Lightroom or Aperture for friend

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.
 
Jul 21, 2010
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LR is a better RAW converter. Aperture offers much better editing tools than iPhoto. One plus for Aperture is that it can share the same library as iPhoto, so if she uses iPhoto features like ordering books or calendars, she can launch iPhoto and do that without moving images around. The Aperture UI is standard OS X instead of the Adobe overlay.
 
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neuroanatomist said:
LR is a better RAW converter. Aperture offers much better editing tools than iPhoto. One plus for Aperture is that it can share the same library as iPhoto, so if she uses iPhoto features like ordering books or calendars, she can launch iPhoto and do that without moving images around. The Aperture UI is standard OS X instead of the Adobe overlay.

Hmmm...don't know that she really orders much in the way of books/calendars/etc, so I think that's fairly moot. And Lightroom does have additional plugins and tools to help with books at least, so probably moot as well.

Lightroom might be better, as I'm familiar with it. So I can more easily help her with it.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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Drizzt321 said:
Lightroom might be better, as I'm familiar with it. So I can more easily help her with it.

It might. A concern I'd have would be about CC - you mentioned she doesn't want that. First, LR wasn't part of CC, then it was but would still be available standalone. But...for how long? It would be unfortunate if she learns LR, and gets a new camera down the line, if Adobe stops releasing LR version updates for standalone purchase, it'll mean CC or switching to something else.
 
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Drizzt321 said:
Hmmm...just saw elsewhere...what about Picasa?

Google is evil. Just say no to Google.

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Seriously though, I took the time to get set up in Aperture and bought LR2 because it was on sale. Immediately stayed with it, and I'm a long time Mac guy. I do, however, find Apple sometimes is purposely obtuse with their layouts because they think people can't handle it, so it could be that simple.

Lightroom just felt more intuitive to me.
 
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dstppy said:
Drizzt321 said:
Hmmm...just saw elsewhere...what about Picasa?

Google is evil. Just say no to Google.

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Seriously though, I took the time to get set up in Aperture and bought LR2 because it was on sale. Immediately stayed with it, and I'm a long time Mac guy. I do, however, find Apple sometimes is purposely obtuse with their layouts because they think people can't handle it, so it could be that simple.

Lightroom just felt more intuitive to me.

Ok, thanks, just another options that occurred to me.
 
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I wanted to add some additional insight to this thread. I've used LR since v1, and I really like it. They are adding more and more tools that were originally only available in PS. The layout is intuitive and easy to navigate and the results are fantastic. I've also used DPP from Canon and it's fine, but I prefer LR. I have touched Aperture a couple of times, but found myself going back to LR.....admittedly because I am more familiar with LR.

You will be fine with either platform, but my preference is LR.
 
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JPAZ

If only I knew what I was doing.....
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Since I use a PC, Aperture is not an option. I've used LR with an occasional export to PS for the most part. But, there is yet another option for her. How about DXO? Once you help her set up some options, she can let it run through a series of photos essentially automatically. While there are opportunities for tweaking an individual picture, the automated processing does a marvelous job with cleaning up lens aberration and distortion. I have it and sometimes just "let it fly." You get a new set of files (for example, JPEG's) but it does not destroy or overwrite the originals while you are off doing something else. Then, you can select the ones you like and do more individualized post processing on the ones that need it.

In another thread, there have been some nice compliments about DXO. Neuro, for one, has a lot of experience with this product. Am I off base about anything I've said here?
 
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JPAZ said:
Since I use a PC, Aperture is not an option. I've used LR with an occasional export to PS for the most part. But, there is yet another option for her. How about DXO? Once you help her set up some options, she can let it run through a series of photos essentially automatically. While there are opportunities for tweaking an individual picture, the automated processing does a marvelous job with cleaning up lens aberration and distortion. I have it and sometimes just "let it fly." You get a new set of files (for example, JPEG's) but it does not destroy or overwrite the originals while you are off doing something else. Then, you can select the ones you like and do more individualized post processing on the ones that need it.

In another thread, there have been some nice compliments about DXO. Neuro, for one, has a lot of experience with this product. Am I off base about anything I've said here?

You're referring to DxO Optics Pro? Interesting...not as expensive as I had in my mind for some reason.

Not sure it'd be for her, she also needs photo management (aka DAM), not just editing.
 
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Ok, so, my friend is expressing some concern/frustration that Lightroom is too complicated and doesn't display/sort things as easily as iPhoto. In part it could be because it's fairly late and she was just tired, but I'm heading over to her place in a few days and she's going to be poking around in it in the

However, the big worries/concerns from her that I got can probably be summed up (in order of importance) by:

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

So, any further software suggestions? One or two button magic wands should apply, provided they can help easily organize and manage 70+K image files.
 
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I started with Aperture in 2007 when I got my first raw capable camera and moved my older iPhoto library over (nowadays Aperture and iPhoto use the same library, then it was still a one way street) and used that until Lightroom 3 came along and mostly switched to it, except I still import my photos first to Aperture and let Lightroom use its masters directory. Legacy reasons due to my setup with network drives and so on, but anyway, point being that I still fairly actively use latest versions of both, though Aperture mostly just to get my pictures shared to iPad and AppleTV.

My library is around the same size, 60k images or so and on my last model 17" MacBook Pro Lightroom is considerably faster in pretty much everything on the same machine and setup. Most of my editing I do on a more powerful PC, which shares the library over network and was part of the reason I switched to Lightroom in the first place as my Mac at the time was the first generation Macbook Pro and getting a bit slow.

So overall I'd recommend Lightroom of the two, Aperture's plus sides are easy sharing with other Apple products, possibility to use the old iPhoto library as is and its automatic picture "enhancements" work perhaps a bit better than Lightroom's autotone, but in pretty much everything else Lightroom beats it hands down for me.
 
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I started with Aperture 2 in 2008 and used that and then Aperture 3 up until this time last year when I switched to Lightroom 4.

Overall I find Lightroom is faster and mostly has a few better editing tools (it is a lot better at highlight and shadow recovery), but I always preferred the way Aperture laid out it's projects and folders system. Much more control of how to file away you photography.

For someone looking for a new program primarily as a way to get past an overrun filing system, I think Aperture would be a much better choice.
 
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I use Aperture, but I'm disappointed with the lack of improvements/updates. I don't remember exactly, but I'm guessing it's been 3 years since Aperture 3 was released. ( Aperture 4 is finally coming in December)

Noise reduction is terrible in Aperture. If your friend shoots a lot of high iso, then that would be a consideration.

I do think Aperture is easier to learn and use.
 
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I've been using Aperture since the day it came out in 2005. However, I am in the process of switching over to Lightroom. It seems like Apple is dropping the ball on updates and that concerns me. I hope that they are not going to kick pro photographers in the nuts like they did with the video people and Final Cut Pro X, but I'm not so sure.
 
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Vivid Color

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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.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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Vivid Color said:
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.

+1

While Adobe products have improved in usability over time, they're still klunky in their implementation of the UI, particularly under Mac OS X. They also don't conform to the OS X standards. For example, accessing Preferences in every Mac app is ⌘-comma...every app except Photoshop, where it's ⌘-K. In the last version of Photoshop, you needed to change a default preference setting so ⌘-H hid the app, they fixed that for CS6.

Bottom line, if your friend is comfortable with Macs, Aperture should have been the default step up from iPhoto.

Plus, they make it easy to post your cat photos on Facebook. :p
 

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Nothing wrong with Aperture. The 3.5 upgrade combined with Mavericks is a disaster, but it could just be because of Mavericks. I do all my editing in Aperture these days and there isn't anything I would like to do and can't.

This you can't do:
Upright.png


That being said, why do people even do that crap? There are other ways to ruin photos too. Making them look like they had been drawn by a 5-year-old (who only understands 2D) is in my opinion a bit too much.
 
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