Lightroom or Aperture for friend

[Arctic Photo]

If your friend is concerned that Lightroom is too different from what she is using, why push LR on her? What is so wrong with her using Aperture? Because you can more easily help her with Lightroom? This should be about her comfort level not yours. Let her use Aperture until she comes up against any limits that she may need something else for. Then she can decide what to get next. Maybe she'll want to try DXO at that point or Lightroom or something else. Aperture is only $79--it's a great value and small risk investment.

I agree with this. I use LR and I'm happy with it. I'm an enthusiast photographer. When my brother in law , who I consider to be a better photographer than myself, asked me what to get when he bought his 6D I recommended him to check out Aperture from what I've read here from other users. He's very happy with it and it haven't limited him in any way.

 

[j1jenkins]

A) It doesn't display in albums like iPhoto or her old Windows did (Windows via pulling the first image in the folder in grid view)

The grid view is an option in the Library module of LR.


B) "How do you put something on Facebook" - the fact that you have to export something seems to confuse her. I think if I setup the Facebook Publishing that'd help, but for other things she might still be confused that she has to export. I'll give this one to Apple, they do have a well integrated entity passing framework that makes it pretty straightforward to have one application push/pull types of files to another

There is an option to export to Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug, as well as many others. Some are native to LR and others require a plugin.



C) She feels very intimidated by it as it's "meant for professional photographers"


I understand that and I agree with Neuro's comments earlier that it can be clunky. The UI can be intimidating at first. I took the "tour" that Adobe opens up once you install it and that helped me quite a bit. From there, it's about exploring the various modules and using trial and error to see what effects they might have.


From what I'm reading, if she's a Mac user, Aperture is probably a better fit. She can't go wrong with either one, it comes down to what she's comfortable with.


Also, I've played with DxO and it's fine. They claim that since they grade all the camera's and lenses that their corrections are the best in the industry. I'm not sure I agree with that statement, but that's what they say. I found that it lacked some of the editing tools that LR and Aperture had. For example, there isn't any spot healing or brushes to change exposure in a certain area. You can adjust the entire image with DxO, but the adjustments are not as granular as they with LR and Aperture.

 

[Drizzt321]

A) It doesn't display in albums like iPhoto or her old Windows did (Windows via pulling the first image in the folder in grid view)

The grid view is an option in the Library module of LR.

Yes, but it's only for the currently selected photos. It's not for all of her 'albums'. An album basically being a folder for effectively single-keyword tagging the photos. Lightroom doesn't seem to really display those well, unless you either take the time to re-name all of the folders (possible but time consuming), create Collections (possible but time consuming), or not so prettily and fairly clunky view all of the keywords (currently possible).

B) "How do you put something on Facebook" - the fact that you have to export something seems to confuse her. I think if I setup the Facebook Publishing that'd help, but for other things she might still be confused that she has to export. I'll give this one to Apple, they do have a well integrated entity passing framework that makes it pretty straightforward to have one application push/pull types of files to another

There is an option to export to Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug, as well as many others. Some are native to LR and others require a plugin.

Yea, I was going to setup the Facebook Publishing service and show her that, although I haven't ever used any of the Publish services, so I'll have to experiment a bit tonight.

As for Aperture, I'm not opposed at all to having her try it. I was going off of some recommendations earlier in the thread on page 1, and the fact that I'm better able to help her out since I'm already know LR. That's the only real reason I started her out with it. I'm not trying to force her to use LR, I'm trying to find the best solution for her and sometimes that means going through a few different tools until she finds the one that is good for her.

Personally I think part of it is that many people, when faced with change in something they don't really understand just sorta shut down. "It's different, it's bad" instead of "Let me see if I can work with it". We all have it, just look at some of the shouting that goes on here whenever a company makes a big change.

 

[keithfullermusic]

i haven't read the replies, but as a user of both can offer some insight:

I began with Aperture, and used it for years. I absolutely loved it, and never thought I would switch - then I discovered Lightroom.

Lightroom is hands down the better of the two. Although Aperture offers some things that Lightroom doesn't, it's not worth choosing over LR in my opinion.

Lightroom's noise reduction and clarity sliders are worth choosing it alone in my opinion, but it depends on what type of shooting you do. I have a 5d3, and I take full advantage of its high ISO capabilities. While it shoots amazing pics at ISO 6400, it looks MUCH better with some noise reduction. When using Aperture, I often times have to use plug-ins to match LR's abilities and that leaves me with massive TIFF's. Also, the new clarity slider is miles ahead of Aperture's definition slider. While it can be heavily abused to make photos look like total crap, it's magical for many situations - especially black and white images.

There are tons of other things that LR dominates Aperture in, but those are my favorites.

Now, the reasons for choosing Aperture are simple for some people. It integrates well with OSX. You can choose photos for your background without having to export them, and you can stream them on your AppleTV with ease. It also allows you to paint in any effect you can apply globally - this is something that LR lacks. However, LR allows you to paint in a group of effects - something that Aperture lacks.

So, to answer your question - if the user is not going to worry about massive amounts of editing and wants to have better integration with their operating system, go with Aperture. If you want the most options, and the best functions, go with LR.

I know this is personal to many people, but I have to say that LR is objectively the better of the programs in terms of "power use," but I can see the argument for Aperture to some people.

Also, you have to remember that Adobe focuses almost exclusively on image editing, whereas Apple is a computer/phone company first and foremost. Making image processing programs is a way to lure you into buying a Mac.

 

[BoneDoc]

If she has a Mac already, I highly recommend Aperture. That's my primary editing tool, and I get through batches of photos quickly. It plays nice with a lot of the other Apple stuff as well (like photo stream and such)

 

[David_in_Seattle]

So, I've got a friend that I'm helping to merge a couple of large stores of photos, and then I'm going to try and get her out of using iPhoto (ugh...) and onto a real photo management system like Aperture or Lightroom. Personally I use Lightroom, have been since LR2. Other than it being a cross-platform license if she goes back to using Windows, what's LR got that Aperture doesn't, or vice-versa? What are people's experiences? I figure I'll have to spend at least a couple of hours familiarizing her with the basic usages of the software and how to manage photos with it, but which one would probably be easier to pick up & use for someone who is not primarily a photographer and mostly needs a better quality (and less slow) photo management/editing application? She's got >65K photos, and her iPhoto is just crawling and slow.

I believe she has a Canon T2 or T3, and mostly shoots JPG but occasionally RAW. Or is there something that'd be even better for her?

Also to note, she's only looking to buy a perpetual license right now, so the Adobe CC w/Photoshop is not really of interest to her.

Go with Lightroom since you're familiar with it; enabling you to be able to help her out in learning the software. On a performance standpoint, Lightroom and Aperture are very close, though Lightroom has a much larger user base for plugins, forums, and support.

As for photo management, I prefer Lightroom and Bridge over iPhoto and Aperture's proprietary library system. The speed of accessing images within either program's library largely depends on the speed of hard drive as well as the amount of RAM at your disposal.

 

[neuroanatomist]

i haven't read the replies,

...LR is objectively the better of the programs in terms of "power use," but I can see the argument for Aperture to some people.

While I don't disagree with you, it's worth noting that the original post stated, "I believe she has a Canon T2 or T3, and mostly shoots JPG but occasionally RAW," and that the need was primarily for photo library management, with occasional editing. From that standpoint, I'd argue that Aperture is a better choice for a Mac user.

Personally, I use aperture and find it quite powerful…for photo library management. I use DxO Optics Pro for RAW conversions, and CS6 for serious editing.

 

[keithfullermusic]

i haven't read the replies,

...LR is objectively the better of the programs in terms of "power use," but I can see the argument for Aperture to some people.

While I don't disagree with you, it's worth noting that the original post stated, "I believe she has a Canon T2 or T3, and mostly shoots JPG but occasionally RAW," and that the need was primarily for photo library management, with occasional editing. From that standpoint, I'd argue that Aperture is a better choice for a Mac user.

Personally, I use aperture and find it quite powerful…for photo library management. I use DxO Optics Pro for RAW conversions, and CS6 for serious editing.

I agree with you completely. I think that Aperture is great, just not as great as LR. But for some people, Aperture is the better choice.

 

[Drizzt321]

i haven't read the replies,

...LR is objectively the better of the programs in terms of "power use," but I can see the argument for Aperture to some people.

While I don't disagree with you, it's worth noting that the original post stated, "I believe she has a Canon T2 or T3, and mostly shoots JPG but occasionally RAW," and that the need was primarily for photo library management, with occasional editing. From that standpoint, I'd argue that Aperture is a better choice for a Mac user.

Personally, I use aperture and find it quite powerful…for photo library management. I use DxO Optics Pro for RAW conversions, and CS6 for serious editing.

I agree with you completely. I think that Aperture is great, just not as great as LR. But for some people, Aperture is the better choice.

Good chance I'll end up pointing her in the direction of Aperture instead. Good feedback, thanks everyone.

 

[kbmelb]

I've used Aperture since v2. It was very slow on a MBP. v3 got substantially faster but it is long in the tooth. But I've recently switched to LR4 and now LR5. LR5's noise reduction, sharpening and clarify tools are WAY better, but...

Phil Shiller said in the keynote announcement for the new Mac Pro that the new version of Aperture blazes on the Mac Pro. I imagine in December with the release of the Mac Pro Aperture 4 will also be available.

I expect Aperture to be superior on the Mac, especially as far as speed goes. LR5 does not take advantage of OpenCL and it is really slow at a lot of tasks even compared to Aperture 3.5.

We'll have to see what NR and sharpening is up to.

 

[Drizzt321]

Erm...so I was going to download the trial of Aperture for my friend to have it already downloaded just in case...but it doesn't look like there _is_ a trial of Aperture. At least not any more. The main Aperture page doesn't say anything, just a "buy now" button, but after Googling I found https://www.apple.com/aperture/trial/. However, that just says "Go to the Mac App Store". So I go there (on my work machine), and find it there, but don't see anything about a trial period, just "buy now for $79.99". WTF Apple. Demos/Trials are pretty darn important for most software, especially something like this.

 

[F700]

Sorry, a side question, I'm thinking to get the Surface Pro 2 and install Lightroom to it. Is anyone doing this? Would like to know what's the performance on Surface Pro 2.

Best