Aperture or Lightroom?

[kazu11]

hi guys,

i just bought a macbook air, and am deciding to buy one of the above software.

have used LR on trial before and correct me if i'm wrong, it is more economical as i can install both on my mac and pc.

any advice and also on where to buy? thanks in advance!

 

[limexd]

Aperture is more tightly integrated into the Mac OS. Not unless you prefer to work around with Adobe Bridge
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Aperture 3 is $298 SGD , while Lightroom is approximately 370 SGD... lightroom will be more expensive (although you can load it on a windows computer as well, take that into consideration only if its important to you)...
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I personally use Aperture, and I find the workflow very intuitive and feature rich. Aperture 3 features 'brushes' which allow you to edit specific area of the photos on the fly without having to leave the software, and you can apply multiple adjustments of the same kind with different settings(skin smoothening, colour, CA correction, sharpen/blur, clone/stamp/retouch(healing brush), dodge/burn... and practically everything). It also has 'presets' which can be used to apply common settings in one press (including toy camera effects). Plus you get iPhoto features like Flickr/Facebook/mobileme sharing, faces/places, and integration into other iLife/Pro apps suites and Finder. Additionally, there are a lot of other 3rd party plugins which you can purchase if you want more features... It integrates well enough with photoshop or any other external editor as well.
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that being said, different people have different personal preferences... you could try a free trial of aperture http://www.apple.com/aperture/trial/ and see if you like it.

 

[stuck]

i would agree with the points limexd made above with regards to the usability of Aperture 3. also the tighter integration with the OS makes life much easier.

I'm not so sure whether you can just buy one copy of LR & install it on both macs and PCs. AFAIK most software has a separate version for each OS that is not inter-operable. also, you can now purchase Aperture 3 from the app store for just 79 USD - & you can install it on all the macs you own. That sealed the deal for me!

 

[sinned79]

i am using macbook pro. tried aperture 3 before getting lightroom 3. i dun like the speed of aperture 3 processing raw files. Very sluggish and slow.

comparing the soften skin preset for both... both is as good but lightroom 3 is more natural.

 

[Doctor Inferno]

Most forum posts I read say that Lightroom 3 is the faster for RAW processing and overall performance compared to Aperture 3. Also read before that Aperture is a resource hog.

I use Lightroom 3 and its great! Noise reduction is great too. And I can install plugins from Nik Software too, not sure if Aperture has them.

 

[kazu11]

thanks for all the valuable feedback guys!

especially the US$79 lobang for aperture 3 from the app store...

any bargains for LR3?

 

[limexd]

Most forum posts I read say that Lightroom 3 is the faster for RAW processing and overall performance compared to Aperture 3. Also read before that Aperture is a resource hog.

Aperture 1 and 2 were real resource Hogs... Aperture 3 is pretty okay now.... Aperture 3 actually imports photos slightly faster than LR3 - they automatically apply the NR and raw settings immediately after you import them though (LR3 requires you to manually do it if I'm not wrong?)... Problem if you use slower machines sometimes that causes the Aperture to get a bit laggy - if you want you can pause the processing workflow in the activity monitor. speeds things up a bit if you just want to edit one photo. And if you just want to review and browse/tag/rate photos, you can use the preview mode.
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i would agree with the points limexd made above with regards to the usability of Aperture 3. also the tighter integration with the OS makes life much easier.

I'm not so sure whether you can just buy one copy of LR & install it on both macs and PCs. AFAIK most software has a separate version for each OS that is not inter-operable. also, you can now purchase Aperture 3 from the app store for just 79 USD - & you can install it on all the macs you own. That sealed the deal for me!

LR3 uses a cross platform CD
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Anyway don't just rely on what people tell you about each software... It's a good idea to test drive both using the free trial, and make a decision on which workflow you prefer. Compare the features offer by both and see which ones you need and which ones you can do without.

 

[sinned79]

thanks for all the valuable feedback guys!

especially the US$79 lobang for aperture 3 from the app store...

any bargains for LR3?

buy a LR1 or 2 license then buy a LR3 upgrade.

 

[brapodam]

Aperture 1 and 2 were real resource Hogs... Aperture 3 is pretty okay now.... Aperture 3 actually imports photos slightly faster than LR3 - they automatically apply the NR and raw settings immediately after you import them though (LR3 requires you to manually do it if I'm not wrong?)... Problem if you use slower machines sometimes that causes the Aperture to get a bit laggy - if you want you can pause the processing workflow in the activity monitor. speeds things up a bit if you just want to edit one photo. And if you just want to review and browse/tag/rate photos, you can use the preview mode.
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LR3 uses a cross platform CD
-----

Anyway don't just rely on what people tell you about each software... It's a good idea to test drive both using the free trial, and make a decision on which workflow you prefer. Compare the features offer by both and see which ones you need and which ones you can do without.

Personally I don't want to apply any settings when I import my photos, especially things like NR and sharpening as that is better done manually. If you really want, you can apply a "develop preset" in LR when you import your photos, in which you can choose to apply lens profile or sharpen or do whatever you want.

You mentioned above about brushes too, and I'd like to point out that LR also has brushes, as well as healing brush and clone stamp tool. LR is basically Camera RAW + Bridge. It manages your photo library while allowing you to edit your photos. I have not used Aperture before so I do not know how it works, so I can't comment on that. I find LR to be very intuitive, not sure about Aperture though