Photoshop or Aperture ??

[Apple Corps]

Over the past several years I have used iPhoto for simple editing. My "philosophy" is to slow down, compose, think through settings and point of view, recompose, and capture the image. As a result, there has not been a large need for sophisticated editing. Some developing assignments will require more photography with more potential editing needs. Portraiture and landscape are the primary subjects - no action shots to speak of. My camera gear consists of various Canon EOS bodies and L glass.

So, CS5 will cost me $200 to upgrade - Aperture will cost me $200 to purchase

I did download the Aperture trial and it appears to be more user intuitive to me. Photoshop is more powerful but difficult for me as I rarely use many of the tools and must relearn them over and over.

What have you found to be the pros and cons of each?

 

[Designer Dale]

PhotoShop has a lot of capability beyond basic photo editing that most of us don't use. Aperture/Lightroom turn out good photos while PS will take those good photos and turn them into works of art with painterly styling.

PhotoShop has it's strong points with rescuing trashed out images. Usually scans of old prints.

I have CS3 Design Premium and can't use the upgrade to just PS CS5. I'm stuck in a 600 upgrade/600 purchase position. I'm looking at Aperture and PhotoShop Elements or a deal on PS CS4.

Dale

 

[VirtualRain]

Photoshop and Aperture are designed for different tasks.

Photoshop is an image editing application.

Aperture is a photo management application.

You will need at least a photo management application. You may also need an image editing application if your photo management app doesn't meet the full extent of your image editing needs.

Clear as mud!

In general, I believe that unless you are manipulating images for marketing or consumption in other mediums (brochures, advertisements, bill-boards, magazines, etc.) you don't really need Photoshop. That's not to say you can't get lots out of it, but you can probably do without it.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Photoshop and Aperture are designed for different tasks.

Photoshop is an image editing application.

Aperture is a photo management application.

You will need at least a photo management application. You may also need an image editing application if your photo management app doesn't meet the full extent of your image editing needs.

Clear as mud!

In general, I believe that unless you are manipulating images for marketing or consumption in other mediums (brochures, advertisements, bill-boards, magazines, etc.) you don't really need Photoshop. That's not to say you can't get lots out of it, but you can probably do without it.

Yes and no. Aperture is actually a very useful editing tool but extensive editing needs to be done in something like Photoshop. I think they still compliment each other very nicely but since A3 I have found that I don't use PS much unless I need blemish correction or anything involving a brush and my painting (which is not photography related).

 

[greemie]

I use lightroom a lot. I like the fact that you can "edit in" Photoshop with a single click.

 

[VirtualRain]

Yes and no. Aperture is actually a very useful editing tool but extensive editing needs to be done in something like Photoshop. I think they still compliment each other very nicely but since A3 I have found that I don't use PS much unless I need blemish correction or anything involving a brush and my painting (which is not photography related).

I agree, they do compliment each other and overlap in many areas.

Some additional clarifications for the OP... If you need the benefit of masks, layers, transformations, and compositing, then you are doing image editing and Photoshop is your tool. If you are just manipulating levels and doing adjustments then you can obviously do this with both tools, but can probably be most efficient doing this in a photo management app such as Lightroom or Aperture. Even things like blemish correction and selective adjustments using brushes are now available in photo management apps, further blurring the distinctions between the two.

 

[Apple Corps]

For some odd reason I have better results sharpening my raw images in iPhoto or Aperture - never quite as sharp in PS for me.

Let me give you a task that may help in my decision making. A photo of the full moon against a BLUE AFTERNOON SKY. I want to take that photo and paste it onto a web page but have the background color edited from the original BLUE AFTERNOON SKY to whatever the web page background color is such that you have a circular moon showing and NOT the moon with a rectangular BLUE AFTERNOON SKY background placed on a green (or whatever color) web page.

Now - how is that for clear as mud

BTW - I've done that in PS, Powerpoint (if I remember correctly) - not sure if Aperture can do that. Lightroom??

 

[mtbdudex]

Aperture 3 handling of CS5 edits/PPs

resurrect this thread instead of a new one.

My dad bought me Aperture 3 as fathers day gift, I like the file management capabilities. I'm also using most of the photo editing tools. Much better workflow than my prior iPhoto/PSE8 stuff.

Well, thru my wife going to school I have CS5 for $199.
Prior to Aperture I loaded the CS5 trial version, played a little, and it expired.
So I can't try anything with CS5.

Q: I like how in Aperture I have 1 master and multiple versions, and PP is easily reversible via click off check box.
Now if I use CS5 as my editor inside of Aperture how does Aperture handle changes?
Is there then an Aperture Master and a CS5 edited Master? Or does Aperture track CS5 changes and they are also all reversible?

I have some other Q's, but 1 at a time.

These answers will help decide if I keep/use CS5 or return it....

 

[snberk103]

resurrect this thread instead of a new one.

My dad bought me Aperture 3 as fathers day gift, I like the file management capabilities. I'm also using most of the photo editing tools. Much better workflow than my prior iPhoto/PSE8 stuff.

Well, thru my wife going to school I have CS5 for $199.
Prior to Aperture I loaded the CS5 trial version, played a little, and it expired.
So I can't try anything with CS5.

Q: I like how in Aperture I have 1 master and multiple versions, and PP is easily reversible via click off check box.
Now if I use CS5 as my editor inside of Aperture how does Aperture handle changes?
Is there then an Aperture Master and a CS5 edited Master? Or does Aperture track CS5 changes and they are also all reversible?

I have some other Q's, but 1 at a time.

These answers will help decide if I keep/use CS5 or return it....

Does your version of CS5 have Lightroom?

I don't know Aperture at all, except that it supposedly acts very much like Lightroom. In Lightroom, if you edit an image with PS (which you do by simply clicking on an "edit in photoshop" button) when you are done working on it, and save the image you are returned back to Lightroom where you will have the original LR image, in addition to the image as edited in PS. When you tell Lightroom to edit an image in PS, you have the choice of editing the image with the LR changes, or the original-original image before LR made any changes.

I assume that Aperture works similarly.

Cheers

 

[ChrisA]

...
Q: I like how in Aperture I have 1 master and multiple versions, and PP is easily reversible via click off check box.
Now if I use CS5 as my editor inside of Aperture how does Aperture handle changes?
Is there then an Aperture Master and a CS5 edited Master? Or does Aperture track CS5 changes and they are also all reversible?...

One you set up PS as the editor. when you double click to edit Aperture creates an image file and opens PS with that file. When you do a sve//quit in PS aperture moves the files to "someplace".

The difference is that when you edit in PS the change is kept as a full size image file. when you edit is Aperture the changes are inside a small text file. In both cases the original image file is not changed.

Don't worry about disk space. 1TB drives sell for $100.

 

[mtbdudex]

The $199 "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended Student and Teacher Edition" does NOT have lightroom bundled.
https://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?&store=OLS-EDU#categoryOid=4529549&category=/Applications/PhotoshopExtendedSTE&store=OLS-EDU&loc=en_us&view=ols_prod
Trying to grasp workflow here:
So, you have then 2 master RAW versions then stored in Lightroom if you use both to edit?
When you go from CS5 to Lightroom for storage back to CS5 are all prior change still editable on/off, or is the file "fixed" upon leaving CS5 into lightroom?

Does your version of CS5 have Lightroom?

I don't know Aperture at all, except that it supposedly acts very much like Lightroom. In Lightroom, if you edit an image with PS (which you do by simply clicking on an "edit in photoshop" button) when you are done working on it, and save the image you are returned back to Lightroom where you will have the original LR image, in addition to the image as edited in PS. When you tell Lightroom to edit an image in PS, you have the choice of editing the image with the LR changes, or the original-original image before LR made any changes.

I assume that Aperture works similarly.

Cheers

 

[snberk103]

The $199 "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended Student and Teacher Edition" does NOT have lightroom bundled.
https://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?&store=OLS-EDU#categoryOid=4529549&category=/Applications/PhotoshopExtendedSTE&store=OLS-EDU&loc=en_us&view=ols_prod
Trying to grasp workflow here:
So, you have then 2 master RAW versions then stored in Lightroom if you use both to edit?
When you go from CS5 to Lightroom for storage back to CS5 are all prior change still editable on/off, or is the file "fixed" upon leaving CS5 into lightroom?

I bought my copy of LR at the same time I bought CS5 - I had forgotten it was a separate line item - but, I did get the Teachers and Students edition, so it was very reasonable.

Depending on whether I am shooting for fun or serious, my images are either JPGs or DNGs (Adobe's Digital Negative - which is converted from the camera's RAW format on import). When I edit in PS, the image is saved back into LR as a PSD file - though I can choose to save it as a TIFF or any other file format supported by PS. My LR master images are identifiable then by the DNG or JPG suffix. The images edited in PS will have the word "edit" attached to the file name, and will be a PSD (or whatever I saved as) file.

I can then make the usual LR adjustments to the the PSD file (which is there in addition to the DNG LR file). There may be limits to what LR can do with a PSD file, but I haven't bumped up against them - and probably there are no limits. I can then re-edit the edited file in PS, which will then create a 3rd copy of the image, etc etc. The images edited in PS (via LR) can not be reset back to the original-original state by LR. But, there is the original file that PS started with. When I am in LR and choose to "edit" with PS, the choices are.... 1) Edit a copy with the LR adjustments; (which is what I do) 2) Edit a copy without LR adjustments; 3) Edit the original without the LR adjustments.

 

[Ruahrc]

When you go from CS5 to Lightroom for storage back to CS5 are all prior change still editable on/off, or is the file "fixed" upon leaving CS5 into lightroom?

When I am in LR and choose to "edit" with PS, the choices are.... 1) Edit a copy with the LR adjustments; (which is what I do) 2) Edit a copy without LR adjustments; 3) Edit the original without the LR adjustments.

If you pick option 1), Lightroom exports a TIFF with the Lightroom adjustments and then opens that TIFF in photoshop. You do your PS things, and go back to LR. A new TIFF (or PSD) shows up in LR with the PS changes.

Option 2 is LR just converting the default RAW file as a TIFF for PS editing. Hence the "without adjustments"

Option 3 actually opens the RAW file itself in PS. I suspect that there is actually still no change made to the RAW file here since I don't think Photoshop can work directly with RAW files (it will convert first using Adobe Camera Raw) but if you chose this option with say a TIFF file, then you'd be editing the original copy of the file (so be careful).

I think in each case (save option 3) you are always getting a duplicate copy of your image back after finishing in PS, keeping with the non-destructive philosophy of LR. I imagine Aperture does this process very similarly, as it follows the non destructive paradigm as well.

 

[Winni]

So, CS5 will cost me $200 to upgrade - Aperture will cost me $200 to purchase

I did download the Aperture trial and it appears to be more user intuitive to me. Photoshop is more powerful but difficult for me as I rarely use many of the tools and must relearn them over and over.

What have you found to be the pros and cons of each?

Those applications were designed for different purposes and it's not an either/or choice. In my opinion, you have to own both programs.

I use Aperture 3 for its library functions and basic editing, but for more advanced stuff I export the pictures to Photoshop Extended (and have the modified version re-imported to Aperture, which happens automagically anyway).

 

[snberk103]

Those applications were designed for different purposes and it's not an either/or choice. In my opinion, you have to own both programs.

I use Aperture 3 for its library functions and basic editing, but for more advanced stuff I export the pictures to Photoshop Extended (and have the modified version re-imported to Aperture, which happens automagically anyway).

What Winni said. Most serious photographers I know would agree that having both Photoshop and Aperture/Lightroom are necessary in a complete toolbox.

 

[mtbdudex]

Those applications were designed for different purposes and it's not an either/or choice. In my opinion, you have to own both programs.

I use Aperture 3 for its library functions and basic editing, but for more advanced stuff I export the pictures to Photoshop Extended (and have the modified version re-imported to Aperture, which happens automagically anyway).

Thx, I'll keep CS5, un-wrap it and load the software this weekend.
I've used PSE8 with iPhoto, but realize CS5 is much more complex.

Will be interesting to see if for some of my astrophotography Milky Way shots shots CS5 can get more detail than Aperture.