Consensus on Aperture3

[maflynn]

Hey guys.

I'm looking for opinions on AP3. I have it, but on my 4gig 2.53Ghz MacBook Pro, it seems to be a bit laggy. While Lightroom isn't any sort of speed demon, I found the performance workable. Aperture 3, I've gotten a bit frustrated as I wait a couple of seconds for any given image.

I like AP3 for its integration into apple apps, like itunes (makes it easy to upload my photos to my iphone), but I like LR's interface, even tough it may be modal.

Also some of the automatic adjustments seem to only bump up the exposure to 1.0, where as Lightroom's auto adjustment touches, black point, brightness/contrast/expsoure. I'm finding the tonal adjustments a bit more pleasing with the LR's auto adjust.

I like using the auto adjustment to get me started on a given image.

Sounds like I'm ranting against Aperture and lusting after LightRoom, and that may be the case, but I do like AP3, just that I've been getting a bit frustrated by it.

Thoughts/opinions?
Mike

 

[GoCubsGo]

Aperture has always been a resource hog for me. It runs great on my octo-core MP with 16 GB ram, but let's face it ... it ****ing better. A3 is nice, I do love it, but the auto adjustments are very iPhoto-ish to me. I don't tend to use those at all, I've created my own adjustments that I may want to use.

Earlier Aperture was my choice because of the non-destructive editing and how the photos were stored in a vault. LR seems to have really improved and if I was not married to Aperture I would jump ship.

I think this is going to boil down to what you're comfortable with. I recommend LR to more people because they're on Windows or because they're very familar with Photoshop. As I am very familiar with Photoshop, I've gotten used to Aperture.

 

[maflynn]

Because I recently transitioned over from Aperture from LR, both libraries are fairly up to date. I hate maintaining two, while they're small compared to others here (65gig) Its chewing up space on my HD.

I do like a lot of the features of AP, like the vault feature. I haven't tried the beta of LR, mostly because I read that it converts your library and I'd like to avoid that if at all possible - at least until LR3 hits the streets.

 

[spinnerlys]

I tried Aperture 2 and three, but I never could get my head around it. It was like a marriage between Motion and iPhoto, and since I had a demo of Lightroom, I used that more and more and finally gave into LR, even though the deciding factor was a simple but important workflow.
In LR I could just grab the photo, which is in RAW format, and drag it onto the PS icon and it opened the RAW and CameraRaw for further adjustments.

In Aperture I was never able to do that, it just opened a copied .tiff or even .jpg, but never the original RAW. I save my work in PS as PSD, so I don't care about the RAW file afterwards, I just need to simply open it in PS and LR was the better choice for this. And the UI of LR is much more logical than Aperture, even though After Effects has almost the same gray, but the layout is fubar in AE (maybe because it is not node based).

Btw, your thread title has a small hiccup.

 

[Kebabselector]

I haven't tried the beta of LR, mostly because I read that it converts your library and I'd like to avoid that if at all possible - at least until LR3 hits the streets.

It doesn't do that. It won't allow you to use an existing library until the full retail version is available. You have to create a test library.

 

[tekmoe]

I began using Aperture 2 late last year and recently made the switch to Aperture 3. I love it! I don't ever touch the Auto Adjustments and instead make all of my own adjustments. Some of my pictures I have taken that I thought had no potential end up looking beautiful once processed thru Aperture. It is truly an amazing software.

 

[maflynn]

It doesn't do that. It won't allow you to use an existing library until the full retail version is available. You have to create a test library.

Good, I was worried that it would mess with my actual library and while I do backups I don't want to take any chance on messing things up, or corrupting it.

Btw, your thread title has a small hiccup.

Fixinated

I don't ever touch the Auto Adjustments and instead make all of my own adjustments.

As noted, I've all but given up on the auto adjustments, as I said. I like using that to get me started. For Aperture it seems to only boost exposure to 1.0 for many of my images and doesn't touch any other setting.

I love the integration of apple products, and I'm pretty much immersed in the apple eco-system so its a plus but between the performance issues and what I think may be better editing in LR. I'm starting to lean back towards LR.

I started this thread to see what others though of AP3, and in particular how they think it matches up to LR (just 2 not even 3 since that's not out yet).

Yeah I know its a personal preference but I like to hear what others think about AP3 or LR.

Mike

 

[Westside guy]

I've never liked the end results of auto-adjustments in any of these programs (meaning Aperture, Lightroom, and Photoshop). Maybe it's just me, but when I've tried using them I seem to still spend exactly the same amount of time tweaking afterward as I do when I don't start off with the auto-adjust.

There is no consensus. We Aperture fans will prefer Aperture, and Lightroom fans will prefer Lightroom. And there's almost certain to be a few silly fanboi comments thrown in (e.g. "Aperture 3 is finally catching up to Lightroom 1..."). But the bottom line is most people simply prefer one approach or the other. If you like the way Photoshop works, or if you already know Photoshop and tend to be one of those people who wants to be able to master everything in 15 minutes - then Lightroom is almost certainly where you'll land because you'll already have a working knowledge of the tools.

But really - both programs offer long free trials, so what's really the point in asking? We don't know how you think, how you approach projects, how you like to work... our opinions are really only valid for ourselves. Especially given the phrasing of the question - your likes and frustrations with Aperture are all very personal. How can we answer that for you?

 

[tekmoe]

I will say this: When I was running Aperture 3 on my 13" C2D 2.26GHz 2GB RAM MBP, it was definitely struggling a bit. After I upgraded to my new 17" i7 4GB RAM, Aperture 3 FLIES!!!!! It feels like Aperture was designed for the i7 compared to the C2D I had.

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

While Lightroom isn't any sort of speed demon, I found the performance workable.

Have you used/tried LR3b2? It cruises compared to LR2 (at least for me).

As Jessica said, it's all a matter of preference and comfort. In my mind, this is basically the same as Canon vs. Nikon - you can get pretty much the same results, it just a matter of comfort and convenience.

 

[maflynn]

No, but I have heard nothing but good reports.

I generally shy away from betas because I'm content in waiting until the gold version is shipping. Additionally I've been using AP these past few months, but given the various posts about its lack of performance on C2D machines, I'm ready to go back to LR.

As I mentioned and to Jessica's point, I like LR's interface its more logical for my work flow

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

No, but I have heard nothing but good reports.

I generally shy away from betas because I'm content in waiting until the gold version is shipping. Additionally I've been using AP these past few months, but given the various posts about its lack of performance on C2D machines, I'm ready to go back to LR.

As I mentioned and to Jessica's point, I like LR's interface its more logical for my work flow

I'm on a C2D and LR3 is such a huge step up in performance. I'm not saying that it won't take 5-7 seconds to get to 1:1 from the preview, but compared to how long it takes A2 to render thumbnails... you see where I'm going. I can't wait to get a rev.b i5 and really watch it scream.

Who knows when LR3 is going to ship. Trust me, the beta version is fine for messing around and for judgment purposes. You have 2 months to use it and don't have to fill out any annoying forms as long as you have an Adobe ID. I will warn you, Adobe may not support the beta catalogs once the gold master is released, so I wouldn't use it for production. But the program itself is pretty small, so I don't see the harm in downloading it, since it runs along side LR2.

Also, once Lens Profiles become refined and shared among photographers (who are using third party lenses), it'll be even better (for me).

 

[maflynn]

Ok, maybe I'll d/l LightRoom 3 and see how that is

I'm pretty much back on LR right now anyways. I've all but switched my library back over to LR since I never deleted it when I first switched back over to Aperture. So I only had to sync up 3 months worth of images.

 

[Binford]

slow

A3 is pretty sluggish on my 2 year old mac pro, at least, compared to A2. waiting to see if its worth the upgrade to the new one coming out this june?
sucks though, becuase pretty much the only time/reason i ever use my MP is for Aperture... such an expensive reason to upgrade computers. haven't tried LR yet though

 

[CrackedButter]

The consensus here is that I've realised I need a new mac!

 

[termina3]

Ap 3 can go slow on my older MP…*but I suppose that's to be expected.

I've been looking closely at switching to LR, and love it's relative zippiness. I just flat don't understand the attraction of the modal organization, though, and vastly prefer Aperture's more open environment.

Overall, I prefer Aperture because that's what I know--but I don't like how it lags and eats resources (including HDD space) compared to LR. I feel like if I took a Santa Fe Workshop class in LR and got over the learning curve I'd love it.

And I don't want to even think about transferring that 200K image library from Aperture over... better to just start new.

 

[wheelhot]

My MacBook Pro 4,1 with 6gb RAM run Aperture 3 much better then the previous 2gb RAM

 

[telecomm]

I just flat don't understand the attraction of the modal organization, though, and vastly prefer Aperture's more open environment.

I only spent a bit of time with Aperture 3 (and having been using the Lightroom 3 beta for months now), but I don't really see the "modal organization" problem. In Aperture you have to switch to adjustments tab to make edits, while in Lightroom you have to switch to the develop module. What exactly is the difference?

Also, once you learn the shortcuts (and really, who isn't going to do that?) the modal organization is irrelevant - if I'm in the library module with a photo selected and I want to crop it, I hit R, which immediately brings up the crop interface in the develop module.

Were things less accessible in Lightroom 2?

 

[termina3]

You're right that there's little difference, which is why I think that if I learned the graphic shortcuts and hotkeys for LR I'd be happier.

There is a difference, though; in Ap I change a single panel. In LR I change the entire window. The difference is subtle but I notice it.

Were things less accessible in Lightroom 2?

Beyond just toying around for an hour here or there, my experience has been with LR3 Beta2 so I can't say.

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

I only spent a bit of time with Aperture 3 (and having been using the Lightroom 3 beta for months now), but I don't really see the "modal organization" problem. In Aperture you have to switch to adjustments tab to make edits, while in Lightroom you have to switch to the develop module. What exactly is the difference?

Also, once you learn the shortcuts (and really, who isn't going to do that?) the modal organization is irrelevant - if I'm in the library module with a photo selected and I want to crop it, I hit R, which immediately brings up the crop interface in the develop module.

Were things less accessible in Lightroom 2?

I think the modal structure is less of an issue the less reliant you are on advanced PP that you can only do in the Develop module. I can eliminate many of my garbage shots in Library (and perform the basic edits) and then really I am not going back and forth at all.

 

[akdj]

"A3 is pretty sluggish on my 2 year old mac pro, at least, compared to A2. waiting to see if its worth the upgrade to the new one coming out this june?
sucks though, becuase pretty much the only time/reason i ever use my MP is for Aperture... such an expensive reason to upgrade computers. haven't tried LR yet though"

Hi Binford...just wanted to point out, your issues seem bizarre...there must be an easy fix for ya. Have you updated to the latest firmware (3.0.3, I believe, unless I'm out of date)? Are you running any apps or programs simultaneously?

Just curious...you and I share about the same rig. I have the early '08 twin quad core MP as well, 3.0ghz. 14gigs of RAM though, I'm not sure it's utilizing more than the 4 gigs or so that you have available.

I, too, came from Ap2 and Ap3 is quick and a pleasure to use on my MacPro. Not so much on my MBP 2.2c2d (3 year old with 4gigs RAM). It's a bit more sluggish on the laptop, but still very usable.

I'm kind of in the same situation as the OP. I've just updated my creative suite to Adobe CS5...more for the video side, but I still use Photoshop for editing and layers. Just tie it in as a "plug-in" for external editor in Aperture. However...with my latest Adobe update, I have also been farting around with the Beta LightRoom and am Very Impressed. I really like it's functionality... But now I have libraries spread all over my hard drive...I probably have a 15 hour job ahead of me once I decide which direction I'm going to go.

Unfortunately, I can't mix and match the strengths of each program LR, PS and Ap3...to come up with the perfect Mac/Library/Organizational/PP program Oh Well!

J