Aperture Vs. Lightroom?

rockingcpa · June 2, 2011

Hi Everyone,

I have searched all over the Dgrin forums and I can't believe there isn't a thread about this, but I could find nothing comparing these two software programs. Does anyone have experience with both Aperture AND Lightroom? I've been using Aperture with Photoshop as an external editor. I really like Aperture and find that I can do pretty much everything I need in that program, but I'm intrigued by Lightroom. I read in one online review that Aperture has a better interface and it is easier to use, and that Lightroom has an advantage in that it's integration with Photoshop is superior. I have not used Lightroom, and I'd love to hear opinions from those that have experience with both, including RAW conversion quality, organization of files, etc.

If there is another thread regarding this, please post a link.

Thanks,

Bob

MarkR · June 2, 2011

I think at this point you picks your poison and makes your choice.

I have tried just about every raw converter on the market, used Bibble and Lightzone for a while, and even almost switched from Lightroom to Aperture.*

I beleive that Aperture has some serious merit as a raw converter and organizer. I even believe that it has a better interface and editing toolset than Lightroom. I also like its DAM tools better than Lightroom. In terms of IQ between the two it's a wash.

Where Lightroom wins it for me is in a few key areas:

1. Support. Both are really good at supporting new cameras, but LR has a slight edge. One of my cameras is a Samsung TL500, not yet supported by Ap. Although I believe Ap would support it if I wanted to take the extra step to convert raw to dng.

2. Noise reduction. Ap actually does a great job at color NR at the time of conversion, but doing heavy NR in Ap requires moving to a 3rd party application. Lightroom's color and luminance NR, on the other hand, are quite good. I'm convinced that NR needs to be done as close to the beginning of the editing workflow as possible, and for me that means raw, and Lightroom.

3. Lens correction: Lightroom lets me do it natively, Aperture requires a 3rd party application. More importantly, Lightroom lets me "roll my own" using some of Adobe's tools. That means I can customize to the foibles of my own lenses, if I want. Their implementation of lens correction is fantastic.

4. Color profiling. I can use an X-rite colorchecker passport to create a custom dng profile, for more accurate and pleasing colors. To be fair, I like the baseline color profile for my cameras in Aperture better than the canned Adobe ones, but Lightroom gives me more flexibility.

My suggestion is to download both programs' 30 day trial and see which one you like better. I doubt you can go wrong with either of them.

*I almost bought SilkyPix. Truly! And I still carry a torch for Lightzone.

Hindsight · June 2, 2011

I began with Ap right from it's launch several years ago and then tried LR on a free trial (LR beta) and switched. I've never looked back. Ap was less intuitive for me and I liked the PS integration better with LR. Plus Apple just doesn't communicate with the user base like Adobe does and this is coming from a major proponent of the FCP Pro app suite, so no I don't consider myself biased. There are a lot of threads and discussions on this subject, or at least there used to be and the previous poster is dead on....they both have a lot of enticing qualities but in the end it comes down to pure preference. Either will organize and allow users to make all the basic adjustments, and neither replaces PS.

rockingcpa · June 3, 2011

Aperture or Lightroom
Hi Mark,

Thanks so much for your in-depth response. I edited my original post like 4 times before I finally got a semi-coherent post. I DID mention that I have Aperture and have been using it for about 3 years, now. I like it very much and I find stable and extremely user friendly. I truly find that I seem to be able to just about all the editing I think I need in Aperture. I shoot everything RAW and Aperture seems to do a good job of converting and automatically adjusting the RAW image. I downloaded some free presets from OnOne software, which I like and just realized today that I could save adjustments as custom presets. There is a site called Mac Pro Video that is awesome. I used that site to get up and running quickly when I switched from Pro Tools to Logic, and they also have some Aperture and LightRoom tutorials. I may download a trial for Lightroom, and give it a shot.

I recently switched from Sony gear to all Canon, primarily to be compatible with pro photographer friends of mine that have become my mentor and with whom I'll most likely be working weddings as a 2nd shooter. I now have a 5D Mark II, with 3 "L" lens (24-105mm f/4.0, 50mm f/1.2L USM & 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM). I was playing with the EOS utility and I set the preference to download the file straight into Aperture and, other than one minor detail, it worked awesome. It's a bit if a PITA, but each time I shot a new pic, it would import in to Aperture and the program would put it in a new project. So, after each shot I would drag the import image into the project I had created. Not sure if there is way around this, but the EOS utility and Aperture otherwise seemed to play nice together.

Here's my thing about Adobe that has made me want to rebel against their products. Adobe reminds me very much of Microsoft and Avid (formerly Digidesign), in that, they have become huge and somewhat the industry standard. It seems, as soon as a company reaches that status, they get greedy. When companies price their products above what the average person can or is willing to pay, that makes us want to find alternatives. If it had a couple more PS type features, I really think I could get by with the $59.99 Pixelmator program. One thing I like very much about using Apple products is that they will NEVER break one of their own products with an OS update. If a program needs an update to work with a OS update, they release both at the same time. Seems to me Adobe didn't care about releasing a native version to be compatible with Intel Macs, so it ran in a much slower Rosetta mode for a long time. I'm also a musician and I got so sick of Pro Tools not being ready for a new operating system update. Leopard came out and I had to wait about 6 months before I could upgrade my computer so that Pro Tools would continue to function. Otherwise, would have had $15,000+ in recording gear that would have made a great doorstop. Logic works great and sounds great, and functions perfectly with no worries about an OS upgrade breaking it. I feel the same sense of security with Aperture, and find that to be a real plus over anything Adobe.

THAT being said, being compatible with the majority of others in the same industry can be a real plus. I got some great images with my Sony A700 with my Sony & Minolta G lenses. By switching to Canon, all of a sudden there are all kinds of options for accessories and opportunities to borrow lenses, and get help. Third parties are more motivated to develop for the greatest target market, and that would be Canon AND Nikon. Truth is my 5D Mark II is vastly superior to my old A700, and I'm getting better images. BEING COMPATIBLE WITH COLLEAGUES , SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE, AND SUPPORT OF 3RD PARTY PLUGINS WOULD BE MY PRIMARY REASON TO CONSIDER SWITCHING TO LIGHTROOM. If that's case, then I'll make the switch, as I'm looking to take photography to the next level.

Thanks again for the responses. This is a great forum and I appreciate the help.

Bob

rockingcpa · June 3, 2011

Hindsight wrote: »

I began with Ap right from it's launch several years ago and then tried LR on a free trial (LR beta) and switched. I've never looked back. Ap was less intuitive for me and I liked the PS integration better with LR. Plus Apple just doesn't communicate with the user base like Adobe does and this is coming from a major proponent of the FCP Pro app suite, so no I don't consider myself biased. There are a lot of threads and discussions on this subject, or at least there used to be and the previous poster is dead on....they both have a lot of enticing qualities but in the end it comes down to pure preference. Either will organize and allow users to make all the basic adjustments, and neither replaces PS.

Well, if you started with AP and switched to LR, that makes it worth a look.

Thanks,

Bob

MarkR · June 3, 2011

Edited my post. I almost switched FROM Lightroom to Aperture. I currently use Lightroom. Damn beer!

rockingcpa · June 4, 2011

So...I did my own comparison
Hi Everyone,

Well I decided to do my own research, so I downloaded a trial version of Lightroom 3 yesterday. I did find one comparison of both at apertureland.com here, and i think the guy was right on with his assessment.

Here's what I think so far.

Aperture advantages:

Ease of use. Hands down, I find Aperture MUCH more user friendly.
Organization - Aperture keeps track of everything for you in one database (assuming you tell it to keep photos in Aperture vs in folders on your hard drive). This can also be a disadvantage - see Lightroom advantages below
Interface - Much less cluttered and you don't have to navigate to 5 different tabs to access various functions.
Price - Aperture is cheaper
Aperture has a couple of tools integrated that I don't see in Lightroom. I often use the retouching, skin smoothing & blur brushes in AP. Unless they are hidden somewhere in Lightroom, that means you have to spend hundreds on Photoshop just to get those functions. I guess you could argue that, if you're really a pro photographer, you'll be buying PS, anyway. For amateurs on a budget, that is a significant chunk of change, if you just need those features.
It's made by Apple - As I mentioned above, you never have to worry about Apple not keeping up with changes necessary to function properly with OS changes.
Photoshop and Portrait Professional seem to function equally well and play nice with either program. So far, I don't see a huge advantage in the LR/PS integration over AP/PS. It did appear the the file saved back to LR made a touch faster than with AP.
I'm embarrassed to say, I just noticed Aperture has a tethered shooting option, as well. I never used that with my A700, so I have no experience with that feature. The Canon EOS utility is really cool and works well. Maybe, I'll try it with my 5D Mk II to see if it is more full-featured than in LR. EDIT Well I don't feel so embarrassed, now. I tried it with Aperture, and it failed miserably. Tethering still seems to work better using the EOS utility and Lightroom

Lightroom advantages:

Better integration with Photoshop, but I honetly haven't tried that yet (see next advantage)
MUCH more feature rich set of tools for editing your photos. Enough so, that I can see I would rarely even use Photoshop. In fact, I might not even upgrade my current version of Photoshop CS3. As photographers (vs graphic designers) I personally think Pixelmator can do a lot of what we might need.
Lense correction - This is a feature I made use of on yesterday's shoot, as well. Very cool feature, and I think it found both my camera and lens from the metadata the first time I used it. I did the shoot with my 5D Mk II and a Canon 24-105mm f/4.0L lens. You can dial in how much of this feature you want. I found that I actually liked a little of the vignette from the lens, as it saturated the sky in the corners, so I backed that setting down a little to allow a very moderate amount of vignetting.
Even though it is much more complex (I'm sure due to the superior feature set), there seem to be places to save presets all over the place.
Organization - Everything is in the finder, so I think that means you can forward images to others via email, YouSendIt, etc. without having to first export them from one large database.
Safety - I haven't heard of anyone discussing this, but I feel a little uneasy having EVERY image I have in one database. It seems really risky to have all of your proverbial eggs in ONE basket. I have my Aperture library on both my MacBook Pro 13 and my Mac Pro desktop and both have Time Machine backups, so I should be safe. Still, I kind of like being able to SEE my image files.
As the reviewer at apertureland.com said, much bigger community to share info and more options for add-ons
LOVE the graduated filters feature. I used it a lot in the first day for editing some pretty good landscape pics I shot yesterday.
Noise reduction feature - I haven't used it yet, as my shoot from yesterday was done outside at dawn with the 5d Mk II set at ISO100, but in the video I watched I was very impressed with that feature.
It seems to be very fast. I'm currently using it on a MacBook Pro 13 Mid 2009 that I just installed a OWC Mercury solid state drive and it has 8gb RAM, and it was pretty snappy (then again the SSD made just about everything snappy on this computer). I also put an SDD in my Mac Pro quad core. With 8GB of RAM, holy crap is that thing fast.
Tethered shooting feature. I used it with my 5D Mk II and it works OK. Unfortunately, it can not control and camera other than firing the shutter, so the EOS utility is still much better for that. I haven't played with it enough to make a good comparison, but I do know, as I believe I mentioned in a previous post, that Aperture creates a new project for every incoming photo, which is a PITA. Maybe I had something set wrong, but I had my test photos using the EOS utility and LR going into one folder.
Last, but certainly worth mentioning, is MUCH better integration with SmugMug. I like the fact that I can update an image and have it also update my image at SmugMug. Again, I've had this program less than 24 hours, so I'm not completely clear on if syncing will update the photo on SmugMug, or if I just have to re-upload the file and it will replace it vs adding a duplicate. Nonetheless, it is a cool feature that seems to work more like an FTP client. The Aperture to SmugMug addon works well in Aperture, but I like this better.

I'm definitely leaning toward switching to Lightroom. I agree with what the reviewer at apertureland.com said, "If I had dreams of going pro, I’d go with Lightroom 3 because it is more of an industry standard and its tighter integration with Photoshop." I am trying to take this to the next level and I like that advanced editing capabilities, bigger community for support and potential for much great availability of add-ons.

The switch:

What I'm NOT looking forward to is the work to get all my existing photos out of the Aperture database and into Lightroom. I have apparently, over the last couple of years, somehow lost some of the masters for images in Aperture, so that means I will have to export the JPGs and then import them into Lightroom.

I'm also not really looking forward to the learning curve to master all the features in Lightroom. Fortunately, as I mentioned above, there seem to be a substantial number of resources for tutorials. Between the Adobe site, YouTube and Mac Pro Video, I'm sure learning to take full advantage of Lightroom will not be a problem, and I think that is knowledge I personally need to get to the level of some of the awesome photographers on this forum.

Comments and opinions are welcome. Hopefully someone else finds my research useful.

Bob

MarkR · June 4, 2011

I actually think that Aperture has a more flexible set of editing tools than Lightroom, FWIW. It's shadow/highlight tool is more flexible, and the ability to brush in/out custom curves and levels adds a lot of flexibility.

Also, regarding "safety": you CAN import Aperture files "in place", just like lightroom. Useful if you have an existing file structure you want to keep.

And the above also sells Aperture short in some of the things it does do quite well: geo tagging and face recognition can be indispensable for some. Scott Kelby admitted to keeping Aperture around for its Books features. If you do video as well as stills, Aperture handles video files better.

carmel6942 · June 4, 2011

I have used Aperture since 1.5 with the update to 2.0 things are much better. I did download the trial of the new Lightroom and I did not like it as well as Aperture. As far as integration with photosop I didn't see a difference between the two. In aperture you set your preferences one time to use photoshop, when you want to edit the photo in photoshop, you can right click on the image and select edit with photoshop. Photoshop opens, you do your edits you save your file and it sends it back to aperture and you have your edited file right there in aperture. I do agree with MarkR's comment on Noise reduction though I wish that Aperture's was better.

Pixelmator, I just purchased this and right now you can get it through the App store for $29.00 and get a free upgrade to 2. which they just announced. Killer program so far.

rockingcpa · June 6, 2011

Thanks for all the responses. I've been using Lightroom for about 4 days now, and I have to say I really like it. I have found that Julieanne Kost of Adobe has done some great videos to help you learn all the features and functions of Lightroom. She also does Photoshop tutorials. Her show on Adobe TV is called The Complete Picture and you can find it here: http://tv.adobe.com/show/the-complete-picture-with-julieanne-kost There are probably some great videos for Aperture, too, but for some reason, I never found any. I'm really liking the lens correction in Lightroom. It has data for all of my Canon lens and recognizes the correct lens used from the metadata. I love, love, love everything Apple, but I'm about 99% sure I'm moving to Lightroom.

W.W. Webster · June 6, 2011

rockingcpa wrote: »

I love, love, love everything Apple, but ...

I know the feeling!

I own both A3 and LR3, but don't (and will never) own Photoshop, so PS integration is not a relevant issue for me. I presently have 70,000 images managed in a single LR3 catalogue, but none under A3. Aperture is beautiful to use in terms of its user interface, but the bottom line is that LR has the better IQ - IMHO.

Lens Corrections, introduced in v3, are a major advantage of LR for me (enabling me to avoid any external editor entirely), and I'm hoping Content Aware Fill and Soft Proofing will arrive in LR4 - then my life will be complete (or maybe not!).

You already know and understand A3 well. You own it to yourself to trial LR thoroughly until you have as nearly the same intuitive understanding of it as you do A3 as practical, and then make you decision. This review might also be useful background in your evaluation.

rockingcpa · June 6, 2011

W.W. Webster wrote: »

I know the feeling!

I own both A3 and LR3, but don't (and will never) own Photoshop, so PS integration is not a relevant issue for me. I presently have 70,000 images managed in a single LR3 catalogue, but none under A3. Aperture is beautiful to use in terms of its user interface, but the bottom line is that LR has the better IQ - IMHO.

Lens Corrections, introduced in v3, are a major advantage of LR for me (enabling me to avoid any external editor entirely), and I'm hoping Content Aware Fill and Soft Proofing will arrive in LR4 - then my life will be complete (or maybe not!).

You already know and understand A3 well. You own it to yourself to trial LR thoroughly until you have as nearly the same intuitive understanding of it as you do A3 as practical, and then make you decision. This review might also be useful background in your evaluation.

Thanks for the info. I do own A3, and don't see a reason to dump it. Somewhere above (or somewhere

) I remember that Scott Kelby keeps AP around for the photo books and maybe video. Truth is, I think I've learned more about LR from Julieanne Kost and experimentation in 4 days, than I've ever learned about AP. I can say AP was took much less effort to get up and running, but I personally think some of this has to do with the more advanced feature set in LR.

One thing I WILL say, is that I really like the Auto Enhance preset in AP. It seems to come closer on the first try to get what I'm looking for than any of the pre-canned presets in LR. But...I learned in the first 24 hours of using LR how to save my own presets, so once I found something I like, I started saving my own for different situations. Today I learned from Julieanne how to make the lens correction a default for all images. So, every image that I import will get that function automatically and then I can make my adjustments from there.

Thanks for the link on the review. I'll check it out.

Bob

Edit..I checked out your gear, and we have a very similar setup. From the 5D Mark II to the computers. I also have a 13" MBP. Mine is the first of the 13" MacBook Pros from mid 2009, but I think your Mac Pro is newer. My Mac Pro is a 2009 single quad core. However, I have a suggestion. Last month, I put an Other World Computing Mercury 115GB solid state drive in my MacBook Pro in the optical drive bay, by using one of their Data Doublers. You take your DVD drive out and put it in an external enclosure and access it via USB. My 250GB internal HD was full, so I added the SSD as the main boot drive in the optical bay, and then installed a fresh OS and reinstalled my apps ONLY. I kept the home folder on the 250GB HD and deleted the OS and applications from that drive, which got me back to having about 50GB available, and I have about 50GB open on the SSD, as well. I also upgraded the RAM from 4 to 8, and I have to tell you this little MBP is as fast and sometimes faster than my Mac Pro. I have noticed that processing some images is still faster with the quad core Xenon processor in the Mac Pro. BUT...then I installed an SSD in the Mac Pro. Holy Moses!! I didn't see as dramatic a difference in the speed of the Mac Pro, as it was already fast, but anything to do with accessing the main HD (launching applications, restarting the computer, etc) is definitely snappier. For about $300 you can transform you MBP into a monster. The installation is very easy on newer MBP's where you can access everything through the back. It took me about 30 minutes to open the back, remove the DVD, install the SSD, install the optical drive in the external enclosure and close up the computer. If your MBP is getting a little "long in the tooth", it's a way to speed it up and gain some HD space vs. plunking down $1,500USD + on a new computer.

rockingcpa · June 7, 2011

I thought it might be interesting to start a pole to see who uses Aperture vs Lightroom here on SmugMug. I have read stats on other sites and realize a poll about the two programs will be a bit skewed, because there is no version of Aperture for Windows.

W.W. Webster · June 7, 2011

Bob, thanks for the MBP info!

rockingcpa · June 7, 2011

My Pleasure

W.W. Webster wrote: »

Bob, thanks for the MBP info!

My pleasure. I'm happy to share.

Here is another tip. Put a disk image of your OSX installation DVD on an 8GB flash drive. The OS will install on your MBP or Mac Pro with an SSD in about 15 minutes vs. 35-40. You can Google how to do it. It's very easy using Disk Utility. Then you have a backup of your OSX installation on a flash drive you can store in a safe place. I keep backups of downloaded software for which I have no disc in my iDisc, but I'm also going to start making disc images and storing them on a flash drive(s), as well.

Bob

catspaw · June 7, 2011

MAJOR thanks for the MBP tip on the data doubler! I LIKE that. I did RAM last summer, so I think I might do this next

rockingcpa · June 7, 2011

I think I've needed my optical drive maybe once in the last month, and that was when I was reinstalling all the software. I asked if the USB connection would be slower than SATA or whatever the connection is inside and they said, "Yes, but the optical drive is so slow you won't even notice a difference". If you do it, you'll be shocked how small, light and underwhelming the optical drive IS.

It will take up very little space in your bag if you need to carry it along. You can usually just download installation files for most of your apps, anyway.

catspaw · June 7, 2011

Yeah, aside from ripping new CDs that I get into my collection (which is already stored externally ...), I never use the optical drive. EVER.

rockingcpa · June 7, 2011

Price of the SSD kit has dropped
Good news for you guys (not so much for me). The price dropped by $10 to $269.99 for a kit with a 115GB SSD, a data doubler and a 5-piece toolkit (of which you only need 2 of the pieces). There is a link to the OWC Value SuperSlim enclosure is on the same page and it's $49.99. They have excellent videos on how to do the installation. I watched the video on my Mac Pro while I was doing the install on the MBP and I would pause as I was doing each step. The Mac Pro is even easier. They sell a conversion carrier that allows you to bolt a 2.5" drive into, which then just plugs in like the drive(s) that came in your Mac Pro. That seriously took me less than 10 minutes to install the SSD in my Mac Pro. My MBP is out of warranty, so I wasn't worried about cracking open the case to do this modification. If you do a get info (command+I) on your system, library & applications folders, you might find you can get by with a 60GB SSD. I decided when I did this to do a clean install and weed out some apps I wasn't using, which also reduced the overall size of those 3 folders. I would get the 115, so you don't run out of room. Maybe in a year or two the prices on the larger SSDs will come down to a point where it would make sense to get a bigger one. The 480GB SSD is almost $900, so unless you have more money than you know what to do with, I'd get a smaller one just for the system and apps and keep your home folder on the original drive. Using your old home folder and keeping it on a separate drive is very easy and makes a lot of sense. You can Google how you go into "Preferences" and re-direct your system to the old home folder on the old drive.

BTW, I'm a CPA, musician and now trying to be a photographer, so I am in no way affiliated with OWC. I was just a customer and, as you can tell, I'm thrilled with the result of the mods I did to my MBP and Mac Pro. The extra speed makes a huge difference in working with large image files. I use PCs ONLY for my tax prep program, a payroll program and QuicksBooks for Windows. I'm sure these SSDs are compatible with Windows computers, as well.

OOPS, I kind of hi-jacked my own thread. :-)

rockingcpa · June 7, 2011

To get back on topic, has anyone heard if LR and PS are going to be updated, or if they need to be updated to function properly with the new Mac OSX Lion operating system that is due out next month? As I mentioned way above, this is one of the real advantages I see with sticking with Apple software.

rockingcpa · June 7, 2011

Roaringapps.com says they work

rockingcpa wrote: »

To get back on topic, has anyone heard if LR and PS are going to be updated, or if they need to be updated to function properly with the new Mac OSX Lion operating system that is due out next month? As I mentioned way above, this is one of the real advantages I see with sticking with Apple software.

Well, I found my own answer. According to roaringapps.com LR, PS & Elements have all been tested and work OK. See the site here.

catspaw · June 7, 2011

well, they just released PS 5.5 last month?

carmel6942 · June 8, 2011

Additional web help for Aperture
If you are looking for some help with Aperture the MacCreate team does a great job and there is a portion of their website devoted to nothing but Aperture. I know there are not as many help sites for Aperture as there are for Lightroom, but these guys do a good job and offer alot good stuff free and paid for.

Here is the link to the Aperture pages http://aperture.maccreate.com/

Here is the link to Apples How to videos http://www.apple.com/aperture/how-to/

I hope these help you out with the learning curve.

The brush in/out adjustments are great and easy to use they do more than I imagined they could.

Also if you need a good plug in to export directly to your smug mug account here is the best one out there. http://nzwidgets.com/smugin/SmuginForAperture/SmuginForAperture.html this is the link to the free version there is also a paid one that offers more features.

Got Grins? · June 13, 2011

Aperture or Lightroom?
Which do you prefer and why? I currently have elements 8. Is there a huge difference? Is it worth the investment?

Thanks

rockingcpa · June 20, 2011

I made the switch to LR
Thread update:

Well, I went ahead and bought Lightroom and made the switch. I've been doing a LR tutorial at Lynda.com that is taught by Chris Orwig, a faculty member at the Brooks Institute. The tutorial is over 30 hours long and I'm about 2/3 of the way through. I highly recommend doing this, or SOME tutorial. I learned quite a bit from the Adobe TV videos done by Julieanne Kost at the Adobe website, but the tutorial at Lynda.com is much more in depth. I tend to dive in and learn how to do what I need, and doing this course is really helping to fill in what I've missed and is teaching me more about photo editing. I plan on doing the PS tutorial, when I'm done with the LR tutorial, to advance my knowledge more. I have to say, once I started learning more about LR's capabilities, I really like it. As when comparing most software programs, there are some things I like better about each program but, overall, I prefer the horsepower of LR.

Snowgirl · June 24, 2011

carmel6942 wrote: »

If you are looking for some help with Aperture the MacCreate team does a great job and there is a portion of their website devoted to nothing but Aperture. I know there are not as many help sites for Aperture as there are for Lightroom, but these guys do a good job and offer alot good stuff free and paid for.

Here is the link to the Aperture pages http://aperture.maccreate.com/

Here is the link to Apples How to videos http://www.apple.com/aperture/how-to/

I hope these help you out with the learning curve.

The brush in/out adjustments are great and easy to use they do more than I imagined they could.

Also if you need a good plug in to export directly to your smug mug account here is the best one out there. http://nzwidgets.com/smugin/SmuginForAperture/SmuginForAperture.html this is the link to the free version there is also a paid one that offers more features.

Thanks for the links. I'd forgotten a few tips, not the least of which was the ability to brush in adjustments selectively. I'm using PS less and less these days with Aperture 3 on my iMac.

rockingcpa · July 3, 2011

I Have Completed My Lynda.com Lightroom Training
Another thread update:

About 3 1/2 weeks and 13 hours and 24 minutes of video tutorials later, I'm really, really proficient with Lightroom. More so than I ever as with Aperture. Again, I LOVE everything Apple, but I feel I'm closer to being where I want to be as a photographer with Lightroom and Photoshop. I realize I have worked much harder at learning Lightroom than Aperture, but in the 2-3 years I used Aperture, I never saw many of the capabilities that are contained in Lightroom. IMO, with power comes complexity. By embracing the complexity and working through it, I'm much better at processing my photos than I was.

I'm not bashing Aperture. It is a great program, and like most things Apple, its beauty is in its ease of use. As with analyzing any two software programs, each has it's strengths and weaknesses. I LOVE the better integration of LR and Smugmug. As cool as this forum and Smugmug are, that is enough reason for me to switch to Lightroom. Jeffrey Friedl's LR Smugmug plugin is like the stock Smugmug plugin on steroids. It works awesome. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Here is my "atta-boy" for completing the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Essential Training course at Lynda.com.

email_cert_banner.gif?c-v=24669

Certificate of Completion: Robert DeLellis
Photoshop Lightroom 3 Essential Training

ABOUT THE COURSE:
The course is taught by Chris Orwig, who is a faculty member at Brooks Institute and did an absolutely awesome job at creating the course. I'm going to take the Photoshop CS5 for Photographers next. I am self-taught in PS, and I tend to learn and figure out what I need to know to perform a specific task. I have found I can do most the things that don't require layers in Lightroom. What that tells me is my knowledge in PS is too basic, and I have skipped over knowledge I need, and I need to study more. I've never met Chris and may not but, because of his class, I have enrolled in the Wedding Certificate course at Brooks Institute. This was the first course I have taken at Lynda.com and, if the rest are this good, I highly recommend it. I previously used macprovideo.com for Logic training, which was excellent, as well, but I think I prefer the lynda.com courses. At least for photography related topics. If you are thinking about online training, I suggest you look at both. They are both $25/month flat for as many courses as you want to take.

I'm working hard to go from a "picture taker" to a "pro photographer". I find that as good as some of my images are, there will often be others where I go, "What the H**L is that"?

With hard work, I hope my images will consistently be as good as some of the incredible photographers here on Smugmug. Hope this other find this info useful.

Bob

W.W. Webster · July 3, 2011

rockingcpa wrote: »

About 3 1/2 weeks and 13 hours and 24 minutes of video tutorials later, I'm really, really proficient with Lightroom.

Well done, you'll never look back!

rockingcpa wrote: »

I'm going to take the Photoshop CS5 for Photographers next. I am self-taught in PS, and I tend to learn and figure out what I need to know to perform a specific task. I have found I can do most the things that don't require layers in Lightroom.

With your new-found LS proficiency, you still feel you rilly, rilly need PS?

rockingcpa · July 3, 2011

Prepare for the vociferous reply.

W.W. Webster wrote: »

Well done, you'll never look back!

Thank you.

I think it's one of those things that you don't really realize the differences in the two programs unless you really commit the time to learn at least a moderate amount about both. Like I said above, I LOVE Apple products and I really wanted Aperture to be THE program, but Lightroom is just way more powerful. Photoshop integrates well with Aperture, BUT it's faster with LR. I haven't used it, but I watched a video on Adobe TV about opening up images in PS as Smart Objects, which mades changes in one program reflect in the other. I highly doubt that is a feature between Aperture and PS.

I like really like that LR will maintain the folder structure of your images on your HD. If you move it in LR, it will move it in the Finder. If fact, it's BETTER if you do re-arrange your folders in LR, instead of the Finder (or probably Explorer on a PC). If you move the folders manually, then you just have to go into LR, right-click and tell it to synchronize the folder again. It will recognize that folders and/or images have been moved, and it will update the catalog. I believe someone said that you don't HAVE to put all your image files in the Aperture database, but I was told there were features in Aperture that don't work or work as well if you don't store your images in the Aperture library database. That really scares me that ALL your proverbial eggs are in ONE basket (database). What happens if that database gets corrupted???? Your LR catalog could get corrupted, but the worst that would happen is you lose are you adjustments. LR could still go back and recreate a new catalog by reading the organizational structure of the image sub-folders that resides inside the Lightroom folder in your main pictures folder.

HOW THE LIGHTROOM CATALOG WORKS?

The best analogy for the Lightroom catalog is to think of the catalog as an inventory list and the folders of all of your images as the actual product inventory in the warehouse. The Lightroom catalog just keeps track of the location of the files/folders and all of the adjustments that have been made to each image. If you lost your Lightroom catalog, you would lose the info about image locations and the adjustments. It's easy to get LR to create a new catalog and let LR make a new list (inventory) of all of your images. What would suck is losing all of your adjustments. So...a corrupted or lost LR catalog isn't the end of the world, but it IS a critical file, so taking precautions with regular backups is STILL important. Again, if you lose the catalog, you just lose the inventory list NOT the actual inventory.

One thing I haven't tried yet, but I believe will work is to be able to synchronize the LR catalog and images between two computers using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) on a Mac. I use that to back up my Lightroom folder, which contains ALL my images and the Lightroom catalog. CCC will analyze the source and destination folders and just transfer the files that have changed. I have a Mac Pro, but I find I use my 13" MacBook Pro for just about everything, but I want to keep the data synced between the two computers. I have it set up to do a backup on my MBP every hour of just my LR folder to one external HD. THEN I use another external HD to do my Time Machine backup of the entire HD, so I have TWO backups. As I get more "pro" gigs, I'll either need a larger backup drive or multiple drives. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my 13" MBP has a 115gb SSD as the main boot drive for the system and apps and then I recently swapped out my original 250gb 5400rpm HD for a 750gb 7200rpm Western Digital drive. I put the original 250gb HD in an external USB enclosure and use THAT for my Lightroom backup drive.

IMPORTANT PREFERENCE IN LR...THIS IS HUGE:
There is a preference to keep all of your presets, plugins, templates, etc in a folder called "Lightroom Settings" that is INSIDE Lightroom folder IN your pictures folder. I HIGHLY recommend you do that. My Lightroom settings folder has 18 sub-folders containing those items. This accomplishes two things:

When you back up your Lightroom folder (or the entire pictures folder), that means you are also backing up all your presets, plugins, templates, etc. and...
You can copy your Lightroom folder to another computer and ALL of your preferences, presets, plugins, templates, etc. and they would be ready to use on the 2nd computer.

What this ALSO means is, by having an external drive with hourly backups of my Lightroom folder, I can plug that external drive into my Mac Pro, which also has LR installed, and keep working.

With your new-found LR proficiency, you still feel you rilly, rilly need PS?

SELDOM. I'd say the three times I can think of that I have needed PS is for anything where I want to do something with layers:

I've been working on my site and I used PS to create the logo in the header image, I used it to make my watermarks and identity plate for Lightroom.
I did some exposure bracketing of a double rainbow and some pretty dramatic skies and used PS to create some HDR images. Topaz Adjust seems to do a pretty good job with ONE image and I'm going to check out the Nik Software. PS came in handy for that.
A graphic designer friend made a logo for me and I used PS to be able to create other branding images and logos from that, so I definitely needed PS for that, as well.

For $699, you can buy a lot of great plugins that might do the trick, or maybe another lens. I tried the Perfect Layers plugin and didn't care for it compared to just using PS. Fortunately, since I'm enrolled at Brooks, I got to buy PS at the Student/Teacher price of $199. One thing I found out is, once you buy the educational version of PS, you qualify for the regular upgrade pricing the full version, when you no longer qualify for the educational "bro" deal. That means I'll never have to pay full retail for the product, so that made it worth taking the plunge on the "big boy" software.

FYI, I found out that you ONLY get the upgrade price to go to the same package. In other words, now that I have PS CS5 academic version, I can ONLY upgrade to another version of PS (not a suite). if you have a suite, then you can't upgrade to just PS (can't downgrade from a suite). For example, we bought one of the suites at an educational price when my oldest son took graphic and web design in high school. I could have gotten an upgrade to CS5 Design Standard or Premium for about $400 - $450, but I couldn't justify the extra money to get all the other programs. I wouldn't mind having Illustrator and Dreamweaver but I still have Dreamweaver in the CS3 and I rarely tinker with any HTML and with my focus on photography, I'll probably do even less.

The Storal of the Mory and info I'm trying to convey is do your research about what Adobe package you might need. Getting the bigger package now (insert joke here), means a higher upgrade cost in the future. If you think you MIGHT need those other programs as some point, then it's probably a good idea. If you're only going to do photo editing and adjustments, I think you can do just about everything in Lightroom and may be able to get by without PS...ESPECIALLY at $699!!!

Bob
Lightroom Club Member

CatOne · July 5, 2011

rockingcpa wrote: »

I like really like that LR will maintain the folder structure of your images on your HD. If you move it in LR, it will move it in the Finder. If fact, it's BETTER if you do re-arrange your folders in LR, instead of the Finder (or probably Explorer on a PC). If you move the folders manually, then you just have to go into LR, right-click and tell it to synchronize the folder again. It will recognize that folders and/or images have been moved, and it will update the catalog. I believe someone said that you don't HAVE to put all your image files in the Aperture database, but I was told there were features in Aperture that don't work or work as well if you don't store your images in the Aperture library database. That really scares me that ALL your proverbial eggs are in ONE basket (database). What happens if that database gets corrupted???? Your LR catalog could get corrupted, but the worst that would happen is you lose are you adjustments. LR could still go back and recreate a new catalog by reading the organizational structure of the image sub-folders that resides inside the Lightroom folder in your main pictures folder.

This information is just plain incorrect. Aperture will let you maintain any folder structure you want on disk. In fact, it is MUCH more flexible than Lightroom in this regard: If you want to move files/folders or rename files/folders it takes a matter of seconds. With Lightroom, you basically have to do it all manually. Which is OK, but it's less flexible (if say you want to go from YYYY-MM-DD folder structure to something else).

There is NO DIFFERENCE in Aperture in terms of functionality whether the files are stored in the Aperture library (which is actually just a folder), or whether they are in folders on disk that you can see in the Finder (note you can see them in either case, you just have to right click on the Aperture Library in the case of a managed library, then they're all laid out logically). All operations are identical, EXCEPT for Aperture's vault functionality, which can automatically back up all your adjustments and your master files with a "managed" library, but will only back up the adjustments (equivalent to a Lightroom catalog) if you use a "referenced" library (the latter is where you specify where the masters go on disk). Other than that, file location is completely abstracted.

Sorry if I'm jumping on you here, but there are many misconceptions about Aperture's file handling that have persisted and been incorrect since Aperture 1.5 shipped, which was back in 2006 I believe. 5 years later, and people still repeat incorrect information

rockingcpa · July 5, 2011

CatOne wrote: »

Sorry if I'm jumping on you here, but there are many misconceptions about Aperture's file handling that have persisted and been incorrect since Aperture 1.5 shipped, which was back in 2006 I believe. 5 years later, and people still repeat incorrect information

No problem. If I'm wrong about Aperture, then I'm wrong. However, this statement is incorrect. At least, in Lightroom 3.

With Lightroom, you basically have to do it all manually. Which is OK, but it's less flexible (if say you want to go from YYYY-MM-DD folder structure to something else).

If you drag a folder in Lightroom from one location to another, it DOES move it in the finder, as well. If you move it manually in the Finder, then you have to go to the folder IN LIGHTROOM, one level above where you moved it in the Finder, then right click and click on "Sychronize Folder..." Lightroom will recognize there have been changes in the folder structure or files have changed inside that folder and update the catalog to reflect those changes. It's best if you move them in LR and let LR move the files or folders in the Finder. I would assume it works the same on a PC running Windows.

I DID say above that after taking the 30 module, 13+ hour LR course at Lynda.com course, I feel like I know way more about Lightroom. I DO apologize if I have posted any inaccurate info about Aperture. Again, I used it for 3+ years, but did not put the effort into learning about it like I did about Lightroom. HOWEVER, I looked at the simple Aperture interface and I personally got the feeling it wasn't so complicated that I needed to take a course. This was probably a mistake. I truly believe it is a good idea to get some training, now matter what software solution you go with. I found LR more difficult at first and, after investing the time, I feel like I am proficient with a more powerful program.

I don't feel like you are bashing. You are passionate about your opinion and I feel the same way about almost everything Apple. I'm a CPA by day, so I'm forced to use a PC for basically 3 PC only programs. I don't think anyone could be a better judge about the platforms than someone that uses both every day. If I could dump my PC, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'm saying this so you understand I'm the last person to bash Apple. It is hard for ONE company to make the best program in every possible category. Aperture served me well for 3 years, but I feel Lightroom is the best program now that I want to take photography to the next level. I know there are "Pros" using Aperture and it's a great program, too. Also, I'm NOT a big fan of Adobe. I think their products are highly overpriced, but I think Lightroom AND Photoshop are THE best programs in their category.

My $.02. Again I apologize for any inaccuracies.

Aperture Vs. Lightroom?

What's your favorite Aperture or Lightroom? 33 votes

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