03-29-2008, 11:47 PM

With the speedy release of aperture 2.1,
Are any other lightroom users now considering converting to aperture ?
The fact that so many people are sitting there developing all these awesome plugins, might put an end to alot of the stuff that we sit here and do now in CS3, so many amazing plug in's that will feature in aperture very shortly, and it appears adobe are making school boy errors by releasing a dud version of lightroom 1.4 and practically refusing to allow other companies to develop software plugins that interact with lightroom, as opposed to CS3.
As things stand if aperture continues to improve at such a crazy pace I may just be tempted to switch from Lightroom, I've also noted after further tests (on my trial download from apple), comparisons and conversions of the same files, I think I actually prefer the RAW converter in aperture, I think it gives richer truer images from the outset, and I also think the highlight recovery tool is far superior.
Anyone else that doesn't already own aperture, who is sharing a similar train of thought ?

03-30-2008, 12:59 AM

You are always going to have far more control over every adjustment in Photoshop, especially masking effects and adjustments properly and accurately. Plug ins for Aperture may suit a lot of people and speed up a basic workflow, but it will never replace the tools and function that Photoshop offers.

However, the plug ins developed may be a good way to introduce and teach basic techniques to people not familiar with the Photoshop interface.

03-30-2008, 08:17 AM

I totally agree that for the ultimate in image control photoshop CS3 will always win hands down. But there are potentially lots of time saving tools in there for certain types of photography, which could deliver the results just as well as photoshop (potentially), which could benefit me greatly at work, such as when I shoot properties, a good dodge and burn tool might replace the need to use layers to bring out detail in the skies and also eliminate the need for a tripod when shooting on a sunny day (in some instances), that would normally just show as blown highlights in a single layer image. It remains to be seen however how effective and extensive these tools are, I think I will wait and see before I make any further decisions but its encouraging to hear that already one of the new tools, the aperture dodge and burn tool has been set up to take advantage of graphic tablets and pressure sensitivity which I prefer over a standard mouse for photo editing, as of yet I Lightroom offers next to no plugins that I can see as being of any benefit to me. Out of interest do you use lightroom, bridge or aperture for your photo management ?

03-30-2008, 04:23 PM

I had a quick look at both Aperture and Lightroom when they were first released, I think I tried out Lightroom for a few days. But I already had in place a very good workflow using mostly Bridge/Camera Raw/Photoshop, and the two programs seemed to be very heavy on the system for what they were trying to achieve.

Theres simply no way I could have either program open in the background while I use CS3, as I'm often working on large files with many layers, 75mb - 1.5gb per image, which rendered their intent useless to me. I find Bridge is a nice and simple app with the power to manage and view images well, and it can run in the background without chewing on the processors and ram.


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03-30-2008, 05:44 PM

Have you considered upgrading to 4gb of ram for how little it costs ? I can happily run lightroom, CS3, itunes and several safari windows while I work, while hooked up to an external monitor, and I very often create files up to around 300mb in photoshop.
1.5gb sounds a bit crazy though ! what are you creating, stitched landscape panoramas with multiple exposure and adjustment layers ? thats one massive file !
I like Lightroom because it enables me to perform alot of edits alot quicker than if I had to go into CS3, plus most importantly alot of non destructive raw edits, some of which can be done in bridge, but many that can't, obviously it doesn't do anything that bridge or CS3 can't do when combined, but when shooting massive amounts of images, I find it useful for quick sorting and editing and find it more efficient than bridge.
I am going to hold fire until the new updates for lightroom come out, but unless they make some incredible improvements, that make up for the fact that they are not allowing plugins from some pretty important software manufacturers then I probably will be switching sides.