Camera Labs

I may have to try Aperture 2. I did try the 1.x version and I can't say I was that impressed with it so have been using Adobe Lightroom instead - fantastic piece of software. Does anyone who has used Aperture 2 and Lightroom have any comments on how the two compare?

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

same question!

very much identical..

aperture seems less clustered in a GUI way, meaning more real estate for the photograph editing.

but yeah you cant go wrong with both.

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Mark Osborne
My life through an iPhone

Just tried Aperture 2 yesterday and I don't really like it. I think you mentioned that the organisation was not as good in Aperture when compared to Lightroom Welly? Well I imported the images as they were organised by Lightroom so can't really comment there. But it is slow on my Macbook Pro. Not very slow but it doesn't run as fast as Lightroom.

There are some things I like though. Aperture allows you to edit your photos in full screen which is something Lightroom does not and the loupe viewer tool in Aperture is very handy. I think Lightrooms editting tools are superior though, I just wish it had a distortion correction tool.

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Graham
Flickr

One thing i like about aperture is the "stack" feature which lets you group similer images together, then you can only see one or expand the one to see all of them. I also like the way aperture stores all the pictures in one simple librery file.

Does lightroom have a "stack" type feature?
How does lightroom arrange and store the actual picture files?

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

I'm going to try and work with Aperture for a little while. I love it's integration with OS X that Lightroom doesn't have but overall I just find Lightroom a little better to work with.

Graham, what I particularly like about Lightroom's image management tools is being able to select an image or images by more or less any piece of data you care to use. So you can find images shot with a particular camera type, or lens or date shot or whatever else. It's pretty handy.

I don't believe Lightroom has anything like stacks yet, and it doesn't appear to have much in the way of version control either. I do love Lightroom but I'm going to give Aperture a bash and see if I prefer that. I had a brief look at it last night and have imported all my images into Aperture so we'll see how it fares. What I also like about Lightroom is it stores images in folders as opposed to a big database, so you can access those images normally through Finder. Now I believe Aperture is capable of doing this but so far I've not seen a way of managing images in the same way.

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

That's what I like too Welly! I think Lightroom really excels in it's image management.

tobywuk, you can stack stack images in Lightroom. From your description of how it works in Aperture, it is identical to what Lightroom does.

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Graham
Flickr

iv been fiddling with both lightroom and aperture and I personaly preffer aperture.

-It intergreats nicley with OSX
-I preffer the way it organises the actual image files, no faffing around aperture just adds them to the one library file.
-I preffer the folder/project organisation architecture or aperture, its simple and works.
-The aperture interface seems so much simpler and clutter free.
-the stacks feature in aperture seems superiour and i use it all the time.

my bit.

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Tobywuk personal website || My Flickr
Gear: Sony a700! || CZ 16-80mm! || Sony 75-300 || bag: Crumpler PB xxxl / Lowepro slingshot 200

Does Lightroom integrate with Photoshop better?

I've used em both, and personally it boils down to:

Aperture is easier to use and more intuitive

Lightroom is more robust for controls, but can be a bit clumsy

Since I can get 90% of what I need from Aperture, it's the ease of use that keeps me going back to it.

Also, as a comparison between Aperture 2.0 and Lightroom 2 beta, the local enhancement tools via Dodge and Burn in Aperture are more fun to work with and perform better in my opinion. However, that's why it's called Lightroom beta and not final.

Ever since I found out that you can edit as an overlay with the Dodge/burn/saturation/sharpness/etc local enhancement tool, I've been in love. It's similar to working with a quick mask and with judicious use of the feather tool, can produce nice results without looking processed.

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Hardware: Nikon D80, Sigma 10-20mm, Nikon 18-55 mm VR, 55-200 mm VR, 105mm f/2.8D Micro, 35mm f/1.8G, SB-600, Manfrotto/Bogen 190CXPRO3 + 468MGRC2
Software: Aperture, Photomatix, GIMP

My Flickr Page

Thanks for the reply!

I'm new to photography and photography organization software.

I have a couple of questions:

I still don't get why there are collections and collections sets...What's the difference?

Is it the same things as albums and projects in Aperture?

Why not just use albums?

I'm very much a newbie when it comes to editing software. Does anyone have experience with Aperture and Photomatrix?

I noticed that there is a Photomatrix HDR plugin for Aperture. Any comments or opinions regarding the interface between the two? Thanks

Apple

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D80 | Nikon 18-135mm