iphoto vs aperture

[chrish]

I scan all my negatives and only keep digital files. no prints. ever.

When I scan, I crop my images to approx a 1-2mb size. I catalog them all in iphoto now but was wondering if aperture has any advantages or was any quicker compared to iphoto.

 

[colyn]

iPhoto and Aperture are two totally different programs. Aperture is primarily an image editing program whereas iPhoto is an image viewing and data base program.

For what you need iPhoto should work fine..

 

[iridium7777]

i always took took aperture to be a fancy cataloging program with some editing capabilities. you can't even open a picture full screen in it.

iphoto is just a waste of space on hd.

iPhoto and Aperture are two totally different programs. Aperture is primarily an image editing program whereas iPhoto is an image viewing and data base program.

For what you need iPhoto should work fine..

 

[jlw]

I scan all my negatives and only keep digital files. no prints. ever.

When I scan, I crop my images to approx a 1-2mb size. I catalog them all in iphoto now but was wondering if aperture has any advantages or was any quicker compared to iphoto.

If you're storing your scans as JPEG files that are already optimized the way you want them, there'd be no real advantage. iPhoto has always been a good cataloger, and the latest version is pretty slick in terms of tools for cropping, simple adjustments, and outputting various kinds of files and printed items.

The big advantage of Aperture is that it provides highly optimized support for the raw files from a fairly wide range of digital cameras. Why you might want to do this is so that you can treat your untouched raw files as "digital negatives" that never themselves get edited or altered.

If you need to do some different croppings, or change some exposure or color-balance settings for different purposes, Aperture can do this non-destructively -- it leaves the underlying image alone and just records what adjustments you've made to it. You can apply the same correction settings to a whole range of images, or save virtual versions of the same image with different changes applied -- all without ever changing the basic content of your "digital negative."

(iPhoto preserves your original file so you can always revert to it after editing -- but it does this by saving the edited version as a new file, which can eat up significant disk space compared to Aperture's approach of just maintaining a database of adjustments.)

Incidentally, Adobe's Lightroom product has basically the same underlying philosophy as Aperture -- maintaining your master "digital negatives" untouched, and letting you edit them non-destructively by storing a database of adjustments. Last time I checked, both products are available as free trial downloads, so you could always have a whack at both of them and see if either has any advantages for you.

As I said, though, if all you're doing is cataloging fully-processed scan files, iPhoto may do everything you need to do. I don't think Aperture or Lightroom will be significantly faster, especially if you've got a lot of files -- they may even be slower, as there's a lot of database updating to do in the background to keep track of your latest changes.

 

[colyn]

i always took took aperture to be a fancy cataloging program with some editing capabilities. you can't even open a picture full screen in it.

I don't have any problems opening a photo full screen with Aperture.

iphoto is just a waste of space on hd.

Can you explain?

 

[kipkeston]

lightroom is clearly superior.

 

[slm]

You can open an image full screen with Aperture - simply hit the F key. You can also perform image editing in the full screen mode.

I would not call Aperture an image editing program though, as you can't really edit an image they way you could with photoshop, drastically altering elements in the image. Color correction, highlight and shadow recovery and especially image management are excellent. And thats really it's strength, image management, AKA workflow.

You import the images in (I let Aperture manage my images in it's own database), tag the images with appropriate keywords, group similar images together (stacks, a great feature), and update the vault (backups from within the app to an external HD). Tagging is not as tedious as it sounds. If you don't let Aperture manage the images in it's own database, it will only contain references to the images on the file system. That sorta breaks the Vault feature.

So, thats my workflow in a nutshell. I used both Lightroom and Aperture for the 30 day trial periods, Aperture just felt better.

Cheers

 

[iridium7777]

when i had aperture you couldn't edit the picture in full screen mode. you could stretch the view format of aperture to have the picture take up a lot of screen room but there was never a "real" picture edit mode. you'd have to call up ps or some other editor program to get that effect. have they changed it so in a year that it's been out?

even apple themselves market aperture as more of a catalog program, thus they say when you have to do extensive modifications you're able to export to ps or something else. aperture was never meant to be a competitor to ps.

with regards to iphoto, i haven't upgraded to '08 yet, but even if i do i'll make sure to omit installing iphoto. i hated the program, every single time you'd touch a picture it seems it'd save a copy somewhere in its dumbass catalog way. it'd move my pictures around and create duplicates somewhere deep inside some folders that it took me weeks to wipe them out. at least with aperture it saves "change instructions" not duplicates every single image file on your computer every time you open and do absolutely anything to it.

if i want to view pictures quickly on my computer i always use preview. i dunno, maybe it's because i was brand new to mac a year ago, but i have a terrible aversion to iphoto and it's little 'quirks'.

for everything else, there's cs3.

I don't have any problems opening a photo full screen with Aperture.



Can you explain?

 

[photogdave]

iPhoto sucks. I'm using it right now to make one of those photo books for my girlfriend. The books are pretty cool but there is too many restrictions on how you can do the layout.
I know this doesn't really apply to your situation but I have just always hated iPhoto. It's very aggravating to work with! :bang:

 

[RayPA]

iPhoto has image editing capabilities, but on my old and slow Power PC G5 it's a slow old dog. I use it to import files from my digital cameras, and it has actually bailed on me during the transfer process and lost the images. Aargh! To be fair, I haven't upgraded it, but I've never really wanted to upgrade it. To echo what was mentioned above, I consider it a waste of disk space.

.

 

[colyn]

when i had aperture you couldn't edit the picture in full screen mode.

The current version allows for editing in full screen mode.

even apple themselves market aperture as more of a catalog program, thus they say when you have to do extensive modifications you're able to export to ps or something else. aperture was never meant to be a competitor to ps.

It's intended purpose is as you say a catalog (data base) program with limited editing capabilities and will require another program such as PhotoShop for serious editing

with regards to iphoto, i haven't upgraded to '08 yet, but even if i do i'll make sure to omit installing iphoto. i hated the program, every single time you'd touch a picture it seems it'd save a copy somewhere in its dumbass catalog way. it'd move my pictures around and create duplicates somewhere deep inside some folders that it took me weeks to wipe them out. at least with aperture it saves "change instructions" not duplicates every single image file on your computer every time you open and do absolutely anything to it.

I never had this problem. It would save the file in the library and nowhere else unless I wanted to save elsewhere. 08 is far superior than the earlier version..

 

[slm]

aperture was never meant to be a competitor to ps.

Yup, I agree. But for importing, color correcting and managing images, Aperture or Lightroom are better. I don't find iPhoto that bad. I haven't tried the '08 version yet.

 

[mich8261]

Love iPhoto. I find it a great tool to catalogue my images, create albums, slideshows and publish (books, calendar, web). Should be great for what you want to do. Aperture is more of a workflow tool (as is Lightroom) if you want to process RAW images from a camera. Neither replaces Photoshop.

 

[jlw]

Gee, it's great to read all these sensible, even-handed responses.... >:-0

There was one group of thoughts that particularly caught my eye, which I'll summarize as follows:

"Aperture (or Lightroom, or iPhoto, or whatever) isn't a real editing program, because you can't do the same sort of manipulation that you can with Photoshop."

I don't disagree with that, but there's something peculiar about it. To see what, let's wind the clock back 30 years or so. Back then, what would you have thought if you'd read a review like this?...

"The new Beseler 45MCRX enlarger is solidly made, but its capabilities are very limited. All you can do with it are enlarge your images, crop them, change their light/dark balance and tonal range, and maybe correct for perspective distortion a bit. For any really serious editing, you need an X-acto knife, rubber cement, illustration boards, frisket paper, a double-action airbrush, and a compressor."​

Factually that would have been a true statement -- but back then, what photographer (as opposed to collagist or retoucher) would have thought of slicing, dicing and painting as things you'd routinely want to do to photographs?

The "image-management" programs (as I like to refer to Aperture and Lightroom) let you do just about everything to photographic images that you'd have done in the past in a darkroom (except localized burning and dodging, which were less practical in color printing than black-and-white anyway.)

The fact that many people no longer consider this an acceptable level of control shows how much change there's been in our concept of what a "photograph" is.

Yes, being a graphic designer, I'm a professional Photoshop user. I need its capabilities in my daily work. But I very seldom need them in my personal photography, in which (possibly as a backlash) I'm more inclined toward a "leave-it-alone" approach to image integrity. For others with the same perspective, an image-management program might be all they'll need the vast majority of the time.

 

[iridium7777]

I never had this problem. It would save the file in the library and nowhere else unless I wanted to save elsewhere. 08 is far superior than the earlier version..

i'll admit part ignorance here and once again i'll restate that when i was dealing with iphoto was 2 days after i got my mac (first mac ever).

for the life of me i couldn't understand why it took all my existing picture folders (copied from my pc in the same folder structure) and duplicate them somewhere else... i guess it's own "library"?. at least aperture allowed me to keep that structure and add any tags or lables that i needed to pictures.

and in original iphoto, any time you do anything to a picture it will save it as a copy somewhere. i hope the new one doesn't do it.

if money was no object or you have creative other means, i'd suggest cs3's bridge for cataloging purposes alone. if not, then aperture. you can easily drag images out of bridge into iweb just like you would out of iphoto.

one thing that i didn't like about aperture (and maybe once again i'm an idiot here because i didn't know how to open an image in full screen edit either)... but say you've made a manipulation to an image. so you see the original image and to the right you see say the b/w version of it. when i dragged that b/w image into my iweb, it'd show up as an original version. i'd have to open the b/w, save it and then move that picture into iweb. i thought i'd be a little more integrated and would do that conversion behind the 'screen' somewhere. can that be done or not?

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

iPhoto is fine for storage. I cannot see any reason to go to Aperture for that.

Photoshop is best for cropping, and for making the horizon level.