Aperature 3 or lightroom 3 on macbook 15 inch mid 2010

On my 2009 15" MBP I preferred Lightroom over Aperture for the reason you mention. Aperture seemed to lag a bit. However, I now do my editing on a 13" MBA Ultimate, and I've found it runs Aperture just as well as Lightroom. I prefer to use Aperture, so I've switched over now that the performance isn't an issue. I don't know how this will translate on your machine. Can you still get a free trial of Aperture to try it out? I would do this before deciding.

i haven't used A3, but LR3 is amazing on my mid 2010 (specs below)- ran really good even when I only had the 4GB of RAM.

I've used both extensively and just recently made the permanent switch to Aperture. Its less resource intensive than LR3 and I like the layout of Aperture better after I got used to it and learned the shortcut keys.

chrono1081 said:

I've used both extensively and just recently made the permanent switch to Aperture. Its less resource intensive than LR3 and I like the layout of Aperture better after I got used to it and learned the shortcut keys.

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Really, I think its the opposite. I've found Aperture to be more sluggish and while the UI is definitely personal preference. There's a lot of threads at dpreview about aperture's performance woes and folks recommending LR.

I'm running LR on a core i7 and so both Aperture and LR's performance is fine. on my laptop (2010 13" MBP) I have to give nod to LR for performance.

Personally, I go back and forth on which one works best. I've more or less rested on LR because I think the edit module performs a bit better for me and to be honest I like how ACR is over apple's RAW processing. Now I know there's been plenty of comparative reviews over Aperture's RAW and ACR handling and those reviews have stated there's virtually no difference but for me I like adobe's. Its just me 😉

shaun319 said:

Just wanted to asked which program will run better on a mid 2010 macbook pro 15 inch with 4 gb of ram and i5 2.4 Ghz. I have heard that lightroom might be better and that aperture is a resource hog. Just wanted to confirm and hear what you all think.

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I believe you can still get a 30-day trial of both apps for free, before you have to commit - why not try them both out and see which works better for you?

http://www.adobe.com/go/trylightroom

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

Make backups of your images before you import them, so you don't accidentally lock yourself into needing one or the other, though!

Mark

In my experience, Aperture and Lightroom are slow when it comes to different things. Lightroom often appears quicker, but when I tried it last time, it would often take a long time until the pixelated preview is replaced by a rendered version of the image when zooming in and using the loupe. Aperture renders everything immediately -- which shows more readily.

In the end, it's a matter of math: my D80 RAW files measure about 8~10 MB/image while the D7000 produces ~19 MB RAW files. It's not uncommon for me to have about 50-100 images per project. That's 500~2000 MB of data per project which needs to be stored and processed. Just reading this much data with modern harddrives (especially on notebooks) takes quite a while. This means, Apple and Adobe have to think hard how to conceal this load and processing time.

Instead of giving you a recommendation on a specific app, I suggest you try both apps. The UI philosophies are very different. Personally, I find Adobe's decision to structure Lightroom in modules very constricting and against my grain. Aperture's more free flowing UI feels a lot more natural. Plus, I very much prefer Aperture's file management.

YMMV.

I recently switched to LR3 (Provided nothing disastrous happens before the 30 day trial is up).

Pros of Aperture 3:
-Great UI
-Some more "fun" features, like faces and all that
-Fast and Easy to upload images
-Love the plugin interfaces and functionality

Cons of Aperture 3
-In my experience doing pro work with large images, it would crash / need force closed a couple times an hour, no joke.
-Took FOREVER exporting images, even web-sized watermarked


Pros of Lightroom 3:
-Quick. Very quick.
-Great Noise reduction, great processing in general
-LENS PROFILES! This was what pushed me over the edge, aside from the incessant crashing of A3. I have already saved hours after only one wedding by using automatic profiles to correct distortion on my UWA shots.
-Water mark and export options are 10x better for my needs.

Cons of Lightroom 3:
-UI is disastrous. Still fumbling around a week later.
-UI is THAT disastrous.
-UI
-UI

😉