Lightroom to Aperture - anyone do it?

I use them both. Their workflow is different. LR Print Module is better. Just go with the one you like best. Because you are the only one that knows your own workflow.

i have gone form aperture to lightroom.

i feel lightroom gives me a better workflow, and the straight round tripping to Photoshop is awesome. that and lightroom runs like a dream on my 13inch mbp(to be quite honest no apple software runs well on my mbp).

that being said aperture offers some nice advantages, such as the ability to "paint" on filters and adjustments, and the fact that its apple software.

imho: if you like lightroom don't switch, its a huge pain to go from one to the other. the databases are incompatible and the adjustments don't transfer at all. by all means try aperture, but think twice before transferring if you rely on LR for photo editing/management.

I've gone from Aperture to Lightroom and then back to Aperture. For some reason, Lightroom editing just didn't click with me as well as Aperture's does.

I've gone from LR to Aperture, then back to LR then back to Aperture.

Mainly because of the necessities of the jobs I work (e.g. some clients want me to process in LR only, others in Aperture. Some want me to just hand them the project files right from LR or Aperture.)

Now, the biggest reason why I will forever and a day just Aperture primarily and LR as a secondary editor is be Aperture is just better at keeping my images organized and doesn't lock me into modules like LR does. Plus, there are times I need to make a proof book and I can do it much faster in Aperture.

Overall, I still use both apps depending on what I am shooting, and still do most of my post in Photoshop.

Digital Skunk said:

I've gone from LR to Aperture, then back to LR then back to Aperture.

Mainly because of the necessities of the jobs I work (e.g. some clients want me to process in LR only, others in Aperture. Some want me to just hand them the project files right from LR or Aperture.)

Now, the biggest reason why I will forever and a day just Aperture primarily and LR as a secondary editor is be Aperture is just better at keeping my images organized and doesn't lock me into modules like LR does. Plus, there are times I need to make a proof book and I can do it much faster in Aperture.

Overall, I still use both apps depending on what I am shooting, and still do most of my post in Photoshop.

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Just did the same thing as you. I am trying both. I wish Aperture would "round trip" with Photoshop edits. Maybe in the next upgrade. I am running both from an SSD with the libs on a Thunderbolt drive. Pretty responsive.

sapporobaby said:

Just did the same thing as you. I am trying both. I wish Aperture would "round trip" with Photoshop edits. Maybe in the next upgrade. I am running both from an SSD with the libs on a Thunderbolt drive. Pretty responsive.

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Aperture does round trip with Photoshop edits just fine. What neither of them do is round trip with adjustment layered PSD files . . . . so I've heard.

I can't wait to get my new setup like that . . . with a boot SSD and a TBolt drive as scratch. Which drive are you using?

maflynn said:

All this talk about Lightroom 4 and hope of Aperture 4 has got me thinking

Has anyone migrated from Lightroom to Aperture? If so why and are you still content with the migration.

I have both on my computer and each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

It would be nice to hear about from the perspective of someone going to AP fro LR

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I remember we discussed this in another thread, and I related my story about being so mad with Adobe that I now use Aperture. Lighroom is (and I think we both agreed at the time) a better product in many way's but Aperture is perfectly useable albeit an upgrade would be nice.

For the money...I think Aperture is around £60 here in the UK, It's a damn good product, but if you are used to Lightroom it takes a little learning to get the best from it.

If I was prepared to pay the vast amount of money Adobe want for me to change back then in all honesty I probably would. It was a bit of a wrench at first, but I've developed my own workflow practices and am now happy with Aperture despite some of it's limitations.


Adobe take custom for granted because they are the industry standard and have been for so long I forget, but the switch can be made.

Thinking of leaving Adobe?

Digital Skunk said:

Aperture does round trip with Photoshop edits just fine. What neither of them do is round trip with adjustment layered PSD files . . . . so I've heard.

I can't wait to get my new setup like that . . . with a boot SSD and a TBolt drive as scratch. Which drive are you using?

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Using the Lacie. Actually I have two SSD's in my MBP. One boot and the second for data and stuff to include my iTunes lib. I realised that I did not need to carry around my entire Aperture library (95 gigs) with me at all times. I mainly work from home, thus the LaCie.

Yes you are correct about the round trip but I thought that LR would bring back in the layers.

maflynn said:

No, its more out curiosity. There's a number of threads about people going to LightRoom but I've not really seen too much discussions around people going to Aperture so I started this thread

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My beef with Adobe (and I'm a stubborn guy ) forced me into finding another way, now that my systems are all setup for Aperture I don't feel the need to swap back again. I'd rather spend the money I save on cameras etc. to enhance the end product.

Macman45 said:

I've developed my own workflow practices and am now happy with Aperture despite some of it's limitations.

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maflynn said:

No, its more out curiosity. There's a number of threads about people going to LightRoom but I've not really seen too much discussions around people going to Aperture so I started this thread

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I think that's the case Macman, for me it was all about my workflow. At the time I used Bridge personally and Photo Mechanic at the newspaper to do much of my organization, archiving and backup work and went into Photoshop to process.

LR and AP gave many users the options to perform much of those tasks in one app, instead two or even three (if you didn't like the way PS adjusted RAW or handled noise).

For me, I still wanted to manage my files from the Finder, and still wanted to use PS to process, so I was looking for a manager/archiver. It will ultimately come down to the user's workflow preferences.

I was thinking about that LaCie too. The Pegasus R4 and R6 are nice, but I don't want to have to pay THAT much for an enclosure simply because it has TBolt, but wouldn't mind having a drive of some kind to dip into that speed benefit.

maflynn said:

All this talk about Lightroom 4 and hope of Aperture 4 has got me thinking

Has anyone migrated from Lightroom to Aperture? If so why and are you still content with the migration.

I have both on my computer and each has their own strengths and weaknesses.

It would be nice to hear about from the perspective of someone going to AP fro LR

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I used Lightroom since Beta up until the current version, but started switching (and recently finished) everything to Aperture. I prefer Apertures workflow to Lightrooms and its much easier to back up an Aperture library vs that mess that Lightroom has.

I've been using both in parallel to compare workflow efficiency for my daily use (hobby, not business). I've been using Lightroom since Version 2.

This is what I've found so far that sticks out.

Aperture Plus:
- Workflow is more simple, you can edit on the fly (no module switching)
- More intuitive interface (example: Lightroom oddly places import button exactly opposite where you would expect it to be - still messes me up). I was more quickly able to get satisfactory color/exposure corrections.
- Better Facebook integration (I said I'm a hobbyist, right?)

Lightroom Plus:
- Cross platform. The library will work on PC or Mac.
- Adobe lens profiles. Aperture can use plugins like PTLens, but it exports a TIFF to do the correction. Lightroom doesn't export, which results in a smaller library.

I will say, after testing Lightroom 4, I am very impressed with the adjustments for exposure.

I think I just talked myself into picking LR.

Now, if they will get content aware fill in these products, i could drop photoshop.

I too think Aperture is easier to work with. I used Photoshop Elements, but found Lightroom to be clunky and un Photoshop or even Mac like.

Somebody said Apple apps didn't run well on Mac notebooks. I use a lot of them, including Aperture, and they run superbly on my 2010 (Core Duo 2) Mac Book Air as does Photoshop.

Aperture is good for organization and workflow but is subpar for RAW conversion, at least Nikon RAW. It is so mediocre that when I use Aperture, I end up converting the Nikon RAW files to .tiff files converted from Capture NX2. I can handle the additional size of the .tiff files for now as I have an older Nikon camera with smaller file sizes, but when I upgrade to a newer camera with much higher pixel count, converting to .tiff will not be practical.

msh said:

Aperture is good for organization and workflow but is subpar for RAW conversion, at least Nikon RAW. It is so mediocre that when I use Aperture, I end up converting the Nikon RAW files to .tiff files converted from Capture NX2. I can handle the additional size of the .tiff files for now as I have an older Nikon camera with smaller file sizes, but when I upgrade to a newer camera with much higher pixel count, converting to .tiff will not be practical.

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I have the same experience with my high ISO RAW files. If I have a high ISO file that I really need to clear some noise from, I export the master file and use Adobe Camera RAW. I then import the PSD back to Aperture and stack w/the original master. Better NR in Aperture would very useful.

maflynn said:

I really, I had not heard or noticed that. I do prefer ACR, and Lightroom's noise handling is superior to AP's.

In comparing both AP and LR for my D70s, and V1, I'm not noticing a huge difference, at least not initially. I haven't done an indepth comparison between the two for a while.

I do say, I like aperture's asset management abilities over LR's and the interface has some advantages but for RAW decoding from the reviews I read back when deciding the consensus was that apple's RAW decoding wasn't bad.

I tried using NX2, but found it awkward in my workflow and saving the edited image as a TIFF was just not going to work for me. The increased file size is just too much

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Would it be possible to attach or link a couple of cropped examples of how Aperture handles NEF files vs. LR?

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Here are some samples. The image on the left is Aperture raw conversion; the one on the right is the NX2 concersion to .tiff and imported into Aperture. These have the same Aperture auto enhance settings. Notice blue sky. The Aperture raw conversion is too dark and the blue is not accurate (in my opinion).

msh said:

Here are some samples. The image on the left is Aperture raw conversion; the one on the right is the NX2 concersion to .tiff and imported into Aperture. These have the same Aperture auto enhance settings. Notice blue sky. The Aperture raw conversion is too dark and the blue is not accurate (in my opinion).

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It's not just the sky color that is different. All the colors are a bit different.

Bear said:

It's not just the sky color that is different. All the colors are a bit different.

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I don't think "different" but maybe darker. The image on the left is darker overall, but without processing the original RAW files it would be hard to say, but that's just my opinion.

I tired to switch to Aperture from Lightroom, but i just couldn't. The Aperture interface is backwards IMO, doesn't make any sense, neither does the file storage.

Lightroom works so i use it and i'm happy