Aperture=my nightmare: Lightroom?

T

tonal1

Established
Local time
3:01 PM
Joined
Jun 3, 2006
Messages
192
I am desperately trying to organize my digital photo archive. In the meanwhile, I have several gigs of new material coming in everyday that I must stay on top of.

I just "imported" a file of tiff scans in to a library. Thankfully, I checked the files before deleting the file, because many of the tiff's didn't import—inexplicably, and without warning from Aperture. Now, I'm manually importing them, and creating lots of duplicated/more work and confusion for later. But, this was nightmare #2; Nightmare #1 today was when I tried to merge several libraries, and project folders began showing no photos in them...

I tried Lightroom in the past, and didn't like it's file handling—and I still don't care for it's UI. Now, I'm starting to appreciate that it doesn't work like Apple's "trust us, your files are there" vault system.

I really don't have time to figure out how to migrate everything into Lightroom (and Lightroom appears to have vastly better raw handling.), but I also don't want to get in any deeper with Aperture. I'm contemplating just using Bridge for now.

The whole thing is making me very nostalgic for negative albums.

Advice?
 
Apple's vauly screwed me bigtime in Aperture 2. I had exported a backup of the vault and then tried toreimport it on a new system. the vault was huge. It would import for a long while and then come across ONE image that was corrupted and abandon the whole thing. I had to use some program to pull apart the vault and get my images out individually.

I switched to lightroom 2 a week later and have loved it since. Even backing up is simple.
 
Doing a bit more digging here. I just checked some memory cards, and it appears that aperture is also not importing videos with formats it doesn't like, and again, gives no warning, just doesn't import. .MOV's get imported, but video from my Fuji .MTS or something doesn't. I'm glad I checked. I just tried to manually import a single video, and aperture gave me this polite message: "aperture has successfully imported 0 images".
 
I tried every version of each, but once Lightroom 3 won out over Aperture 3, I haven't gone back. Lightroom 4 is, in my opinion, a clear step up from Aperture.
 
I could never even work out where to put the files in Aperture and found it just didn't work for me which surprised me. The Apple way of dealing with the individual files was scary like with iPhoto. Lightroom 3 came with my M9 and I have now upgraded to LR4. I like everything about it. I don't need anything else.
 
No issues with Aperture here. As long as I have disk space, Aperture imports files just fine. In my experience it will not import a single image if it thinks there is not enough space available for the whole set you have selected. However, there is a clear error message when this is the case.

You can rewrap the AVCHD video with ClipWrap prior to import, or transcode if that doesn't help. (For video files, I mainly use FCPX. It supports AVCHD natively through "Import from camera". A newish version of iMovie should also work, but it converts AVCHD into Apple Intermediate Codec format for editing.)
 
Lightroom is far more file-friendly and also has less stuff running in the background than aperture. I switched back and forth for a while between them - I really want to like aperture, but after lightroom 3/4 I never went back. Lightroom is very good (as much as I don't like adobe).
 
I abandoned both. Returned to good old folder structure. Generate smaller jpeg's for iPhoto where i apply some keywords.
 
A comment on the Aperture "vault" filing system: you don't have to use it. You can set your own save locations which is what I like to do, I just prefer to file things my own way.
 
yep. I have my files on an external FW drive in a folder structure and import it into an aperture vault as a reference only. Thus I have both. A reference and organization in my Aperture app, and a structured file system. works well.
 
I have never put anything in the Aperture Vault...
However I too have my Nightmares w/ Aperture

Most of my photos up to two months ago are ALL 'Locked'
And I can't seem to do anything to them ...no adjustments, email, import/ export..... ARGHHH
I HATE Aperture...Plain and simple !!!!
 
Aristophanes said:
Same for Aperture. In fact, Aperture began that option and Adobe copied it.
Click to expand...

Yes, and I still think that the 'project' orientated structure in aperture is superior, but it's inferior in every other way - reliability, performance, backups, IQ, sharpening, publishing, printing. IMO.
 
Bridge works well on a folder-to-folder basis. I use it for my initial review, tagging and culling.

But Lightroom is better for finding and managing a large directory of images.

I really like the new 2012 process in ACR of Lightroom or Bridge. The review at Luminous Landscape claims it has better highlight control without artifacts. Also, more Leica lens profiles are in the new versions.
 
I've never used Aperture. I've used LR since v2; recently upgraded from v3 to v4. Very happy with it, never had any problems with my files. I download/import to whatever folder I nominate, and at the same time tell LR to make a copy to my backup drive. Adding metadata keywords at the time of import saves time later in file retrieval. Metadata is stored in sidecar files - the originals are left untouched. I'm very comfortable with LR's workflow but obviously can't compare it with Aperture. I much prefer it to Bridge. I'm very satisfied with LR's development tools. Suggest you give it a trial.
 
Last edited:
mugget said:
A comment on the Aperture "vault" filing system: you don't have to use it. You can set your own save locations which is what I like to do, I just prefer to file things my own way.
Click to expand...

True, but if I recall correctly, it defaults to that, so you can find yourself soaking in it before you know enough to develop an opinion about it.

Please let me know if I misremember, I haven't installed or used Aperture in well over a year.
 
hteasley said:
True, but if I recall correctly, it defaults to that, so you can find yourself soaking in it before you know enough to develop an opinion about it.

Please let me know if I misremember, I haven't installed or used Aperture in well over a year.
Click to expand...


I don't use Vault either. You don't need to use it... Vault is not on auto drive by default.
 
I really like Aperture 2 and have been using it for about three years now. Don't care for Aperture 3, and bought Lightroom 1 when it first came out, and beta tested Lightroom 2, neither one worked for me.

Best,
-Tim
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom