Doug, if you run across LR for $99 again without any requirements, let me know. Want it, but I can't justify $150 much less their regular price of $299 to make the jump.
You got it.
Ok here it goes
I posted this for a friend that is on the fence of buying a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro to do some photo storage and some editing and I showed him Aperture which I use on my MacBook Pro which he asked me why I would use Aperture over iPhoto. With my Canon 40D I have always shot in RAW which I feel gives me more editing power over a larger JPG. My friend uses a Nikon D3000 which shoots RAW and TIFF. What is the difference in TIFF over RAW because Nikon can shoot in TIFF or RAW which Canon can only do RAW or JPG. I understand the RAW is the negative in which what the sensor record within the camera.
Thanks for everyone’s input!!!
Ok, so this is for your friend and not you. Forget about tiff, it's not something you or your friend want to work with. The file sizes are HUGE and practically useless for average consumers. Most if not all pro labs request jpgs for printing, so it's not a matter of needing a lossless file there.. a common misconception. Where a tiff file is necessary is in the art of high-quality forensics photography combined with image authentication.
If you shoot NEF and then export to JPEG or TIFF you will invalidate the authentication. In order to maintain the IA with a lossless high-quality photo, you would need to use TIFF from the camera. So now, unless you guys find that relevant to your shooting, I'd suggest forgetting about tiff. Be my guest and do further research if you need more to convince you.
Furthermore, I'd say that for 98% of the people out there, shooting RAW is kind of a waste of time and money. Waste of time, because shooting RAW means ALWAYS having to fine tune the image. ALWAYS. A RAW file is simply data, nothing more. It is not an image. A RAW file consists of the data directly recorded from the sensor plus.. usually two .jpg images. One for the camera's lcd and one slightly larger file. The larger jpg image is actually processed by your camera's hardware (yes, hardware not software) and utilizes some of the settings that you have defined in the menu system.
This jpg can even be extracted and used for most things (not for print though I'm thinking) like web publishing or soft proofing. There are a few apps out there which will extract said jpg's from RAW files and are very useful.
Then of course, there is the jpg file that YOU have set all of the parameters for. In your camera's menu system, you'll see options for how the jpg should render. The resolution, compression rate (fine, extra fine etc..) saturation, contrast, sharpness etc.. Now here's the important part. It's up to the shooter to figure out what combination of these settings is going to produce the look he or she is after. Do you want your images to be true to the scene (most do)? Of course, one can always mess with some of these settings afterwards in post processing BUT.. the point is to try and save time and not have to. So that's why it's important to try and get things right when shooting!
There's only one setting that is absolutely vital (IMO) and which has a limited amount of play in post processing. That's white balance. It's very important to get the white balance right the first time, and since light is always changing (unless you're in a controlled environment) it's important to remember to tell your camera what is happening lighting wise. Most pro's use a grey card in order to set a custom white balance and they are really handy to have with you. All you do is set the card next to what you're shooting, and then tell your camera that you're testing the white balance and it will do the rest.
Some camera's do a better job at guessing the lighting than others so YMMV. When outside, it's usually said that the "cloudy" setting is best for most camera's. I find that auto does great for my D300 so again, YMMV.
There's the waste of time part of it, unless you need me to clarify anything. The waste of money part is pretty obvious. The bigger the file sizes you have, the more storage space will be used up. Obviously then, you'll have to get more external storage space in a shorter amount of time. Now, unless you're a fine art photographer, or are just someone who likes to tinker with individual photos in order to achieve a very specific look (which I'll admit, I do a lot.. I find it fun and creative.), I'd say that shooting RAW is quite unnecessary.
This isn't always a very popular viewpoint, but it's logical and extremely true. Here's an example of why it's better to get it right in the camera and not have to futz around in post processing:
You're working for a newspaper and covering a baseball game. The paper needs those shots before any other paper.. and you go to the press box, and start uploading your RAW files to the editor.. Guess what? You're so fired! They don't deal with RAW data. Slow to work with and lack the look which is important to have when printing since the print process already diminishes some of the luster. What the paper needs is small files that are already processed. There are a ton of examples which follow this precept.
That said, I can see only one reason to ditch iPhoto (which is free) to get Aperture or LR. Ok.. maybe two. The first reason being that the way it handles its database is rather cludgy. It wastes a ton of space with stupid "versions" of each photo. Also, after importing photos, the only sense that the structure makes, is from within the GUI. Take that out of the equation, and you're left with an absolutely nonsensical barrage of stupidly named and placed folders with "versions" all over the place. Not very nice at all, should you have chosen to not back your photos up somewhere in a hierarchical manner.
I'd say that iPhoto is good for anybody who knows to back up their stuff and doesn't care about the things I mentioned. Now... the thing about Aperture, is that it carries over some of iPhoto's stupid behavior. And that's part of why I don't care for it. (though not the main reason) Aperture also tends to create "versions", though you can turn this "feature off". What you can't turn off (or I can't find where you can if so) is something really weird. When you create masks or layers (such as vignette's) these things are stored as separate tiff files in their own folder. And I really don't understand the purpose of doing this. In LR, what happens is that all data is written to either a side car file (xmp) which is only a set of instructions and takes up no space or can be written directly to a .dng file. The latter method is a ton more efficient.
Anyway.. Aperture is great if you're looking to go beyond iPhoto.
Doug