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Aperture?
- Thread starter Afbar1114
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If you only use it once in a while, why not get Gimp? It's what I use and has all the functionality of Photoshop without the crazy price.
It does have a learning curve though, but if you experience with PS you will catch on pretty quickly. Download Gimp 2.8 and go to Window > Single Window Mode.
This enables a much cleaner interface
It does have a learning curve though, but if you experience with PS you will catch on pretty quickly. Download Gimp 2.8 and go to Window > Single Window Mode.
This enables a much cleaner interface
They are completely different programs Aperture and Gimp. Look up the differences. Gimp is more comparable with Photoshop.
If you want to touch your photos up here and there, and store them in an orderly manor, then buy Aperture. Or Lightroom. Or stick with iPhoto.
If you want to touch your photos up here and there, and store them in an orderly manor, then buy Aperture. Or Lightroom. Or stick with iPhoto.
There used to be a trial version you could download but it was killed off by the App Store. I personally was never that in to Aperture, but that's mostly because I had already used Photoshop for years so I was just more used to that workflow. To me, Aperture is more about photo management.
I personally was never that in to Aperture, but that's mostly because I had already used Photoshop for years so I was just more used to that workflow. To me, Aperture is more about photo management.Well, on the brighter side, Aperture is $79.99, so you're not even out one $100 if you don't like it.
I'm not sure I've you seen the gazillions of little "how to" videos Apple made for Aperture. If not:
http://www.apple.com/support/aperture/
If you watch those, you'll get a good feel for everything that Aperture can do.
Personally, I switched to Aperture because it has sooooo many more options for organizing/storing/finding your photos than iPhone (or manually trying to organize them in folders).
It seems like there are two different conversations here. One about photo management and one about photo retouching.
Aperture (or Lightroom) are primarily for managing photos and can do retouching as well.
Photoshop, The Gimp, and Pixelmator are only for retouching. You open a file, make some changes, save it.
If you only want to buy one piece of software I would recommend Aperture as it does a great job of helping you manage your photos and will probably do all of the retouching you'll need to boot.
Aperture (or Lightroom) are primarily for managing photos and can do retouching as well.
Photoshop, The Gimp, and Pixelmator are only for retouching. You open a file, make some changes, save it.
If you only want to buy one piece of software I would recommend Aperture as it does a great job of helping you manage your photos and will probably do all of the retouching you'll need to boot.
Gimp is a comprehensive image manipulation app. For photo management, I just use files and folders. Easier to manage, more compatible, easier to backup.
As others have stated earlier, Aperture (Lightroom) are organizers that also edit. Specifically.... Aperture's editing allows you to make changes to the overall image (exposure, contrast, colour, etc), clean up dust spots etc, and (I'm a bit rusty on Aperture as Lightroom is what I use) but I believe Aperture also has some localized editing brushes. So, for instance, you can lighten/darken just a small area instead of the whole images. What you can not do is to edit on a pixel level. So you can't brush out a distracting tree, or copy a pattern into boring patch of sky. Also... edits on images in Aperture/iPhoto/Lightroom are non-destructive while edits in Photoshop will, by default, overwrite the old image with the changes (though you can do a "save as" of course). Many many photographers do 80% to 95% of their editing in Ap and Lr, and save Photoshop or Gimp for the heavy lifting.
Respectively, I disagree with you about "easier to manage" and the back up bit. If you allow Ap or Lr to move the images into its own folder structure then you have just one folder to back up, making it just as easy to back up.
If you create albums in Ap and Collections in Lr that are similar to the folders you currently use, then you have a structure that is exactly just as easy to manage. Plus.... by using keywords with Ap and Lr you can search and find all images that meet certain criteria without trying to remember where each image may reside. So, for instance, if you have a folder for family "smith", one for family "rokeby", one for "friends", and another one for "Christmas" - then you can either hunt through all four of your folders for a picture that includes the Smiths, the Rokebys and Friends at a Christmas party. Or I can do a keyword search and find them in about 1 second. If I create a Smart Album/Smart Collection with those terms I don't even have to search - I just open up the Smart Album/Collection.
Plus... if I want to put together a book of those people, I can create a temporary album/collection and drag the photos I want into that temp album/collection. Because we are working with a database there is still just one image (no new space is used up).
Plus... if I want to see what a bunch of images might look like in BW I would just make a virtual copy, and make those BW. Since we are working with a database and not the actual images, I don't take up any extra room on the HDD to have both colour and BW images.
Plus ... if need different sized images for FB and for email, I would just set up an export preset, instead of storing duplicate copies for each size.
Plus... if I needed different aspect ratios (8x10 and panoramic versions) of the same image, I would make a virtual copy and crop those into the aspect ratios I needed instead of storing duplicates.
Plus .. I would set up a Smart Album/Collection that only showed me images that I had cropped into a panoramic so that I could instantly find all my panoramas without searching through a bunch of folders.. Plus I would set up a Smart Album/Collection for BW images as well.
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I'm slowly working my way into Aperture and have 5000+ images in there now. Had a few issues over storage and access to other users and machines. Have sorted this by using a USB drive as the library depository in the back of our time capsule which its visible from any machine.
Just wanted to add. We have started using Nik Software suite plug ins in Aperture and it is awesome! The edits that are now possible are superb, without the 45 minutes needed in PS to achieve the same results.
This is from Silver Efex and file has been butchered to get it on here, but have a look at the reviews for all the Nik software.
Lastly, under Aperture 3, iPhoto and Aperture libraries can be the same....wish it had been that way when I first converted!
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not to hi-jack a thread, but perhaps rather than start my own, I can ask on here.
if I have an Aperture Library and an iPhoto Library that I open within Aperture and have pictures from both that I want to put into a folder/project/grouping to have within one library is there a way to do that?
Other than exporting "said Photos" and then importing those photos?
I make a yearly Photo DVD/Slideshow of my son each year and upgraded to Aperture within the past 6 months and decided to wait on importing all my iPhoto photos into one large library. (I have easily 25,000 - 30,000 or more photos so on a 2008 iMac that may not run the best with all those files)
Thanks in Advance!!
if I have an Aperture Library and an iPhoto Library that I open within Aperture and have pictures from both that I want to put into a folder/project/grouping to have within one library is there a way to do that?
Other than exporting "said Photos" and then importing those photos?
I make a yearly Photo DVD/Slideshow of my son each year and upgraded to Aperture within the past 6 months and decided to wait on importing all my iPhoto photos into one large library. (I have easily 25,000 - 30,000 or more photos so on a 2008 iMac that may not run the best with all those files)
Thanks in Advance!!
Use iPhoto. It gives you a starting place for editing and managing your photos. Once you open the door to editing your photos, instead of shooting and forgetting, you can never go back. You won't just edit some photos, you will edit all of them. As you grow and learn you will keep fewer photos but they will be better. If you go back 2 or 3 years you'll wonder how you could have kept such cruddy photos. That's the path that the retail camera world hopes you take. You become addicted to it. Always lusting for the newer and better hardware and software. You'll find yourself participating in and contributing to photo forums instead of just lurking in the shadows.
Or you could just do as probably most people do and wave your point and shoot phone or camera and take a shot or two. Then you wait until your camera or phones memory is full and dump the older stuff into oblivion since you've probably already forgot why you took the picture anyway.
I used iPhoto before moving to Aperture and I never really looked at Lightroom. Both cultures offer plenty of depth and you can be happy wading around the edges or you can head for the deep end of the pool and max out the capabilities of either and then you head to PhotoShop.
Or you could just do as probably most people do and wave your point and shoot phone or camera and take a shot or two. Then you wait until your camera or phones memory is full and dump the older stuff into oblivion since you've probably already forgot why you took the picture anyway.
I used iPhoto before moving to Aperture and I never really looked at Lightroom. Both cultures offer plenty of depth and you can be happy wading around the edges or you can head for the deep end of the pool and max out the capabilities of either and then you head to PhotoShop.
Well, on the brighter side, Aperture is $79.99, so you're not even out one $100 if you don't like it.
I'm not sure I've you seen the gazillions of little "how to" videos Apple made for Aperture. If not:
http://www.apple.com/support/aperture/
If you watch those, you'll get a good feel for everything that Aperture can do.
Personally, I switched to Aperture because it has sooooo many more options for organizing/storing/finding your photos than iPhone (or manually trying to organize them in folders).
The "sooooo many more options" means you must know what you are doing and have a clear idea of the consequences of every move. Lots of people, based on the public pleas for help, get very confused with the organizational features.
Also, if you shoot RAW, think about your workflow and if your editing program will handle the camera you use.
Just do a little reading first about 'best practices' when you get started, and you'll be fine.
Good point, though most cameras are covered now.
When you import your camera files into iphoto and then open the library in aperture is aperture using the RAW file or a jpeg?
If you imported RAW files from your camera, then as I understand it both iPhoto and Aperture are pointing at the original RAW files. However, what they are showing you are thumbnails/previews that have been created from those RAW files and incorporating the edits you have made. In either iPhoto or Aperture the edits you make are not being made to the original RAW images. Instead the applications are recording the edits you make into their respective databases (catalogues).
Please.
Would not that comment refer to just about any serious endeavor you can think of? It goes without saying, pretty much.
And it actually refers to Aperture less than almost anything else, because every "move" is nondestructive; there is always a path backwards because originals are stored as, well, originals. Try as you might, you just can't F anything up.
This means you can use your "mistakes" to learn how to use the program without risking anything at all other than your spare time. That pushes the risk/reward slider so far towards "reward" that "risk" is no longer part of the equation.
OP, there are tens of threads on this, did u try search?
Fwiw, I've got both aperture 3 and CS6, different purpose for each.
I can do so much in aperture hardly use CS6. About the only thing I can't do in aperture is merge images together ala layers in CS6.
Fwiw, I've got both aperture 3 and CS6, different purpose for each.
I can do so much in aperture hardly use CS6. About the only thing I can't do in aperture is merge images together ala layers in CS6.
In response to the original question, Aperture 3 is an Amazing application for editing. I use Aperture 3, Lightroom 4 & Photoshop CS6.
Aperture 3 is what I use for all my professional work, archives, clients, etc.
Photoshop is what I go to when I need to do layout work for specialty items like books or when a woman asks me to shave a few pounds off her.
Lightroom is what I use for fun when I'm just playing around. That and I just like to stay updated with it since it's a major player in the RAW editing world.
Pixelmator is a super cheap alternative to Photoshop that has a very professional feel to it. I bought it just to play around with. Honestly, if they just added a Liquify Tool to it I wouldn't bother using Photoshop anymore. It's pretty spiffy.
Personally, if I had to choose only one to work with it would definitely be Aperture.
Aperture 3 is what I use for all my professional work, archives, clients, etc.
Photoshop is what I go to when I need to do layout work for specialty items like books or when a woman asks me to shave a few pounds off her.
Lightroom is what I use for fun when I'm just playing around. That and I just like to stay updated with it since it's a major player in the RAW editing world.
Pixelmator is a super cheap alternative to Photoshop that has a very professional feel to it. I bought it just to play around with. Honestly, if they just added a Liquify Tool to it I wouldn't bother using Photoshop anymore. It's pretty spiffy.
Personally, if I had to choose only one to work with it would definitely be Aperture.
I totally agree. I own Aperture 3, Lightroom 4, Adobe CS6, Nik Software suite, Pixelmator. Over $3000 of imaging software. My priority of usefulness (and recommended order of purchase) is:
1) Aperture 3
2) Nik Software Suite
3) Adobe CS6
4) Pixelmator (if I didn't own CS6)
5) Everything else
90% of my work is done in A3; 9% in Nik; 1% in everything else.
/Jim
Precisely my suite of apps and workflow. (Except Pixelmator.)
As for what roles suit Aperture and Gimp/Photoshop best, I'll quote myself from another thread:
I use Aperture and CS 6 with most of my time spent using Aperture. For an economical start I would suggest pairing Aperture with Photoshop Elements.
