Somewhat like iPhoto catalogs photos only with better editing features and RAW support? I never liked iPhoto's method of cataloging. I'd rather just keep photos in folders by date and description. I suppose this is not the place to be asking questions. I need to do some research. Have heard of Aperture and supposed it was kind of like a competitor to Photoshop, which I use nearly every day.
Aperture lets you have "unmanaged" (ie, externally managed) photos as well as "managed" (ie, copied in to its catalogue package) photos. I personally prefer the fully-managed way of life as it's just less hassle, but I know many people moan about not being able to find their pictures in Finder. That having been said, you'll find when using Aperture that if you make changes to the image in Aperture that the original file will remain unchanged. This is by design (the change list is stored separately from the file so you can back up to start at any time without losing anything). In contrast, Lightroom, I believe, will store the changelist also in a separate file, but that file (XSD sidecar) either lives next to the original file or can be exported alongside it (not sure which). So that might be an advantage for Lightroom if you rely on Finder access to your photos.
iPhoto versus Aperture is fairly straightforward. If I were to sum it up, Aperture is for the folks who place a significant value on their pictures (monetary or otherwise), who have a habit of taking a large number of pictures, and who are willing to invest the time to learn a tool which will allow them to spend much less time per picture to achieve significantly enhanced pictures. This isn't for the teenager who captures snaps on their cell phone and emails them to her friends, or for the grandmother who just wants a place to put all her grandkids' photos. One could argue, though, that it's definitely a tool for the non-professional parent who wants to capture treasured moments and make stunning photographs as well as the obviously targeted professional photographer.
Aperture adds:
1. Hierarchal keywords. This is a huge benefit. Unfortunately my workflow doesn't allow their use, but iPhoto's flat keyword list is really limiting IMHO.
2. Non-destructive / non-linear editing. Aperture starts with the original file (JPEG or RAW, although seriously if you're using a tool like Aperture why would you be using JPEG?) and adds a "change list" to it. So, you might do a little cropping, some sharpening, some levels adjustments, and tweak the white balance, then look at it and say you want the same thing done but without the sharpening. In a standard (Photoshop) workflow you might have saved copies between each step, but even so if sharpening was the second thing you did you'll have to go back to the cropped copy then re-apply the levels and white balance adjustments. iPhoto doesn't even allow for the intermediate copies unless you force it to by duplicating the image, so you're always going back to the "start".
3. No compression between edit steps. If you do three different things to a picture in iPhoto, you have to do all three at the same time, starting from the original image, or you start getting multiple compression/decompression cycles degrading the quality of the picture. You can't, for instance, take one pass of color correcting all your pictures, then a second pass of brightening, then a third pass of cropping the best ones. You'll end up JPEG-cycling three times. Even starting from RAW in iPhoto 6, you'll still end up writing the mods out to JPEG after the first change and then you're back in the multiple-compression spiral of image quality death.
4. Highly optimized keyboard-based workflow. Once I started using the shortcut keys in Aperture I was able to do even the simple iPhoto-style edits an order of magnitude faster than I could do them in iPhoto.
5. Significantly enhanced tools. This isn't Photoshop by far, and doesn't really do anything at a pixel level (red-eye adjustments are placed, as are heal and clone instructions, but pretty much everything else acts on the image as a whole). Still, relative to the iPhoto tools you have a
huge amount of additional control and options to bring to bear.
6. Vault management. This helps you keep your images in multiple places much more effectively than the iPhoto/Backup combo.
7. Stacking and comparison tools to manage "batch" shots. I operate at least half the time with my camera on burst mode, and will almost always have three or four pictures that are 90% identical, except for the expression on someone's face or the particular way a shadow fell. Aperture will auto-stack these and let me pick the winner of the stack (or in some cases multiple winners of the stack) with its side-by-side comparisons.
I'm sure there's more, but those are the major bits that come to mind. Note, however, that you do sacrifice some niceties with Aperture:
1. Slideshow options are significantly less family-friendly.
2. No Bonjour sharing of photos, or auto iWeb posting, or whatever the kids are doing these days. I really hate that I don't have Bonjour sharing, though; this is something I was using constantly with iPhoto!
3. Significantly higher machine spec requirements for Aperture versus iPhoto. On the other hand, if you're already running up against library-size limits with iPhoto then Aperture might actually be faster for you (it was for me).
My workflow:
1. Capture in RAW wherever possible. My camera captures RAW, but my wife's and kids' do not.
2. Import into Aperture for culling and finishing. "Finishing" might in rare cases involve opening in Photoshop, but that's extremely rare (about one in thousand finished pictures).
3. Delete the real downers from Aperture. These are the ones I can see no way of ever wanting to see again, like the backside of a thumb or the time the shutter released while walking, yielding a blurred shot of the forest floor.
4. Import only the best of the remaining into iPhoto. Note that rankings (stars) and keywords don't make it over in this step, which I find stupid and aggravating, but such is life.
5. Rank, keyword, etc, from iPhoto.
Any time I want a different take on a picture, or want to print it, I go back to Aperture. I find my rate of iPhoto growth is about 1/50th what it used to be, plus I'm not faced with forever losing the other 49 pictures in order to get there.
