Moving

[Nicholasdorsey]

Hey guys, I have a long question! I promise this is not a which is better Lightroom or aperture question.

I have been using aperture for about a year now and have around 5000 photos edited and saved in aperture. My aunt recently bought me Lightroom as a present and I think I want to switch over. I have read lots of articles on how to do this, but it doesn't really make sense. I shoot in all raw and I would like to get all my already edited photos into Lightroom and be able to add new ones and build my library. HOW DO I DO THIS?..

Another questions is could I organize in aperture and edit in Lightroom and have the same file structure/origination appear in Lightroom?

 

[The Bad Guy]

Export WITH edits intact? Pretty sure you'll have export your whole library as TIFF's.

It's worth the move though. IMO, Lightroom is far better than Aperture now.

 

[swordio777]

Hey guys, I have a long question! I promise this is not a which is better Lightroom or aperture question.

I have been using aperture for about a year now and have around 5000 photos edited and saved in aperture. My aunt recently bought me Lightroom as a present and I think I want to switch over. I have read lots of articles on how to do this, but it doesn't really make sense. I shoot in all raw and I would like to get all my already edited photos into Lightroom and be able to add new ones and build my library. HOW DO I DO THIS?..

Another questions is could I organize in aperture and edit in Lightroom and have the same file structure/origination appear in Lightroom?

My advice would be to start fresh with lightroom & keep things completely separate. I switched from Lightroom4 to Aperture3 about a year ago, but all of my old work from before the switch is still in my Lightroom catalog. If you have both apps anyway then there is really no need to stop using one completely just because you now have the other as well.

If you're absolutely determined to have all of your photographs in one place then you'll need to export all your edited raw files as either JPEGs or TIFFs. There is no way to save your edits into the raw file. It's possible to save some metadata as a sidecar file (such as star ratings, keywords & colour tags) however Aperture & Lightroom can't read exactly the same metadata, so I'd be very careful with all this. The safest option by far is definitely to export your edited files first so you have a version with your changes "baked in".

As for your final point about organizing in aperture & editing in lightroom - in short, no. It may be possible to have both apps using a referenced library & referencing files stored in a particular folder, but any changes in one app would not apply to the other.

Alternatively, if you wanted to use Aperture to manage your files & lightroom to edit, you'd have to set lightroom up as your external image editor. This would mean you could only send TIFF files or PSD files to lightroom for editing, not the original raw.

Hope that makes sense & helps answer your question.

Regards

 

[ChrisA]

..I shoot in all raw and I would like to get all my already edited photos into Lightroom and be able to add new ones and build my library. HOW DO I DO THIS?.....

You will need to export all the images from Aperture. Choose a file format you like (tiff or jpg.) These will have the edits but you loose the non-destructive feature. Another words after the export you will never be able to undo your edits. You will need to do a second export to get the un-edited RAW images

But you knw what is going to happen, Apple will release Aperture X and you will then want to move all the image back.

You wil have to re-organize the images as none of the alllbums and slide shows and what not will transfer over.

 

[Bending Pixels]

Wait and see if Apple announces an update to Aperture today. There are manu who expect a refresh to Aperture (along with iLife and iWork) with the release of OS X Mavericks. Apple IS aware that there are a number of key features missing in Aperture that Lightroom has had for 2 1/2 versions (lens correction, perspective correction, better highlight/shadow, etc.)

 

[Nicholasdorsey]

Alright. That all makes sense. One more thing is how do people organize their photos using Lightroom. I know that unlike aperture it references a separate file somewhere in a commuter or external hard drive. So my main question is what steps do you take from your first import from the camera to being done editing the raw files?

Also, now that Apple did not update aperture, I really want to stay because once the new one is released it will probably incredible, but no one knows how long that will be. I feel like I need to make the move.

 

[fa8362]

Hey guys, I have a long question! I promise this is not a which is better Lightroom or aperture question.

I have been using aperture for about a year now and have around 5000 photos edited and saved in aperture. My aunt recently bought me Lightroom as a present and I think I want to switch over. I have read lots of articles on how to do this, but it doesn't really make sense. I shoot in all raw and I would like to get all my already edited photos into Lightroom and be able to add new ones and build my library. HOW DO I DO THIS?..

Another questions is could I organize in aperture and edit in Lightroom and have the same file structure/origination appear in Lightroom?

If you're not a pro, your edits might matter less than you think they do. But if you really need them, do as the others suggest and export those edits as TIFFs. I would definitely not export them as jpegs, because jpegs can't be edited again without degradation.

As already suggested, do start from scratch with Lightroom. No sense starting off on the wrong foot.

I don't use aperture and consider it non-professional software since it has never been compatible with my medium format digital camera files. Moreover, the first version wasn't even color managed...unbelievable, but true.

 

[fa8362]

Alright. That all makes sense. One more thing is how do people organize their photos using Lightroom. I know that unlike aperture it references a separate file somewhere in a commuter or external hard drive. So my main question is what steps do you take from your first import from the camera to being done editing the raw files?

Also, now that Apple did not update aperture, I really want to stay because once the new one is released it will probably incredible, but no one knows how long that will be. I feel like I need to make the move.

I have mine set up to do nothing other than note where the raw file is (on an external) upon import (no copying of raws). From there, I edit crop, etc., but I don't save as a tiff or anything else. So it's only the raw files that take up significant space.

 

[Nicholasdorsey]

Yes but where I you out your initial files when you import and how do you organize them?

 

[egis]

Hey guys, I have a long question! I promise this is not a which is better Lightroom or aperture question.

I have been using aperture for about a year now and have around 5000 photos edited and saved in aperture. My aunt recently bought me Lightroom as a present and I think I want to switch over. I have read lots of articles on how to do this, but it doesn't really make sense. I shoot in all raw and I would like to get all my already edited photos into Lightroom and be able to add new ones and build my library. HOW DO I DO THIS?..

Another questions is could I organize in aperture and edit in Lightroom and have the same file structure/origination appear in Lightroom?

OP - do not know if you read this thread, started by me in Jan 2013? It contains some really useful advice. Hope this helps

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1520341/

 

[fa8362]

Yes but where I you out your initial files when you import and how do you organize them?

I have an archive of raw files on a 2 TB hard drive. I organize by camera, photographic subject and my camera organizes by date. Within Lightroom, I don't do any separate organization. I use the organization already on the hard drive (camera, subject, and date).

Note that lightroom picks up on exif data, so you can pretty much search on anything in exif - camera, lens, date, focal length, aperture, etc.