the big advantage of lightroom over photoshop or elements is the work flow, you can bulk correct and edit, you see all your photos in a preview, it also helps manage shoots.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Adobe Releases Photoshop Lightroom 4, Slashes Price in Half to $149
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
the big advantage of lightroom over photoshop or elements is the work flow, you can bulk correct and edit, you see all your photos in a preview, it also helps manage shoots.
Price is the new feature
@iRCL -- I've not seen the same trouble with Aperture you have experienced.
I've used it constantly on two generations of MBP, none recent, a G5 MP, and now a 2009 MP.
I have found the Aperture upgrades to solve problems in speed, and add great features.
Also, Aperture photo sharing is pretty darn simple for me. Your milage may vary...
@convergent I don't bill for my photography (haven't since days of film) so can't say I've integrated anything that kind of workflow. I have used Aperture for web work, managing galleries for publication, output for web, sharing to FB and more ... it's nice. But I hear you on LR and know there are a lot of devotees. For now I'm a happy Aperture customer.
W/re to Photoshop and Illustrator pricing.
I have used Photoshop since 1.0 (Digital Darkroom before that!), and Illustrator since v88. I dropped my Illustrator upgrades because the application became bloated, slow, buggy, and simply confusing with features I didn't care for. I may need to upgrade so I can use some old files I care about.
I have CS4 for Photoshop and it suffices. I am a big fan of Pixelmator too.
If Adobe were to ease pricing, stop adding features for features sake, remove the myriad ******** versions, and just ship a lean version of Illustrator and Photoshop it'd be a no-brainer.
@iRCL -- I've not seen the same trouble with Aperture you have experienced.
I've used it constantly on two generations of MBP, none recent, a G5 MP, and now a 2009 MP.
I have found the Aperture upgrades to solve problems in speed, and add great features.
Also, Aperture photo sharing is pretty darn simple for me. Your milage may vary...
@convergent I don't bill for my photography (haven't since days of film) so can't say I've integrated anything that kind of workflow. I have used Aperture for web work, managing galleries for publication, output for web, sharing to FB and more ... it's nice. But I hear you on LR and know there are a lot of devotees. For now I'm a happy Aperture customer.
W/re to Photoshop and Illustrator pricing.
I have used Photoshop since 1.0 (Digital Darkroom before that!), and Illustrator since v88. I dropped my Illustrator upgrades because the application became bloated, slow, buggy, and simply confusing with features I didn't care for. I may need to upgrade so I can use some old files I care about.
I have CS4 for Photoshop and it suffices. I am a big fan of Pixelmator too.
If Adobe were to ease pricing, stop adding features for features sake, remove the myriad ******** versions, and just ship a lean version of Illustrator and Photoshop it'd be a no-brainer.
May check out the demo but i'll probably stick with aperture. Looking forward to aperture 4 if they ever get around to releasing it.
As far as an iPad aperture app is concerned i'd prefer to just have one that will allow me to import pictures via the camera connection kit and then add all the ratings, metadata etc i would normally do to select images. Then when i get home i can import all that information as well as the photos into the desktop aperture ready for the heavy work.
Would also allow a nice way to have client input in the selection process for the times you are working with an awkward client.
As far as an iPad aperture app is concerned i'd prefer to just have one that will allow me to import pictures via the camera connection kit and then add all the ratings, metadata etc i would normally do to select images. Then when i get home i can import all that information as well as the photos into the desktop aperture ready for the heavy work.
Would also allow a nice way to have client input in the selection process for the times you are working with an awkward client.
I've been with Aperture since 1.0 and plan to continue for now. There have been issues relating to performance but they seem to have been addressed. Nonetheless, Apple needs to bump up the Aperture development team. It's a significant industry to be in right now and Apple is losing to Adobe.
Aperture 4 + an iOS companion app needs to be released this year or any remaining Aperture loyalists like myself will begin to switch over.
Apple's secrecy works for the consumer market but pro's need to be able to plan ahead. Final Cut and Aperture teams need to be more upfront about their software release schedule.
Aperture 4 + an iOS companion app needs to be released this year or any remaining Aperture loyalists like myself will begin to switch over.
Apple's secrecy works for the consumer market but pro's need to be able to plan ahead. Final Cut and Aperture teams need to be more upfront about their software release schedule.
Last edited:
Seriously? These are not products for the masses. Especially Illustrator. And if you want Photoshop functionality, get the consumer version. It does 90% of what of a Pro would need except 3D, Paths, and CMYK.
Everybody complaining. Geez, After Effects ALONE used to cost $3400 for the Production Bundle in the late 90s. Now it's $1000. Many Plug-Ins cost less than that. These are tools for people that use them to make money. If you make money with these tools, the cost is insignificant.
I would have jumped all over this a year ago when I went into my Aperture vs. Lightroom decision, but I went with Aperture and I'm not looking back. Aperture has been amazing for me. All the reviews about bugs scared me, but knock on wood I haven't had any problems, and just made a beautiful wedding album for a friend and couldn't believe how easy the process was.
I think the syntax in the article's sentence was a bit mangled and unclear;
Generally there is no upgrade path for any education/academic editions.
There is education pricing and then there is upgrade pricing.
If you want to upgrade your education edition...you buy the new version. But unless you are a student or faculty at University of Forever, you will eventually become ineligible for the academic/education version and will have to buy the "real" one. [Note: Education products are not supposed to be used for commercial (make money) type of work]
Upgrade pricing only applies to owners of the commercial, non-education edition.
The performance difference was very start in Aperture 1.0 vs Lightroom 1.0, but honestly I haven't seen any noticable performance difference with more recent versions of Aperture and Lightroom.
For me, the modality of Lightroom was the killer that pushed me back to the (then-slow) Aperture. The modalitity has been somewhat alleviated in more recent versions, but Lightroom still has a quite obvious "This Is How You Will Work" workflow which works far better than the way I actually want to work (whereas in Aperture the way I actually want to work is just as easy to do as the Lightroom Canonical Workflow is in Lightroom).
IMHO, the remaining clear advantage for Lightroom is the integration with Photoshop. If you have Photoshop and feel the need to send some reasonable number of your photos through that tool, Lightroom provides a better workflow than Aperture. I personally only use Photoshop (Elements, because I'd much rather spend the $800/year on lenses than on Photoshop CS) rarely, so Apertures export/import hoops don't end up bothering me very often. But, I can definitely see someone doing that every day would not want to suffer through Aperture's workflow.
The downsides: severe favoring of a Canonical Workflow, price, Adobe-isms, etc.
----------
Well, "great" is a bit of a stretch, and "reasonably" is still well above the better-featured competitors. But, it's something to consider, along with Pixelmator, Acorn, etc. IMHO, it reeks of "My First Photo Editor" way too much; I feel like I need to lower my IQ by 30 points when the PSE icon starts bouncing in the dock.
Photoshop (Elements or CS) is a destructive editor. If you go into Photoshop and change the sky purple and save it, the sky is purple. Granted, PSD files can use layers to keep things from being destructive and can store an edit history so you cn go back in the sequence, but at heart it's a destructive editor with "oops"-recovery features bolted on.
Lightroom (as Aperture) is a non-destructive editor. If you go into Lightroom and apply a filter to make the sky purple, you can always go back and remove that filter or adjust the filter to make the sky green, whatever. While you can take the current version and send it over to Photoshop etc for pixel-by-pixel editing, at heart Lightroom works as a "cookbook" where you create a recipe and see the results live.
As far as when they are used, generally speaking Lightroom/Aperture replace what a traditional photographer would do in a dark room, tweaking exposure and color image-wide and with masks, etc. Photoshop is more along the lines of "creating" information in the image (such as removing power lines and creating the sky that would have been there). The tools of each can sometimes be used to accomplish the tasks of the other, but if you have both then you're in a more efficient position.
If you decide you want a destructive editor, I'd encourage looking at one of the non-Adobe products rather than Photoshop Elements. Pixelmator and Acorn are the two main competitors out there; I've moved almost completely over to Pixelmator these days. The advantages of going non-Adobe are (1) price/upgrade strategy, (2) less retardation of interface, and (3) performance.
And, yes, full-on pros who use Photoshop will generally also use Lightroom or Aperture for the whole-image development tasks.
Had Aperture for about 2 years now and I'm hoping for a radically new version. My (and clearly a lot of other people's) experience of running version 3 has been painful, and was only remotely stable for me at 3.2 . It is a monumentally unstable resource hog. It may have a better general UI and workflow than LR, but that's about it.
I've played with the LR 4 beta for a couple of months now and it's amazing. Its just better at editing photographs. Its brush and gradient level controls are simply way more powerful than Aperture, noise reduction and exposure being key examples. Aperture simply can't match it.
Having said that, I'd rather Apple get their ar*e in gear and give it the update it needs, than migrate my library into Adobeness on my Mac. But if Aperture 4 takes to long to appear (or just sucks), I might have to. Especially at that price.
Probably wouldn't be alone either. Frankly, a combination of PSE 10 and LR4 represents a ton of power for the price now.
Haha that sounds like an ad. But at least Adobe are having a real go in this space. Apple need to share their plans.
I've played with the LR 4 beta for a couple of months now and it's amazing. Its just better at editing photographs. Its brush and gradient level controls are simply way more powerful than Aperture, noise reduction and exposure being key examples. Aperture simply can't match it.
Having said that, I'd rather Apple get their ar*e in gear and give it the update it needs, than migrate my library into Adobeness on my Mac. But if Aperture 4 takes to long to appear (or just sucks), I might have to. Especially at that price.
Probably wouldn't be alone either. Frankly, a combination of PSE 10 and LR4 represents a ton of power for the price now.
Haha that sounds like an ad. But at least Adobe are having a real go in this space. Apple need to share their plans.
Just wanted to thank you for your posts. I’m an old school Photoshop user, let my license lapse (so full priced purchase), got behind several versions, and recently migrated over to a Mac.
I’m not a designer or pro photographer, but a developer that occasionally need a decent image editing app for icons, logos, screen UI elements (and an avid am photographer that needs a little photo tweaking).
I still have my ancient Winders© Photoshop available in a VM, but I’d like something native OSX. In a pinch I snagged Seashore which is a decent freebie, but I’m still looking for something a little more stout. Now giving some serious consideration to Acorn or Pixelmator.
What machine were you using? Aperture hadn't had that issue since Ver1. Aperture 2 addressed a plethora of issues, and was updated and successfully squashed bugs more often than FCP or Logic.
The biggest bottleneck may be your HDD, and your image library. I know that any library larger than 100GBs gave me issues on my Intel systems, but referencing the images fixed that issue. I've been referencing my images ever since.
True. I have used the beta for many weeks and LR4 can indeed make an ordinary photograph stand out from the crowd.
The UK price includes VAT whereas the US price doesn't include sales tax. It's actually cheaper in the UK (£86.57 before tax = $136.24)
Lightroom has an attractive exotic woman on it while Aperture has an unattractive part of a camera on it.
Aperture is clearly an inferior product.
Aperture is clearly an inferior product.
I'm all over this. LR gets better with each release, I use PS less each time. I can't imagine Aperture could ever catch up, adequate as it may be for some folks.
This is wrong on both accounts.
You CAN upgrade from a Student and Teacher Edition product to the standard version for the regular upgrade price. There is no upgrade pricing from one Student and Teacher Edition to the next. Upgrade pricing only applies when going from Student and Teacher Edition to the non-academic version. (Source: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4104482 )
ALL Adobe Student and Teacher Editions are legal for commercial use. Only pre-CS3 *MACROMEDIA* products were ever ineligible for commercial use. ( http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/25f26dd.html#main_Can I use STE commercially)
Easy $80 spent.
And for the record... nobody will ever convince me that LR is actually an Adobe product. It's just too good.
And for the record... nobody will ever convince me that LR is actually an Adobe product. It's just too good.
I'm not sure that I can agree here. What's the difference?
In Aperture you assign an "external editor" (they'd be smart to eventually let you assign more than ONE, but I digress.) Right-click the image, choose "Edit With", select your image editor—Photoshop. A new PSD file is created with the same name as the Master, right beside the Master in the Finder. Opens in PS, edit, save, close. This file appears in Aperture now too.
It's basically the same in LR. Set up external editor, right-click, choose "Edit In" select Photoshop, etc.
I've been using Aperture for a few years, both personally & professionally. Over the past 6 months have been bringing LR into the arsenal. But what am I missing here? To me the process of editing in Photoshop from inside Aperture or from Lightroom seems pretty much identical. I just don't see this massive breach in the getting-to-Photoshop "workflow" between the two apps.
Aperture is a Mac App Store App - you can run it on all of your authenticated computers.
Is there an easy way to move from Aperture to Lightroom? Including events and so on? I have about 40000 pictures in Aperture and if I could move easy I would think about doing it.