Buy LR or Aperture now, or wait for Photos

How much do you want to do? You will need something, might iPhoto hold you over for the moment? It processes RAWs too. The question with Adobe is will LR 6 be subscription only, and does that suit?

I moved to a new computer recently and was pondering upgrading to LR 5. Ultimately I moved my copy of LR 4 and will stick with that until I have seen the new Apple photos. I can then decide if I want to subscribe to the lightroom/photoshop bundle which is pretty decent value if you want photoshop too https://creative.adobe.com/plans/photography

If money isn't an issue I'd go for the Lightroom/Photoshop bundle - it's such a solid set of tools, though I did love aperture back when I used it, apparently it is a little behind the times now.

SoonerChris said:

My new a6000 will be here tomorrow and I plan on shooting in both RAW and JPEG. I need something to post process the RAW files.

Should I buy LR or even Aperture now or just wait for the new OS X photos app?

FWIW, I plan on still using iPhoto for organization and LR or Aperture for editing.

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Buy LR and use it for organisation AND editing is my choice.

You can download the trial version for 30 days. Gives you time to decide.

I only have experience with Aperture, and I absolutely love it (mostly for the flexibility it gives when it comes to organizing your library, compared to how inflexible iPhoto is).

But since Aperture is officially "discontinued", it doesn't make any sense to me to buy it/learn it now.

I'm personally waiting until Photos comes out before I make any decisions on what my next platform will be. I don't expect Apple to hit a home run with the first release of it, but I'm hoping it continues the flexibility that Aperture has when it comes to organizing.

Buy the looks of it and Apple's latest trends, Photos will be a mess up on launch.

I simply can't trust Apple software anymore. I'd stick with a company who's business it is creating these products.

In addition, it's highly unethical for Apple to continue selling Aperture, given its discontinued status.

As for me, it's going to be tough. My year of Adobe CC is up in 2 weeks and I am leaving the Adobe garden. Luckily, I've bought Pixelmator for iPad and Mac, but I still need a way to handle file management. I'm working out a system using my old school folder based management system. Luckily, OS X now has tags.

We'll see. I've been using LR since version 3 and I use alot of little things I probably take for granted (ie embedding my copyright info in the file or renaming a file to a certain scheme or batch resizing photos for the web, etc).

I'll wait and see what LR6 brings in the spring and see if it remains a stand alone product.

Just buy Lightroom and get it out of the way.

Apple fanboy said:

Buy LR and use it for organisation AND editing is my choice.

You can download the trial version for 30 days. Gives you time to decide.

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I hadn't spotted the last line of the OPs post, yes, it makes no sense to use iPhoto for anything if you have Lightroom. It is needless complication.

I have LR5 and use it for both organisation and editing. Works very well for my needs.

if you go with LR, stick with your native raw format; do NOT convert the raw images to DNG.

MCAsan said:

if you go with LR, stick with your native raw format; do NOT convert the raw images to DNG.

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Curious. Why is that?

Using DNG is a needless step in your case. There are lots of issues there, but it is a conversion. Most of the folks I know that use DNG do so now because it is an open format, unlike proprietary RAW formats. And it can embed XMP. But I doubt that matters to you. If you don't need it, why do it?

Please do not use iPhoto. It can be tough getting your work out of there, and it just doesn't offer the options you'd need, especially for RAWs. You'll be using something different in the future anyway, and there's no point to using TWO organizers (i.e. iPhoto and Aperture or LR). It can really mess things up.

There are open source applications out there that can do great work on RAW files, and have organizers. Might try one of them (Lightzone, Darktable, RAW Therapee). Pretty much everyone but Apple offers demos; try some.

The Bad Guy said:

Curious. Why is that?

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I learned the hard way NOT to convert to DNG. Luckily I just lost a couple of months of photographs to the DNG myth. I was able to convert everything else back to RAW.

Aperture is dead, why buy it? Photo app? No one but the Apple Knights of the Round Table knows what it will be or do. If we are lucky, the photo app will just have one magic button that morphs any and all snapshots into works of art. It will usher in the Age of Photographic Enlightenment. Pictures of beauty and perfection will grace the internet and we all will soar on the wings of Angels.

But seriously, I would not count on anything from Apple. As another post said, the photo app will be a mess when it is released.

The Bad Guy said:

Curious. Why is that?

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Because you lose your RAW files and are locked into a proprietary file format that (for the most part) only Adobe supports. You don't want to mess with your originals. DNG really doesn't offer anything to improve your workflow so why mess with the originals.

HantaYo said:

I learned the hard way NOT to convert to DNG. Luckily I just lost a couple of months of photographs to the DNG myth. I was able to convert everything else back to RAW.

Aperture is dead, why buy it? Photo app? No one but the Apple Knights of the Round Table knows what it will be or do. If we are lucky, the photo app will just have one magic button that morphs any and all snapshots into works of art. It will usher in the Age of Photographic Enlightenment. Pictures of beauty and perfection will grace the internet and we all will soar on the wings of Angels.

But seriously, I would not count on anything from Apple. As another post said, the photo app will be a mess when it is released.

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You joke, but I believe the magic button is what a lot of people are looking for.

I wouldn't count on Photos being robust as Lightroom.

At this stage, the answer isn't easy, and I'd probably wait until Photos is released -- especially since you say that you'd want to use iPhoto for the organization. iPhoto uses the same RAW editor as Aperture, and so you have access to the same tools. Given that you seem to like iPhoto, Photos may be what you're looking for: full access to all the controls you have in Aperture while simpler controls regarding organization of photos. Also note that Photos does more in certain respects than Lightroom, because of the automated synching which is built-in (in fact, the whole app is built around that idea). And the database bit of Aperture and iPhoto has always been rock solid (no surprise, it's just a SQLite database just like Lightroom).

I would not buy Aperture, because it is EOL, and I would wait buying Lightroom until you've tried Photos. Moreover, keep in mind that Lightroom will eventually become subscription only, and from the looks of things, that may start with the next version which is expected to be released soon. (And even if I'm wrong about the timing, the writing is on the wall: Adobe wants to sell software as a subscription service to its customers.)

HantaYo said:

No one but the Apple Knights of the Round Table knows what it will be or do. If we are lucky, the photo app will just have one magic button that morphs any and all snapshots into works of art. It will usher in the Age of Photographic Enlightenment.

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Actually, we have seen demos where it is clear that you have full access to all the controls you get in Aperture. And we know that you can use Extensions as plug-ins, so the Pixelmator guys or any of the other plug-in manufacturers can write an extension which will just work with Photos (and any other app which allows for such Extensions).

I think you're in a strange predicament. If you buy LR 5 now, just plan on buying LR 6 in the next few months (March 2015).

I'm also in the same situation since my CC sub is over in 2 weeks. I'm not sure how long Adobe will let me keep using it after my sub is over, but I'll see how that'll work.

I sure as heck don't want to buy LR 5 now only to pay another $80 in March for it - I'm better of sticking with CC for a few months to see how Adobe will handle LR6, meaning if it's standalone or if they'll make it part of CC.

It's pretty obvious they want LR users to be on CC, since their LR Mobile app is useless without it.

At the end of the day, I still have Aperture and now I have Pixelmator. They may be my go to products for now. Aperture still works and will be for at least another year. If the next OS X version doesn't support Aperture, so be it. I'm just hoping Photos is up to par by the next OS X version.

CC is great, I admit. But for $120 a year, I don't use it that much. I don't live in LR. I don't have weird import and export schemes and collections of all sorts. I simply import, process, export the high resolution file and close it. I don't feel the need to look at my images every day nor reprocess them over and over again. I don't use it to upload to various social networks. $120 for the way I use LR is just too much.

@Razeus
Adobe's move toward a subscription model is a strong reason for me to wait, because I'd then be locked into Lightroom once I make the move, meaning that I'd probably have to shell out $120 every year.

I used Aperture almost exclusively for the last three years. With the announcement that Apple is going to discontinue Aperture I decided to move over to Lightroom and give it a try.

Initially I did not like Lightroom - it's not as intuitive as Aperture, and the file management system isn't anything like Aperture's.

However, now that I've got the hang of all the setting differences and how I want to manage my photos, I actually have found that I like it a lot better than Aperture. It's also quite a bit more powerful than Aperture; recovering shadows and highlights is far better in Lightroom.



One really disappointing thing with Lightroom is that it doesn't show where the focus points are, whereas Aperture has this setting. I found it is very useful to have this feature, as sometimes if focus miss I want to know exactly where the camera was looking and whether it was my error or the camera's.

Luckily someone has just made plug in for Lightroom to display the focus points. It's not as efficient as Aperture's setting, but it's still pretty damn good and removes one of my biggest complaints about using Lightroom.

Here's the link for the plug-in: http://www.lightroomfocuspointsplugin.com

SoonerChris said:

My new a6000 will be here tomorrow and I plan on shooting in both RAW and JPEG. I need something to post process the RAW files.

Should I buy LR or even Aperture now or just wait for the new OS X photos app?

FWIW, I plan on still using iPhoto for organization and LR or Aperture for editing.

Click to expand...

I did ask myself the same question few weeks ago; LR beta (open) is still not available so they are is at least few more months before its published. So what i would suggest is to get LR trial 30 days and then if you like it just go and but it. No one knows how good or bad Apple Photos are going to be when they are released.

iPhoto as an editor can tide you over for a while. For organization, I don't trust it not Apple. If something goes wrong in iPhoto its tough to rebuild. Not nearly as robust as Aperture and more tools in Aperture. Perhaps the later versions are better, I abandoned it after the second forced change by Apple. That's my second issue. Apple will continue to introduce new magic within its iOS devices. Some of which will impact photos and who knows how many more library or OS changes will be forced upon you. For me, with 5 Mac's in the family running various flavors of OSX, it was a pita. As someone else stated, I'm also starting to rid myself of Apple software.

As far as Lightroom goes, its solid but needs CPU to run smoothly. My main machines for photo editing are a 2.8 c2d, 6 gb ram iMac and an i7 1.7, 8 gb Air. Neither run LR remotely as smooth (GUI) as my default Aperture.

Don't ignore C1. Its a more Mac oriented interface than Adobe and shares many of the Apple terms that are used in both Aperture and iPhoto. I found it a very easy pickup but decided not to use it as auto masking is not enabled with my Fuji XTrans files.

I'm waiting to see what Photos looks like after 3rd party developers have had enough time to indicate support. I find with both Nikon and Fuji, I prefer the initial renders both Apple and C1 provide. Not saying it can't be done with LR but its more work.

For cataloging, Aperture is the star. Simple, fast, does it all. My 600 gb referenced library is solid as a rock.

C1 does not do integrated round trips to plugs like Aperture and LR does. I have yet to find any other DAM with a good round trip workflow to Nik, Topaz, DxO, Perfect Photo Suite, Pixelmator.....etc.

maflynn said:

Because you lose your RAW files and are locked into a proprietary file format that (for the most part) only Adobe supports. You don't want to mess with your originals. DNG really doesn't offer anything to improve your workflow so why mess with the originals.

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Use whichever is best for your workflow, but DNG is not proprietary, it is open source now and works just fine...