Which one?

nightspidy

Ok, I'm a total newbie at post processing, but I am ready for the upgrade from the camera supplied software. I know these programs have been discussed here, but I am just really stuck. I'm not "computer-literate" at all and I need honest feedback that is not sales driven. I'm using a mac and I'm thinking either: lightroom or aperture. I would like to start doing some more creative things with my photography with a system that is user friendly. I'm thinking of getting my reb xt converted to infrared, so if the program can handle that it would be great. For example, shooting in IR and punching out one color, like a blue sky. I would like to do more enlaring of my macro's and sharpening where needed. I also need to be able to get rid of dust spots....healing....cloning, etc. If there is someone who has used both programs that could comment that would be great. Thank you in advance.

claudermilk

There should be trial versions of both (I know LR has one). Download them both & try them both. Use the one that works for you. It's a highly personal choice that only you can really answer. For example as popular as LR has become I don't use it as I hate it's workflow and--to me--extremely weak DAM module; just my own minority opinion.

Richard

nightspidy wrote:

Ok, I'm a total newbie at post processing, but I am ready for the upgrade from the camera supplied software. I know these programs have been discussed here, but I am just really stuck. I'm not "computer-literate" at all and I need honest feedback that is not sales driven. I'm using a mac and I'm thinking either: lightroom or aperture. I would like to start doing some more creative things with my photography with a system that is user friendly. I'm thinking of getting my reb xt converted to infrared, so if the program can handle that it would be great. For example, shooting in IR and punching out one color, like a blue sky. I would like to do more enlaring of my macro's and sharpening where needed. I also need to be able to get rid of dust spots....healing....cloning, etc. If there is someone who has used both programs that could comment that would be great. Thank you in advance.

I think you ought to consider Photoshop CS3, if your budget permits. The RAW converter is the same as in LR, but PS has a huge number of tools for selective edits that are simply not available in either LR or Aperture. PS is rightly considered complicated to learn, but there is a vast amount of training material available.

Pupator

For a total newbie I'd recommend Corel's Paint Shop Pro. You can get it for under $100 (often $50) and it has 99% of the functionality of Photoshop CS with a less steep learning curve.

cmorganphotography

I have a Mac and right now I'm using the iphoto supplied with the computer. It does the basics. I'm pretty happy with it and so far I'm leaning towards aperture. The ability to save as amny versions of one photo and not have it take up the space of a seperate photo each time really helped me make my decision and I like to look at the full scope of my shoot at once and the world/album views are crazy.
I haven't really looked into photoshop but I did compare lightroom and nothing about it really grabbed me. I've used photo shop in differenet versions in the past and it was hard to learn. There are tools on there I still don't know what they do.
I guess now I'm questioning it all again. I curious to see what people choose? I have a Macbook Pro 2007 if that helps anyone.
The cloning adn healing features are really nice.

darkdragon

Personally, I use and love Lightroom. I run it on my iMac and my macbook Pro. I'm a photoshop user from way back (v3 i think) and i just hate waiting for a 10MP image to load up in photoshop just so I can adjust the simple stuff.

Lightroom is perfect for this. It also has a library mode where you can view all your image and scale the size of the "thumbnail" so that you can fit a lot or a few on the screen at once.

My favorite things about lightroom:

• Clone/Heal tool
• Cropping with ability to lock ratios quickly/easily
• Color temp adjustment
• Catalog/keywording
• Ratings and flagging system
• Upload to Smugmug from lightroom without an export first
• ...theres more, so much to love.

nightspidy

Decisions, decisions.....
I think I am going to do some more research. I definately like that LR is compatable with SmugMug as I'll be getting an account soon. The simplier the better. I will check into Corel however as that also looks interesting. Unfortunatly PS is way out of my budget. I don't want to spend anymore than $400...saving up for some glass. Not sure who said this, but wow, is this ever an expensive hobby!!!

jasonstone

I'm using Lightroom on a MacBook and PowerBook

Reason is that LR is much faster (didn't try Aperture 2.0 as it wasn't out when I chose) and also I wanted small notebook - and MacBook doesn't have dedicated graphics card which Aperture really does work well with (possibly a requirement for fast processing)