chippy
foo was here
Aperture 2 is $249 AU and Lightroom 2 is AU$499 if one was to go on the ol adage that you get what you pay for then Lightroom 2 should have more to it/better. although i may be able to get Lightroom 2 with the education discount, which brings it down to $199AU. no edu discount available for Aperture
i have finaly got my Mac Pro machine although i have not set it up to use yet, I still need some extra drives and ram, new screen, software etc
but reading about aperture v lightroom is leaving me even more confused and i need to pick one!
is it possible for someone to outline in breif unbiased pro's con's of each application-remembering that i have not yet used either of them but want to make a choice, i saw some demo somewhere on the net for lightroom with two guys raving about it and it was qute convincing about meta tags and fining your photos' etc.....
but, does it appear that that the majority of people here are prefering Aperture 2 ? perhaps because it is a apple software and maybe this works better than lightroom on macs
i have finaly got my Mac Pro machine although i have not set it up to use yet, I still need some extra drives and ram, new screen, software etc
but reading about aperture v lightroom is leaving me even more confused and i need to pick one!
is it possible for someone to outline in breif unbiased pro's con's of each application-remembering that i have not yet used either of them but want to make a choice, i saw some demo somewhere on the net for lightroom with two guys raving about it and it was qute convincing about meta tags and fining your photos' etc.....
but, does it appear that that the majority of people here are prefering Aperture 2 ? perhaps because it is a apple software and maybe this works better than lightroom on macs
gavinlg
Veteran
They both work equally well on a well set up mac. Neither have any major problems.
My advice would be to download the 30day trials each of them has on their own websites and see which one you like more.
willie_901
Veteran
I agree... run the trials.
As fdigital points out, both are good. One reason I prefer LR because there are more LR users, so there are lots of third party plug-ins and templates.
As fdigital points out, both are good. One reason I prefer LR because there are more LR users, so there are lots of third party plug-ins and templates.
fixed point
 
I much prefer the "free form" interface of Aperture over Lightroom. I also prefer Aperture in the areas of performance, organization, and keywording. That said, I use Lightroom for two reasons: non-destructive dodge and burn and the DNG 1.2 camera profiles. If Aperture were to allow non-destructive selective editing I would switch back in a heartbeat. As it is, if you need to create a TIFF to dodge and burn with their built-in plugin, then you might as well open in Photoshop and do it there.
rogers
Still developing
I really like Aperture for everything except the image processing pipeline, in which I think Lightroom's is superior. In my opinion, Lightroom seems to combine (concatenate) operations together from the different sections of the Develop pane, whereas Aperture would appear not to.
This is not a big deal if you are doing small tweaks around an image. However, if you are really shifting contrast, colour balance, etc., you will find that Aperture clips more readily, more often. Moreover, the interpolation between the "curves" (Histogram points), would seem to behave like a cardinal-spline - meaning the closer you move the points, it just compresses the curve - so you may go from a smooth curve, to something quite sharp (the curve is compressed in space by being pushed up and down, with the limits of the curves going beyond the values of the set points). Cardinal-splines are easy to program however, because there is not need to calculate the tangents, which may explain something. To the people who don't understand what the hell I am talking about, when you move your histogram points close together, it will result in the visual equivalent of clipping, or worse, unintended solarisation.
So, with Aperture, I found I couldn't “overwork” the dials as much as you can in Lightroom. Aperture seems to have very safe limits, even when you ignore the sliders and type numbers up to their highest value. I do think Aperture has a more “pure” approach to image processing… and the new RAW 2.0 conversions are very nice. But I think Lightroom handles shadows more delicately (it won’t crunch them as suddenly); plus it has curves controls, which I find handy and intuitive.
The other thing that bugs me both in Aperture and Lightroom is that you cannot reorder the modules, so that the processing happens in a different sequence. However, in Lightroom, this limitation seems to be somehow less apparent, or maybe I need to get used to the tools… In Aperture, if I wanted to go the full monty in Highlights & Shadows, for example, I would prefer that it did this as part of the Levels adjustment (which is pretty much your last chance to change the overall shadows and highlights, contrast, etc). As it stands, the highlight/shadow controls come after Levels, and inherit whatever you may have done to the image (clipping highlights, for example), but the highlight control cannot regain what has been clipped -- even though it was there before. (I know you can do Highlight Recovery earlier, in the Exposure module, but I am talking about manipulating the shoulder and toe of the curves [aka Histogram] here more than "recovery"). In Lightroom the Curves and Shadow/Highlight controls are combined into the one module. In this way, Aperture is odd, but it doesn't have to be, as Apple do it "correctly" in other apps.
I have read online that Aperture works in float (generally defined as 32bit or higher), although the user manual seems to have no reference to this. If true, a float pipeline would mean you couldn’t end up clipping an image in the whites or blacks – information would be preserved module to module, so if you did two contradictory adjustments (say, brighten in one module and darken in the next), the detail in the image would not be adversely affected - it would be passed on to the next module (even if you can't see it visually). In most Apple products, this means 32-bit float, and they have it implemented (and documented) in Core Image, Motion, and Shake.
You don’t get far into the processing chain to see that Aperture is not working in float, at least module to module. If you crank the contrast up in the Enhance module, but try to pull the highlights down using the quarter tone controls in the Levels module, you will see that your image has been clipped. In fact, I would say that one would be best off not to touch a lot of the controls in the Exposure and Enhance modules, and try and get it all done in Levels, so that you are not losing too much detail in your image.
I'm not suggesting that Lightroom is any better in the image-bit-depth respect, it just seems to hide it all better.
Of course, Aperture does a lot of other stuff quite well. I much prefer the interface, and the organisation side of Aperture. It is more intuitive, integrated, and I find it much faster when it comes to finding what I want.
The difference between Lightroom and Aperture (or C1, Bibble, et al.) is becoming the modern equivalent of shooting Kodak or Fuji. Perhaps the best way to look at it is settle on the one that works best for you. Horses for courses.
I'm sorry to take up so much space in this discussion - I've been thinking about this a bit!
This is not a big deal if you are doing small tweaks around an image. However, if you are really shifting contrast, colour balance, etc., you will find that Aperture clips more readily, more often. Moreover, the interpolation between the "curves" (Histogram points), would seem to behave like a cardinal-spline - meaning the closer you move the points, it just compresses the curve - so you may go from a smooth curve, to something quite sharp (the curve is compressed in space by being pushed up and down, with the limits of the curves going beyond the values of the set points). Cardinal-splines are easy to program however, because there is not need to calculate the tangents, which may explain something. To the people who don't understand what the hell I am talking about, when you move your histogram points close together, it will result in the visual equivalent of clipping, or worse, unintended solarisation.
So, with Aperture, I found I couldn't “overwork” the dials as much as you can in Lightroom. Aperture seems to have very safe limits, even when you ignore the sliders and type numbers up to their highest value. I do think Aperture has a more “pure” approach to image processing… and the new RAW 2.0 conversions are very nice. But I think Lightroom handles shadows more delicately (it won’t crunch them as suddenly); plus it has curves controls, which I find handy and intuitive.
The other thing that bugs me both in Aperture and Lightroom is that you cannot reorder the modules, so that the processing happens in a different sequence. However, in Lightroom, this limitation seems to be somehow less apparent, or maybe I need to get used to the tools… In Aperture, if I wanted to go the full monty in Highlights & Shadows, for example, I would prefer that it did this as part of the Levels adjustment (which is pretty much your last chance to change the overall shadows and highlights, contrast, etc). As it stands, the highlight/shadow controls come after Levels, and inherit whatever you may have done to the image (clipping highlights, for example), but the highlight control cannot regain what has been clipped -- even though it was there before. (I know you can do Highlight Recovery earlier, in the Exposure module, but I am talking about manipulating the shoulder and toe of the curves [aka Histogram] here more than "recovery"). In Lightroom the Curves and Shadow/Highlight controls are combined into the one module. In this way, Aperture is odd, but it doesn't have to be, as Apple do it "correctly" in other apps.
I have read online that Aperture works in float (generally defined as 32bit or higher), although the user manual seems to have no reference to this. If true, a float pipeline would mean you couldn’t end up clipping an image in the whites or blacks – information would be preserved module to module, so if you did two contradictory adjustments (say, brighten in one module and darken in the next), the detail in the image would not be adversely affected - it would be passed on to the next module (even if you can't see it visually). In most Apple products, this means 32-bit float, and they have it implemented (and documented) in Core Image, Motion, and Shake.
You don’t get far into the processing chain to see that Aperture is not working in float, at least module to module. If you crank the contrast up in the Enhance module, but try to pull the highlights down using the quarter tone controls in the Levels module, you will see that your image has been clipped. In fact, I would say that one would be best off not to touch a lot of the controls in the Exposure and Enhance modules, and try and get it all done in Levels, so that you are not losing too much detail in your image.
I'm not suggesting that Lightroom is any better in the image-bit-depth respect, it just seems to hide it all better.
Of course, Aperture does a lot of other stuff quite well. I much prefer the interface, and the organisation side of Aperture. It is more intuitive, integrated, and I find it much faster when it comes to finding what I want.
The difference between Lightroom and Aperture (or C1, Bibble, et al.) is becoming the modern equivalent of shooting Kodak or Fuji. Perhaps the best way to look at it is settle on the one that works best for you. Horses for courses.
I'm sorry to take up so much space in this discussion - I've been thinking about this a bit!
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chippy
foo was here
yeah, fdigital advice on running the trials makes sence, at least it would give me a starting point or feel. however, not having used this type of thing before (comming from wet darkroom), i am worried that i simply wont know what i am looking at within a short trial period time (given there must be considerable learning curve, heck even though i am not using the Mac per say yet i have been playing around with it, they say its intuitive but they say that about women too, so far i end up with a mess of windows open in safari and cant find my way from one to the other LOL, no back button on the mouse either! thats frustrating! cant press the center button to open a new window/tab either haha--hopefully it will get better)
so to make an informed decision, so to some extent i try to understand the points made by you folk that have more experiance with actually having used either for some time. at this point i hardy know what plugins are, and how often, or, how one makes use of them from day to day
chippy
foo was here
i dont know what free form means but it sounds good hehe, and as for the rest thats sounds good as well, although the demo by the blokes on the LR2 web page seemed to indicate organisation and keywording was a strong feature of LR2
now this is a term i understand-dodge and burn, combined with non distructive sounds like a real benifit--which no doubt means it doesnt stuff up the original and can be reversed easy