Aperture 2 or Cs4 Design Premium?

[Luke1robb]

I'm trying to decide between putting Cs4 Design Premium or Aperture 2, along with other programs that make up similar programs of Design Premium on a group of iMacs. What should I put on them? Is Aperture easier to use than Photoshop? Do they have different purposes? What has an easier learning curve?

Thanks for the help,
Luke

 

[robbieduncan]

Aperture and Photoshop are not really comparable. Aperture and Lightroom are competitors.

 

[odinsride]

I'm trying to decide between putting Cs4 Design Premium or Aperture 2, along with other programs that make up similar programs of Design Premium on a group of iMacs. What should I put on them? Is Aperture easier to use than Photoshop? Do they have different purposes? What has an easier learning curve?

Thanks for the help,
Luke

Aperture is for Photo Management and Workflow, and light touchups
Photoshop is for heavy photo/image editing and graphics design

Completely different products, both with pretty steep learning curves imo.

 

[kastenbrust]

Aperture and CS4 Suite have very different purposes. What are the iMacs for?

If its for photography work then i'd recommend Aperture

If its for any kind of Graphic Design / Website Design then you need CS4.

Are you the guy who's setting this up for his college? If so look into getting Multi License Educational Establishment discounts, sometimes you can get up to 50% off, and also with Microsoft i believe students can now get a contract to get any Microsoft software for free, but that might just apply to Europe.

If i were you i'd start of experimenting around with Gimp and some other free design apps before investing heavily for a college in CS4 if you've never even used it before. As the poster above me wrote, they're pretty steep learning curves for both CS4 and Aperture.

 

[Luke1robb]

Are you the guy who's setting this up for his college? If so look into getting Multi License Educational Establishment discounts, sometimes you can get up to 50% off, and also with Microsoft i believe students can now get a contract to get any Microsoft software for free, but that might just apply to Europe.

Yup, I'm the same guy. Thanks for all the input, I've done some pretty extensive research on the numbers so far, including getting CS4 Design Premium for $311 a license, etc, but I will def. look into the MS software deal. Do you know of a link?

Thanks again,
Luke

 

[Luke1robb]

Lightroom or Aperture?

Aperture and Photoshop are not really comparable. Aperture and Lightroom are competitors.

So then the question must be asked...

Aperture 2 or Lightroom 2?

Thanks again guys,
Luke

 

[kastenbrust]

So then the question must be asked...

Aperture 2 or Lightroom 2?

Thanks again guys,
Luke

Just get Adobe Creative Suite 4: Design Premium + Adobe Lightroom 2
as Lightroom 2 is technically part of the Photoshop family which is in CS4 Design Premium. If you ask around some resellers i bet you could get it thrown in for a large discount or even free.

I would recommend Aperture if you weren't getting the CS4 suite, but as you are you may as well go with Lightroom 2. Less learning, more integration

 

[Luke1robb]

Just get Adobe Creative Suite 4: Design Premium + Adobe Lightroom 2
as Lightroom 2 is technically part of the Photoshop family which is in CS4 Design Premium. If you ask around some resellers i bet you could get it thrown in for a large discount or even free.

I would recommend Aperture if you weren't getting the CS4 suite, but as you are you may as well go with Lightroom 2. Less learning, more integration

Thanks for the input. So you're saying get Cs4 Design Premium and then Lightroom 2 seperately, or try and get a discount on it?

Also, from the sounds of it, if there is no added discount I'll get through that deal, you are saying Aperture is the better way to go... right?

 

[kastenbrust]

Thanks for the input. So you're saying get Cs4 Design Premium and then Lightroom 2 seperately, or try and get a discount on it?

Also, from the sounds of it, if there is no added discount I'll get through that deal, you are saying Aperture is the better way to go... right?

No, im saying get CS4 Suite, and then try to get Lightroom for a discount.

Only get Aperture if you dont get the CS4 suite.

 

[Luke1robb]

No, im saying get CS4 Suite, and then try to get Lightroom for a discount.

Only get Aperture if you dont get the CS4 suite.

Which CS4, there's Web Premium, Design Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection. I realize that I'm probably confused, but could you send a link?

Also, it's important to note that the students who use these computers might not be using CS4 and the photo management software (LR or Aperture), but that they might only come to do photo management. With this in mind, is there one that you would lean towards? I realize the best way of figuring it out is to do a 30-day trial, but I'm trying to get a better idea from people who know better than me.

Thanks again,
Luke

 

[kastenbrust]

Which CS4, there's Web Premium, Design Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection. I realize that I'm probably confused, but could you send a link?

Also, it's important to note that the students who use these computers might not be using CS4 and the photo management software (LR or Aperture), but that they might only come to do photo management. With this in mind, is there one that you would lean towards? I realize the best way of figuring it out is to do a 30-day trial, but I'm trying to get a better idea from people who know better than me.

Thanks again,
Luke

As i said before CS4 Design Premium, You just need Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Fireworks really, possibly Illustrator but that depends what kind of Graphic Design your going to do. You really need to go on a quick graphic design course so you know what your getting into.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I'm not sure what type of solution you are looking for. Photoshop, and really all of the CS apps can be used in a "lab" style format, but lightroom is a little bit trickier. It works by having libraries and the images themselves stored seperately. I wish I could have a single container but it doesn't work like that.

But anyway, lightroom was designed to be an end to end workflow. If the users want to just seperate them according to type in seperate folders, that'll be done easier in the finder, but if they want to change metadata, give ratings, do touchups, and set a heirarchy within lightroom, than that is what it was designed for.

What I do, and what I suspect most people do, is shoot my images, send the images straight from my camera to lightroom, tag, rate, and weed out the baddies, bring them into photoshop (from lightroom) and have any adjustments sent back to the original file, then email/print/web/archive from lightroom.

BTW, if you talk to an adobe sales rep and explain exactly what you want to do they will put you in the right direction and hook you up with the educational sales guys.