never use the Web or Print modules, though you have enough control over the appearance of your images in Lightroom that you could print directly from the application.

Lightroom gives you a photographer-centric subset of the Photoshop tools that affect images in a global fashion. Curves, Selective Color, Hue/Saturation, Sharpening, etc. At this point it allows more sophisticated processing than Aperture. But if you know Apple, you know they'll change that position post haste.

Kelly, Thanks for your insights. Tim

Do bear in mind that ACR in CS3 and Lightroom have almost exactly the same RAW editing capabilities. The big advantage to Lightroom is digital asset management as noted above.

As a MANY year dedicated Mac user I bought Aperture...what a time (and money) waste it has been. I used Lightroom beta and thought it was quite nice but I have reverted to my old stand-by of Bridge and PS3 but I don't process thousands of photos a week. I think that at present Aperture is way too slow and cumbersome, but you can easily go to edit with Photoshop from Aperture, as you can, at least in the beta, with Lightroom. If you need a cataloging management there are several MUCH better than Aperture. Breaks my heart to say it, but don't waste your time with Aperture unless you have lots of free time to wait for it to process!

Thanks Grace. It could be what I really need is a smart Cataloging Management program. I thought that was what Lightroom and Aperture did (plus other stuff). I do most of my image correcting and manipulation in PS. I think I need a smart place to keep things.

It might be that Lightroom would work well for me. I'll probably try the trial version and see how it goes.

I use Aperture, and on a reasonably fast Intel platform performance is just fine. Aperture and Lightroom have pretty much the same feature set. I worked with the Lightroom Beta a long time before settling on Aperture.

Both provide direct access to PS as a configurable menu item.

The main advantage of Aperture is that it doesn't lock you into a specific workflow; it's more free-form. Of course, if you like Adobe's structure, that's fine.

The main drawback to Aperture, IMO, is that Apple is quite slow updating its import filters for new cameras. Recent Nikon and Olympus cameras are still unsupported.