iPhoto vs. Aperture vs. Lightroom vs. Photoshop

[asherman13]

iPhoto? Aperture? Lightroom? Photoshop?

Which one is for which type of photographer doing which type of work? How are they different (and similar, I guess) from one another?

EDIT Darn it, I just realized I should've posted in the Digital Photography forum. Sorry Dr. Q!

 

[howesey]

Basically.

iPhoto is for the consumer. It is really a very cutdown version of Aperture.

Aperture is bloated, slow, has hardly any decent RAW support. Oh, and it's slow!

Lightroom. Lightroom is good. It's quite quick. Integrates with Photoshop. Has good RAW support which is a major plus. You can do a few edits such as white balance, brightness etc.

Photoshop is the daddy when it comes to manipulation. It's RAW support is ok, a little slow and images lack detail (others are far better). You can virtually do any form of manipulation. Adobe Bridge is also included, which is similar to lightroom, and quicker.

 

[Chaszmyr]

iPhoto is for the consumer. It is really a very cutdown version of Aperture.

Half right. iPhoto and Aperture really aren't similar at all. iPhoto has some basic editing functions, but it's mostly just for storage and organization, and to deal with snapshots.

Aperture is bloated, slow, has hardly any decent RAW support. Oh, and it's slow!

Aperture is only bloated and slow if it does stuff you don't need and you have a slow computer. It is designed for professional photographers who want to emulate the darkroom process as closely as possible. There is nothing wrong with Aperture's RAW support.

Lightroom. Lightroom is good. It's quite quick. Integrates with Photoshop. Has good RAW support which is a major plus. You can do a few edits such as white balance, brightness etc.

Lightroom and Aperture are all but identical. I like Aperture better, but Aperture requires a more powerful machine to run properly

Photoshop is the daddy when it comes to manipulation. It's RAW support is ok, a little slow and images lack detail (others are far better). You can virtually do any form of manipulation. Adobe Bridge is also included, which is similar to lightroom, and quicker.

Photoshop is the de facto gold standard for image manipulation. It's not necessarily better than lightroom or aperture, because they aren't designed for the same purposes. Photoshop is a much more robust application, that lets you do all sorts of 2D digital artwork, spot editing, etc. If you don't care about doing anything that can't be done in a darkroom, though, it's not necessarily the app you want to go with.