Where can I find a good Lightroom Aperture comparison?

I bought a 2.66 2GB Mac Pro so lean towards Apple out of loyalty.
But would love to read a good comparison
My understanding is that I's still need CS3 for detailed editing
Rob
--
Taking pictures first, equipment second

Best place is on your own computer.

You can download each trial. I tried both, ended up with lightroom. Many in this forum prefer Aperture. I would not have known which worked best for me without the try'em option. There are plenty of recent posts in this forum where you will find many opinions.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1017&message=22265706

Other

http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/02/aperture_vs_lightroom_day_7_ro_1.html
--
Gregory Eddinger
Those that believe they can, CAN because they BELIEVE!

Try
http://arstechnica.com/journals
for a no-holds-barred review

waveney

waveney said:

Try
http://arstechnica.com/journals
for a no-holds-barred review

waveney

Click to expand...

I came up with "the page cannot be found"

I found the Ars review of Lightroom that includes comparisons to Aperture, Bibble Pro, & Capture One at

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/lightroom.ars

The advice to use the trial versions on your own machine is spot on. That is what I am doing now. Also, make use of the tutorials on the Adobe and Apple web sites.

If you are relatively new to digital image manipulation like me I recommend a book by Ben Long, Getting Started with Camera raw. Although the book uses Photoshop and Photoshop Elements in its examples, the discussion of image editing basics and color management are extremely useful and transcend any particular software application.

Have fun. I am ;=))

dd....

Lightroom is faster period.

While Aperture "supports" lower video cards, anything less than the x1900xt will render Aperture not very usable on the MacPro.

Aperture also runs its best at 4+ GB RAM.

Doing the math for total cost for a responsive application:

LightRoom: $199

Aperture: $1112(Aperture $299, 2 GB RAM $414, X1900xt video $399)

So $199 vs $1112 .

John,

I agree that Aperture is a hardware hog, but it seems like the poster might already have the X1900XT althouth he didn't say so. Also, I tried bringin my Dual Core 2.0 Ghz G5 up to 2 Gigs of memory, and that made a big difference in Aperture speed, however, I then brought it up to 4.0 Gigs and that didn't make hardly any difference. Makes it easier to run several other program simultaneously though. I also agree that the stock 7300 video card is inadequate for Aperture, although folks surely do use it.

I think LightRoom is a very good program, but in some ways it is very different than Aperture. It is very modal, whereas Aperture is non-modal. I like non-modal. At the current time, Aperture is far more full featured with regard to managing files than LightRoom. The only place that LightRoom is actually more responsive than Aperture is in image adjustment. This is because they are using entirely different algorithms and different reference paradigm. I'm not sure which is best yet. But we will see over time.

The ARS Technica article referenced earlier does a pretty good job of reviewing the capabilities of LightRoom, but the comparison leaves a lot to be desired. For one, it doesn't say anything about the differences in DAM capabilites. And while it points out some issues with Moire and overblown highlights in Aperture's RAW conversion (however slight), it doesn't point out the Aperture is pretty unique in that it lets the user customize the initial RAW conversion (Bayrer Demosaicing) for each camera. You can adjust the "Boost" (similar to vibrancy/saturation), color noise suppression, luminance noise suppression, and input sharpening. All RAW convertors do this upong initial conversion, prior to further adjustments, but I'm not sure if any others let you "tweek" the initial conversion. This should not be confused with the further adjustments you do after the initial conversion. In most convertors, this is automatic. So you have no control over it. If the ARS reviewer had simply decreased the "boost" slightly, he would have matched the initial conversion of the other convertors.

I think the jury is still out on which of these programs is "best". They are just different, and they have different strengths and weaknesses. Time will tell.

--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/

I’ve been trying the LR V1.0 30 day trial and I like it, and I’ll soon try the Aperture trial too.

I’m using a 2.0GHz G5 iMac with 2GB of RAM, and so far, LR seems to work pretty fast on my system.

But I also have Nikon Capture NX for RAW processing and I like that program too, so I’m not sure if I really need another RAW converter. I use iPhoto6 for quick and dirty stuff with JPEGs, but I’m still trying to figure out my RAW workflow for more serious work. I also have PSE 4.0 if I want to edit pixels.

I like the cataloging features and library features of LR and Aperture, since NX really doesn’t do that; it’s just a RAW converter, and supposedly gives the best results with Nikon RAW files, but I’m not savvy enough yet to tell the difference. And I haven’t tried this yet, but I suspect that these programs would ignore any edits I’ve made with NX, so I’d be starting from scratch.

Capture NX guru Jason Odell suggests using NX to process RAW files and Photo Mechanic to perform the library functions, so that’s an option for me too. Jason has an excellent ebook on NX, and I’m still working my way through it.

I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do before April 30th, so I can buy LR before the price jumps, if I decide to go that route! If I don’t go with LR, then I’m not in a big hurry.

But I guess if I do go with Aperture, I’d be more familiar with the library aspects since they seem to be similar to iPhoto.

Arrrrggghhh!!!! What to do???!!!!

--

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

If you try the Aperture demo, you should do a little quick reading. It is a far deeper program than most suspect, because it was designed to be as flexible as possible. There are usually two or three ways to do something, such as a menu command, a keyboard command, or a contextual menu. Watch the tutorials, and get whatever hardcopy you can in order to give it a fair trial.
--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/

I have the 2GB ram

But may have made the mistake of getting the 7300 card versus the 1900
This swings a close fight nack to Lightroom

I just need to find time to download them both and play :-(

For me it's $200 versus $700. That's not trivial
Rob

John Rayl said:

Lightroom is faster period.

While Aperture "supports" lower video cards, anything less than the
x1900xt will render Aperture not very usable on the MacPro.

Aperture also runs its best at 4+ GB RAM.

Doing the math for total cost for a responsive application:

LightRoom: $199

Aperture: $1112(Aperture $299, 2 GB RAM $414, X1900xt video $399)

So $199 vs $1112 .

Click to expand...

--
Taking pictures first, equipment second

The link to that highly flawed comparison is here:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/lightroom.ars/8

I believe it is flawed for the following reasons:

a) CPU v GPU
b) Plug-ins

a) Author claims that by processing on the CPU, Lightroom will enjoy a growing advantage over Aperture. Currently there is no argument that Apertures graphics performance is a potential issue. However, the newer graphics cards offer, for example, 128 parallel shading engines compared to the 12 on the current 'Standard' graphics cards (eg MBP). By using these shading engines, Aperture will get a 10X performance boost when run on these newer cards. As GPU price/perfomance ratio is outperforming the CPU price performance (e.g. moores law) it is most likely Aperture that will continue to get the performance boost.

b) Author cites Lightroom advantage of Plug-ins, but of the two products is is Aperture that have over 20 plug-ins available. It is Lightroom that doesn't (appear) to have a public lpug-in architecture.

In a related review, author also compared 4 products raw outputs using uncalibrated defaults. Devoted several pages and a large part of the overall rating based on this pointless, meaningless exercise in un-informed personal preference.

But still work a read!!

-Najinsky

It's worth a read just to get a line on any new features in Lightroom one might have overlooked. The RAW comparison is absolutely worthless. As is the comparison. Adobe said they were going to seed the developer community with an SDK for making "modules" for LightRoom. That's just what the program needs. About 50 more modules! For instance, nik could make a sharpening module. Then, if you want to sharpen, you have to move to the sharpening module, and that's all you can do in that module. But at least it allows some flexibility. Apple has only provided "plug-ins" as a way to automatically send images to an outboard service agency, photosharing site, or gallery. I wish they would allow image processing plugins. How about if you could get a plugin for Aperture from nik for sharpening, and it would just add it into the adjustment pane? Unfortunately, plugins like Color Efex Pro will probably never be used in Aperture or LightRoom, because they need layers and the use of Photoshop tools in order to work right now. I wonder when some third party is going to come up with a "pixel editor" for photos, that can be used as the outboard processor with Aperture for instance. We don't need ALL of Photoshop for that task, but we get it no matter.

--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/

Try this link, a very reasoned comparison

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/03/05/lightroom-vs-aperture.html
--
Mark Gipson

In order to defend my decision to buy Aperture over Lightroom:

I love Aperture and on my iMac with 3GB of RAM it runs sufficiently fast. I can understand that less memory would make Aperture slower. Also consider that the 2GB cards for the Intel iMac are quite expensive. That being said I am going to stay with Aperture. Reasoning? Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is supposed to be out around early April. I am quite sure that shortly thereafter Apple will release Aperture 2.0. I am hoping to see a lot of improvements given the pressure of Lightroom and the new features of Leopard.

Here's hoping

Apple is tight lipped as usual ... but ...

All we know about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard so far:

http://porg.4t.com/Leopard.html

Ken

First of all speed and performance is relative and a moving target. While it has to be a consideration ever time Apple changes the OS or comes up with another version of Aperture every thing changes. Not to mention that the hardware is also moving at its own pace so making a decision on a management platform for your entire image library is just plain dumb in my opinion. In fact it makes about as much sense as the megapixel debate.

Selecting an image cataloging and management system has a whole lot more to do with easy of use, portability, image quality and whole list of other USER issues not geeky specs. The question you should be asking is can I live with this system for 5 years ?

The question of SPEED is one of workflow not specs.

I have tried just about every image management system out there (mac and pc) and Aperture is the first product that I have found that allows me to have every tool at my finger tips no matter what I am doing. The ability to move libraries from laptop to desktop, the vault backups, the heads up display and speed of tagging, keywording and selecting quickly and repeatedly is great.

From a strategic perspective Adobe is playing catch up. Don't get me wrong I love what Adobe is doing in so many great areas and use about a dozen of their products from ColdFusion to Dreamweaver. But Aperture is a key strategy for Apple and is a few versions a head of Lightroom 1.0.

If you look at what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro I think you will see Aperture take the same development track. They have continued to improve the product and has become a standard for video editing on the Mac platform. It is a key part of their professional software series. Even Adobe is resurrecting their video editing software for the Mac because of Apple's success in this market.

So yes doing the old "check box test" feature for feature is part of the decision I think there is more going on here than just specs. I think any decision of a product that touches every image I own has to be broader than just speed.

Lee

--
"History judges great Photographers by their Technique not their Technology."

Hear, Hear! Thank you Lee for expressing something I sometimes have difficulty expressing. Yes, the individual adjustment sliders in Aperture can sometimes be a little sticky on my dual core G5, and yes, the sliders in LightRoom are just a little quicker. But the main advantage for me is the non-modal interface allowing you full flexibility no matter what you are doing, and the amazingly flexible digital asset management. I am keeping up to speed with LightRoom also, because this whole field is moving so fast. But for now, there is no question which program is my overall favorite. I can't wait to see what Apple comes up with in Version 2.0!

--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/

I am in the position of trying to choose a tool to use for processing images from my brand new Nikon D200. I have been a Nikon film camera user for many decades, a digital camera user (mostly point-and-shoots) for many years. I have been involved in IT for over 30 years. I mention these things to point out that I have SOME background in photography and computers. This background and my experience learning new technology (a fact of life in the industry) led to my earlier opinion that, when choosing something as complex as image manipulation software and given that each photographer’s needs and way of doing things are different, the only effective approach is to take advantage of the manufacturers’ trial versions. That is what I have been doing. And this is the source of some frustration to me.

My environment:

As noted, my primary digital camera is a Nikon D200. My primary editing platform is a Mac Pro 2.66 with 4gb of RAM and several 250gb drives. I have an old Epson Photo 870 printer that I am using temporarily to test print images. The printer will be replaced in a month or so.

What I have tested or am testing:

Adobe products:

PSE: I have a copy of v2 that I used on a Powerbook. Since there is no trial of v4 that is what I have used to evaluate PSE.
Verdict so far: too limited in “post-development” image editing capabilities.

Lightroom trial version:

Pro: pretty intuitive to use, good “image development” tools, nice interface. easiest print interface to use .

Con: some development tools (esp noise reduction) are substandard, don’t understand the rationale for buying if you also have Photoshop since everything that Lightroom can do can be done in Photoshop and Lightroom is missing the “post-development” image editing functions in Photoshop (by design, I know, which is why I ask what the purpose of Lightroom is.)

Photoshop CS2 trial version:

Pro: what can’t you do with this thing?, good tutorials available from Adobe and others online, good print interface.
Con: BIG and complex, overkill for most of my needs, expensive.

Apple:

Aperture trial version:
Pro: cheaper end-to-end solution than CS2 and more complete than PSE.

Con: it confuses me. The tutorials on the Apple web site are little more than thinly disguised marketing pitches and are worthless for learning the tool. I have used Apple systems since the days of the Apple II and this program frustrates the hell out of me. The print module is especially poor. I WANT to like this program but after using it for about a week I am ready to delete the trial and look elsewhere.

I agree that the performance issues for Aperture may be overstated for all but very high volume shooters and folks with slower hardware. My problem with Aperture is the functionality of the program.

If anyone has pointers to “educational material” on Aperture that might improve my “user experience”, I would be grateful.

If I had to choose today I would probably take a deep breath and plonk down the cash for Photoshop (and probably use Nikon NX for RAW capture).

Regards
Doug Dickerson

So here are some answers to your various tests.

Testing version 2.0 of PSE is not a valid test vs. other programs. PSE4 is way better, and is a lower price option for those who can't afford, or don't want full CS2. Makes an inexpensive advanced pixel editing add on for LightRoom or Aperture. Supports standard CS2 plugins. Not Intel native.

CS2 is, in my mind, an absolute must for serious hobbyists or professional photographers. But it is not an "end to end" workflow solution. It has no DAM capabilities.

LightRoom is a good "end to end" workflow solution for those shooting primarily RAW (but it does work with other file formats). Some, or all of your images may have to be "roundtripped" to CS2 or PSE for further editing. DAM capabilities still need some work. Not as full featured as Aperture. Very Modal (have to switch between editing "modes". Not all tools availalble in each mode.

Aperture is another good "end to end" workflow solution, again best for RAW, but works with others. Much deeper program than LightRoom, therefore higher learning curve. But rewarding if you put in the effort. Non-modal, that is most all tools are available no matter what you are doing. Supports dual monitors, has plug in architecture for third party photo sites. Best DAM capabilities. Very flexible. Hardware hungry.

I agree that the tutorials online are a little limited. Are you sure you actually navigated to the tutorials, and not just the "tours"?

Try this page for full tutorials. Frankly, I think they are pretty good.

http://www.apple.com/aperture/resources/tutorial/

If these are not enough to get you going, try this page:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/resources/

And then do a Google on "Aperture Tutorials"

Kendall Gelner, a frequent poster on here, has an excellent tutorial on Aperture Adjustments on his website, the name of which escapes me currently.

--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/

LIGHTROOM
PRoS

• Easier to pick up and use
• Slightly more in depth Editing Tools (Curves, more color sliders, Black Level etc). Can acheive the same with Aperture, but not as easily.
• Fast (but with a few gotchas - must let the program finish building previews etc)
• Can create and share Presets with other users and apply Presets on Import
• History - can go easily back to Prior state
• System requirements not that stringent. Can also Mac & PC
• Healing Brush/Clone Tool is nicely done
• More Camera support...

CoNs

• File Management (DAM) seems to be the least in depth part of the program.

• Stacks/Virtual copies could be more intuitive. People that use both prorams will understand what I mean. Aperture just does a better job in its exectuion. Also doesn't do a good job on import of Raw/Jpegs with same name. Need to do a workaround.

• Modules (forces you into set way of doing things). The best part of the program is how easy it is to figure out due to the modules, but that is the part of the program that limits you the most once you figure it out. You end up hating the thing you love the most.

• User Interface is somewhat customizable, but you cannot customize the view as much as in Aperture...

• Email feature and watermark feature not as intuitive. Sends images for email to a folder.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

APERTURE

• Best FM/DAM Features of the two. Program clearly geared more towards File Mgmt
• Loupe
• Stacks
• Versions etc...

• Can get CLOSE to Canon DPP (colors) conversions when using this program.

• Faster to Navigate and do things on the fly due to open nature which greatly speeds up your Workflow. Program geared more towards managing large amount of images IMO.

• Emailing functions are very intuitive (e.g. adding watermark etc). Click on email and my image goes straight to mail resized and with a watermark.

• More Customizable UI..Can display images a multitude of ways
• Presets for each section

CoNs

• Learning Curve. The program is daunting at first due to its wide open nature. I suggest buying a book or you will miss out on many of its features.

• Focus was on clearly on File Mgmt features. The Editing features needs to be more in depth and improved. E.g. The Lift and stamp Tool is extremely difficult to use. Lightroom also has a few features that Apple should a good look at. I.e. Curves, History, More sliders etc.

• POWER HUNGRY - The program requires way too much computer to run it adequately. I think Apple focused too much on using Aperture in the beginning to promote hardware. The program still cant get pass that stigma.

• The program locks you out once you start your conversion to Jpegs (you can’t work in the program during this time). Apple has to correct this because it really cuts down your productivity.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion

The best way to figure out if a program works for your particular needs is to test it under your working conditions. I had a week of down time and I decided this was the time to learn and test Lightroom vs. Aperture because I was looking for an alternative to Cannon DPP mostly due to how it handled shadow details and also sorting through pics etc.

Background: I am a fashion/model photographer and in my field we shoot a lot of photos to ensure we have that Money Shot ;-). A shoot with over 1000 images is quite common. From this I have to narrow down to the best photos to send the presentable sample to the client without overwhelming them. One week turnaround is customary. I shoot only RAW so I have to do some edit to get the pictures to a state where they POP. Photoshop is not used in this phase unless I see a shot that needs something done that my DAM software cannot do and I HAVE to send it to the client because it is a winner.

After testing both software, I chose Aperture. It has some drawbacks, but I found it t be the better program for my needs. It helped me tremendously to sort through photos, apply keywords and create smart albums. For Example I came up with a key word Submission Package and I created a Smart Album tied to that keyword. I went through the images and tagged all the shots that caught my eye immediately with that keyword. This was while deleting the obvious bad shots, and editing the pictures and lift and stamp. Click over to the smart album titled Submission package and all the shots I want to send was sitting there already pre-edited.

I tried this with Lightroom, but the modular nature frustrated me because I don’t do things in a set order...For Example I might be applying Keywords, then see a pic I want to crop, then I decide I want to stack a few pics, then I want to tweak a photo. I was so tired of switching between modules and trying to remember what I could do where that I just gave up and went back to Aperture.

At the end of the day it is all about of getting a great product in the shortest amount of time to my client and Aperture helped me the most to meet this objective…

First, thanks for the detailed reply. This forum has a lot of folks who are very generous with their time and experience.

I think I found my problem with the tutorials on the Apple web site. The relative links that allow you to launch the various "chapters" don't work with Firefox. After reading your reply I went back to the tutorials page and noticed that no matter which tutorial I selected I always launched the overview. Tried it with Safari and it worked. The Image Processing tutorial was very helpful.

I went back to Aperture and attempted the same edits to some images that I had done with Lightroom and found that now I could get similar results. I miss the curves tool, though. And I still think the print features in Aperture are difficult to use. But now, at least, I can begin to compare the applications based on data rather than frustration.

Thanks again.

dd....