Would Lightroom or Aperature help?

[ricciardella]

As a parent, I shoot a lot of high school and college swim meets. I then post the photos to a web site for all parents to enjoy.

Natatoriums are not well lit, so I am always shooting at ISO 1600 or 3200, f/2.8, custom white balance on a Canon 30D with a 70-200 zoom. I take a lot of shots using the cameras high speed drive mode – 5 fps, and have been shooting in JPG.

I have been importing into iPhoto and editing with Photoshop Elements 6 on an iMac. I do post processing on most of the photos I want to post to the website – levels, brightness, saturation, removing any color tint, editing shadows and highlights. I then sharpen and use Noise Ninja to remove noise.

What advantages would Lightroom or Aperature provide to this process?

[jessica.]

To me and for me both applications are nothing more than workflow assistants. I believe when i tried both Aperture and LR Aperture handled my files better and the output from RAW to JPEG was better. It was not best though, that's important to know. With that, I went with the application that didn't edit my originals. In the beginning with LR I felt it would be more destructive to my originals. Now, this is when LR was still in beta and free. I can't comment on what happened after it was publicly released for sale.

I think your workflow is fine but I've heard if you shoot a lot iPhoto can be limiting and with that, you may benefit from a workflow application such as LR or Aperture.

In Aperture I will do light editing of my raws but for dust removal and the likes I will toss it into Photoshop.