iPhoto 11 vs Aperture

[torontomac2011]

I am starting to think that I am reaching the limits of iPhoto and am looking into upgrading to Aperture.

My Mac is getting slower and slower and it may just be due to the large amounts of photos and videos I have with iPhoto and iMovie, but that is a side point.

I have an iMac with 8 GB of RAM and an Intel i5 processor.

One feature that would really make my decision to upgrade to Aperture would be one that transposes the dates of each picture onto the actual picture. I know I can always figure out the date/time of the picture by looking at the file attributes, but I typically need to know the date when I am not sitting in front of the mac.

I year for the good old days when pictures would be processed with the date/time printed as part of the picture.

I use a Canon T3i and there is no way for that camera to transpose the date onto the image, so I am looking for the software to take care of that for me.

Does anyone know if Aperture can do this?

Does anyone know if Aperture and Final Cut process projects and large amounts of files better than iPhoto and iMovie? The mac revolving pinwheel is starting to feel like the revolving hour glass I don't miss seeing.

Thanks!!

 

[James_C]

With Aperture you can create custom print settings, with the ability to add any Meta data (including date and time) to the print output. See screenshot below:



Both Aperture and Final Cut Pro are designed for professional use, and Aperture has no problem holding a lot of digital images. I have every single Photo taken since 1999 in my Aperture Library, which is now getting on for some 500GB.

 

[The Tech Fish]

Ok, Firstly aperture will not (to my knowledge) stamp the date and time onto each photo. You may be able to set up a photoshop batch run to do this, but aperture will not.

As for processing - if anything FC and Aperture are even more intensive.

Personally I would recommend that you get an external hard drive that has a RAID array to store all of your photos and videos, then reformat your iMac and it should run a lot faster.

Aperture is a fantastic piece of software, but it is designed for enhancing photos, not manipulating them like photoshop, I would recommend downloading this 30 day trial to see if it's for you:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/trial/

I believe that there is also a trial for Final Cut Pro X.

If you do a lot of photo enhancement, aperture is top notch. It takes a little while to get used to working with (for me, coming from photoshop, which i still use when i want to do something that aperture does not allow, it was quite a jump) but from iPhoto it should not be too much of an issue. It's also very easy to import an iPhoto library. (you literally just point it to the library, leave it to sort it's self out, and hey presto!).


Hope that helps, and feel free to ask me if you have any more questions.

Joe

EDIT: James - I had not realised that you could do that in aperture, seems that there's still stuff to learn!

 

[torontomac2011]

I don't really enhance photos all that often......I have photoshop and opening it up just gives me a headache.

I will certainly download the trial and see if it meets my needs.......an example of why I need it is when I create a video or slide show for a birthday, I would want to pull a photo from each month easily......for me, having the date on the image just makes my life easier even though I am sure there are other ways to sort by faces and dates......maybe someone could suggest that tip on this thread as well.

As for an external RAID idea, I hear you 100%, that would be a great idea, but I would imagine it would be a bit expensive. My iMac doesn't have Thunderbolt......it was the iMac just before ThundeBolt came out.

 

[flynz4]

I am starting to think that I am reaching the limits of iPhoto and am looking into upgrading to Aperture.

My Mac is getting slower and slower and it may just be due to the large amounts of photos and videos I have with iPhoto and iMovie, but that is a side point.

I have an iMac with 8 GB of RAM and an Intel i5 processor.

One feature that would really make my decision to upgrade to Aperture would be one that transposes the dates of each picture onto the actual picture. I know I can always figure out the date/time of the picture by looking at the file attributes, but I typically need to know the date when I am not sitting in front of the mac.

I year for the good old days when pictures would be processed with the date/time printed as part of the picture.

I use a Canon T3i and there is no way for that camera to transpose the date onto the image, so I am looking for the software to take care of that for me.

Does anyone know if Aperture can do this?

Does anyone know if Aperture and Final Cut process projects and large amounts of files better than iPhoto and iMovie? The mac revolving pinwheel is starting to feel like the revolving hour glass I don't miss seeing.

Thanks!!

Do you really want the date on the picture (I think it ruins the pic)... or do you want to just see the date as you are viewing your pictures? A3 allows you to set preferences to display any type of metadata (including dates) while viewing your pics. I have attached an example of the viewer showing a pic taken at my beach condo.

/Jim

 

[torontomac2011]

now that I think about it, you are probably right, I don't really want the date on the photo.....you suggestion is good.

now I just have to see if iPhoto has a similar feature before I buy Aperture for this one feature.

 

[James_C]

I tend to create Annual year books of family photo's in Aperture and I use Smart Albums to do this. Smart Albums allow you to create a selection of photos based on criteria that you define. As you can see in the screen shot this one I created for 2009, has the year defined as well as a minimum rating for each photo. Usually I will select the whole year to begin, without a rating set, just to make sure I have not missed any great photo's and then go back and set a minimum rating for the smart folder. In theory you could create a smart folder for each month, but perhaps that is overkill. Each Time I import a 'roll' into Aperture I normally name the folder Subject Month, and these are then kept in a separate folder for each year.

 

[KingJosh]

i'm not a user of either but my understanding is Aperture is targeted to the professionals and iPhoto is targeted at the consumers.

I personally use Lightroom but only because I was trained on it.

 

[maflynn]

i'm not a user of either but my understanding is Aperture is targeted to the professionals and iPhoto is targeted at the consumers..

I'd say Aperture is geared more towards the prosumer and professional. iPhoto has its strengths but aperture is better at Asset Management and it offers more tools for editing.