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Aperture vs iPhoto?

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BruiserB

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 9, 2008
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With all the excitement around the $79 price of Aperture on the new mac app store, I'm thinking about getting it, but wondering if I can then ditch iPhoto?

I looked at Apple's website about Aperture and see that it seems to be iPhoto+ with all the features of iPhoto plus more. But I'm wondering about the integration of it with iOS devices, etc. If I move everything to Aperture, will I still be able to use photos in my mac's screensaver, or on my Apple TV, or sync to my iPhone....all of these seem to tie to iPhoto, but if you install Aperture, do they then work with it?
 
BruiserB said:
With all the excitement around the $79 price of Aperture on the new mac app store, I'm thinking about getting it, but wondering if I can then ditch iPhoto?
Click to expand...

I use Aperture but not iPhoto, so I don't know if I'm missing anything that iPhoto has that Aperture doesn't, but:

BruiserB said:
If I move everything to Aperture, will I still be able to use photos in my mac's screensaver
Click to expand...

Yep

BruiserB said:
or on my Apple TV,
Click to expand...

Yep.

BruiserB said:
or sync to my iPhone
Click to expand...

Yep

BruiserB said:
....all of these seem to tie to iPhoto, but if you install Aperture, do they then work with it?
Click to expand...

Yep. I do all of these things (my Apple TV is the new one, not the original)
 
Cool! I may be just about to make my first mac app store purchase!

Really cool that it uses your iTunes payment account! I bought some iTunes prepaid cards from Best Buy just before the holidays at 20% off! :)
 
I bought Aperture last year after using iPhoto for years. Enormous difference. nIn fact, for most daily edits and minor tweaks, I find Aperture can compete with Photoshop.
 
BruiserB said:
Cool! I may be just about to make my first mac app store purchase!
Click to expand...
Cool, I think you're going to like it.

When I moved from iPhoto to Aperture, there was definitely a learning curve, and it was a little frustrating at times. Now, I love love love Aperture and would never consider going back to iPhoto. :)

I don't know if you already saw this, but Apple has a bunch of Aperture video tutorials. Definitely a great resource if you need some clarification on how things work. :)

http://www.apple.com/aperture/how-to/
 
rKunda said:
I bought Aperture last year after using iPhoto for years. Enormous difference. nIn fact, for most daily edits and minor tweaks, I find Aperture can compete with Photoshop.
Click to expand...

For most daily edits and minor tweaks, I'd say Aperture (or LR) now *beats* PS. No separate file-based versioning to worry about, etc. Adjustments are easier, overall workflow is so much faster. And DAM.

Now, just round-trip from Aperture to PS and back only when needed. Which, actually, I haven't really needed to do for any individual exposure since Aperture 3 came out.
 
Just got Aperture...

What is the best way to sync with iphoto11??
 
KD35 said:
What is the best way to sync with iphoto11??
Click to expand...

They don't sync. You can open photos from iPhoto in Aperture, and I assume you can open Aperture photos in iPhoto. However, there is no sync. Why would you want to sync two photo management applications? What's the point of managing the same photos in two different places?
 
Clete2 said:
Might I suggest Lightroom?
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/?promoid=DTEMM

You can download a free trial.
Click to expand...

You can download a free trial of Aperture, too, and compare.
http://www.apple.com/aperture/trial

FWIW, I tried LR3. Absolutely hated the workflow it forces, but it's got good functionality and results. Aperture is better at some things, LR3 is better at others.

At nearly equivalent pricing, it's closer to a toss-up, but Aperture at $80 is hard to argue against unless there's something specific about Aperture that's a deal-killer for you (or something specifically about LR that's a deal-maker).

Lightroom: $299 retail, online probably around $250
Aperture: $80 via app store.
 
I figure if you have to ask about the differences between Lightroom, Photoshop and Aperture that iPhoto is probably enough to meet your needs. :D
 
Aperture is missing some of the Keepsakes. Just cards and calendars, I think.

iPhoto also has some slideshow themes that Aperture doesn't have. Some very nice ones at that.
 
Anyone think the $79 price point is launch day only and might go away tomorrow or soon?

I think I'd like to pick up Aperture, but I'm not sure I wanted to jump on it tonight.
 
roland.g said:
Anyone think the $79 price point is launch day only and might go away tomorrow or soon?

I think I'd like to pick up Aperture, but I'm not sure I wanted to jump on it tonight.
Click to expand...

I've been wondering the same thing. If it's sticking to this price point I will save up for it, if not, bummer. I haven't heard if it's just a promotional thing or if it's long term pricing.
 
roland.g said:
Anyone think the $79 price point is launch day only and might go away tomorrow or soon?

I think I'd like to pick up Aperture, but I'm not sure I wanted to jump on it tonight.
Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing. I am a heavy Photoshop user that does not have Aperture or Lightroom and just use Bridge. This price point might be low enough to sway me. Anyway, I do not want to jump in today either but I believe this is the new download price because I did notice that a few apps, like 'Angry Birds' state 'Introductory price - 50% off for a limited time' so I believe this real.
 
Last edited:
Apple and discounts

I can't believe I actually have to write this on a Mac-related site, but Apple doesn't "do discounts". Plenty of third party apps do lower prices to climb the iOS App Store charts at launch. That seems to be going on in the Mac App Store. I've yet to see Apple change any iOS App Store price, so I don't think they'll be doing it with the Mac App Store either. I'd be very surprised if that $80 price ever goes up.

I have a 68GB iPhoto library and it's getting exponentially unmanageable with higher camera resolutions, kids, and 8GB flash cards. I barely shoot RAW mode because of it. I lasted until about midnight the first day before I jumped on that price. I'd been occasionally contemplating it at $200, but for $80?

So far so good. Not very intuitive when jumping from iPhoto at this stage, but there hasn't been a question the help couldn't answer so far. It seems to fix a lot of little niggling "I wish iPhoto could do X" situations.

It took a long time to import a large library on this 4 year old MacBook, and even when it's done importing it still spends a lot of time "Processing". That eventually stops and it's fairly responsive. It is the first app I've ever used that seems to eat 1GB of RAM to run. Maybe it will use a bit less once I split the library?
 
How difficult is it to learn Aperture?
I tried it out and it seemed waaay over my head.
Then again, I really didn't give myself a chance to learn it.
I sorta tinkered with it and then went back to iPhoto.

For those of you (novice) that went from iPhoto to Aperture, how long did it take you guys to learn?
 
I downloaded the trial version of Aperture and toyed around with it for a while. Importing my iPhoto library was a breeze and Aperture seems to be leagues ahead of iPhoto. With it's current price I would buy it if I needed it.
 
A few more questions. People have said you can't do calendars? Could you still do it in iphoto or will your new pics only show up in Aperture instead of iPhoto? Basically i guess i'm asking, when i'm trying to import new pics from a camera, i'd be doing that through Aperature instead of iPhoto. Correct
 
the main reasons for me to switch to aperture would be increased speed and stability and most importantly the fact that aperture does not create a new copy of a pic for every edit. this should save disk space.

what happens when I transfer my iPhoto library with all the original pics hidden in my iPhoto library? do they get ignored or do they get transferred into the new library as well? I actually don't want to keep the unedited originals. this should reduce my library by about 3GB.

i want to keep only the aperture library in the long run. do I need to delete my iPhoto library after the migration manually?
 
Cost of Aperture

Is the $80 version of Aperture 3 the same version as the $199.00 you buy from the Apple Store? I'm guessing it is. Is there any limitations with App download over buying the box version?

Thanks,

Lightroom: $299 retail, online probably around $250
Aperture: $80 via app store.[/QUOTE]
 
MacProDude said:
You can download a free trial of Aperture, too, and compare.
http://www.apple.com/aperture/trial
Click to expand...


I did just that, and loved the trial version. Couple hours later I decided to buy the version off the app store. Am I to assume that after downloading the app from the app store, it replaced the existing one? (in the help docs, it says it automatically puts the downloaded app on my doc)

Question is, when I launch Aperture, it still says trial version. Any thoughts whether I should remove the trial version and re-download the app? or not worry about it and go ahead an import my iphoto library?

Thanks!
 
rheuett said:
I did just that, and loved the trial version. Couple hours later I decided to buy the version off the app store. Am I to assume that after downloading the app from the app store, it replaced the existing one? (in the help docs, it says it automatically puts the downloaded app on my doc)

Question is, when I launch Aperture, it still says trial version. Any thoughts whether I should remove the trial version and re-download the app? or not worry about it and go ahead an import my iphoto library?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Hi! I too tried the trial and loved it. I first quit Aperture and then went to the Picture folder and used Get Info (right click or control click) to change the "Aperture 3 Trail Library.aplibrary" to "Aperture Library.aplibrary". Then when Aperture starts it will ask you which Library to use, and you select the "Apeture Library". You can renamed it whatever you like. Hope this helps.
 
So far i like Aperture however the UI is not a simple as iPhoto's of course.

I haven't consolidated the iPhoto Masters into Aperture yet because that is 50GB in my case and I would like to weed out duplicates and originals first because whenever I rotated a Pic then iPhoto created a copy.:rolleyes:

Also Aperture does not display a number of videos and says video format is unsupported. However those videos play fine in iPhoto.

Is there a way to get Aperture to recognize those videos?
 
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