Aperture / CS2 / workflow question

sardelli

I've started doing some professional portrait work and plan on seeking more. I have been evaluating Lightroom vs Aperture and have come the basic conclusion that Lightroom has better touchup capabilities than Aperture but Aperture has better photo management capabilities. I really like Aperture's system of organization and its GUI overall. I thought that I would use Aperture for management and raw processing and use CS2 for the heavy touchups. So here's the problem. When I navigate to CS2 from Aperture it converts the file to PSD or TIFF, both of which end up being > 70MB. Now if I have to do this for every portrait I clean up I will run out of storage pretty quickly. Now there may be a few ways to get around this depending upon how I deal with finished PSD. Any ideas? What am I missing?

yokimbo

Do you have the option to import as DNG?

I'm using Lightroom (LR) and the same thing happens to me. I import my NEF files, then make some edits in LR, then send a copy of the photo (Tiff) to PSCS. I think if I were willing to convert my NEF files to DNG on import, then I may not have to make a copy to send to PSCS.

Also, I recommend reading O'Reilly's Inside Aperture blog. Good stuff. They also have an Insisde Ligthroom blog for you LR users out there (like me).

sardelli

Interesting suggestion (DNG)

yokimbo wrote:

Do you have the option to import as DNG?

I'm using Lightroom (LR) and the same thing happens to me. I import my NEF files, then make some edits in LR, then send a copy of the photo (Tiff) to PSCS. I think if I were willing to convert my NEF files to DNG on import, then I may not have to make a copy to send to PSCS.

Also, I recommend reading O'Reilly's Inside Aperture blog. Good stuff. They also have an Insisde Ligthroom blog for you LR users out there (like me).

Interesting suggestion. I checked the apple site (not at my workstation right now) and it appears that Aperture accepts DNG but does not convert it itself. And, I've been thinking that I may have the originally stated problem in Lightroom to a smaller extent but Lightroom gives you the ability to convert to DNG when you first import. That might be my solution.

I really really like the aperture interface and its cataloguing features but realistically I may have to go with Lightroom and just hope they improve it.

yokimbo

When is the last time you looked at LR? I find it's cataloging features to be excellent. Reading some of the blog posts on the Inside Aperture blog, they're pointing out some of the things LR does that they wish were in Aperture. Of course, Aperture does some things better too. It's all about which trade offs you can live with.

I highly recommend reading the Aperture vs. Lightroom series by Micah Walter on Inside Aperture. Follow this link and click on blog to see everything the author has posted.