Lightroom 3 vs Aperture

 Power – Performance   vs   Slide Shows – Books.

 Although I do not use Aperture, I thought I would do some research on the topic and post my findings. I have been happy with Adobe Lightroom 3 and find it streamlines my post production workflow. I can literally sort, pick, edit, organize and export an entire wedding of over 3000 images / 2 photographers, in less than 1/2 the time it took me using Bridge/PS. The smart collection feature is a time saver as well. Being able to organize images by any “rule” I set, it will collect the images and put them into a folder automatically, without having to search for them. Very convenient if I want to look at one photographers images vs another. The possibilities are endless. I have currently almost 20,000 images in one catalog and it works flawlessly. I will report that the spot removal tool (Develop Module) lags when selecting large areas to fix. It seems to chew up memory and freeze for a couple seconds. It is annoying and I presume they (Adobe) will have this corrected by next update.

The core concept of Lightroom is similar to Aperture’s: manage your photographic workflow from the moment you plug in your camera to exporting your finished images to the web or print. As with Aperture, the location of your images on your hard disk is unimportant – once pictures are copied you can arrange them into custom collections, or set up smart collections that automatically draw files into them if they meet certain criteria.

Lightroom’s main advantage is its speed – working with huge libraries of files is fast and efficient.

In LR3, for the first time you can output a finished slideshow to an H.264 MP4 file.  Although you can add your own soundtrack, LR3′s slideshow capabilities pale in comparison to Aperture’s. Lightroom will now recognize video files from your DSLR, for instance, but you can’t run them into a slideshow. There’s also less control over transitions – the fade being the only option available. Aperture’s ability to create stunningly finished photo books remains unchallenged. That’s not the only place Lightroom lags – Aperture leads the way for consumer-friendly touches such as face-recognition and geo-tagging. But Lightroom offers a more powerful suite of editing tools, and its new noise-reduction tools are second-to-none.

I found this post by Brad King: I have been an apple user for decades. So when I got more serious about photography I naturally got Aperture 3. After using it for several months I started doubting my decision so I switched to Lightroom 3. There are some “cute” apple features in Aperture that make it somewhat attractive but if you plan on editing your photos at all Lightroom makes much more sense. Lightroom 3 wins hands down!”

Alpa Doug wrote: Aperture’s multi-media slideshow tool just embarrases the slideshow module in LR. Aperture has a professional level Book creation module. LR doesn’t. Both have Web Gallery creation modules. Both have roughly equivalent Print modules. Both can round trip an image to Photoshop. (To be fair, LR can send and image over as a “smart object” allowing it to be further tweaked in ACR). Both programs accept plugins for additional targeted editing, both have several targeted editing tools internaly. Both accept plugins for automatically updating photo sharing sites, and for uploading directly to them. In the end, you can try both for free and decide which one you like better. But it is unfair to just blow off Aperture if you have not used it for a while, studied how it works and become competent with it.

In a seperate post he commented on DNG files: Also you can import your proprietary camera RAW files as dng files. These files are smaller and easier to work with, they don’t place EXIF as sidecar files like RAW files do. Plus they are generic used by all 3rd party software. These files are smaller than my RAW files (approx 21mb) and faster to work with.

You can find these debates all over the web. Choose what is best for you and your needs, period. If you venture into Lightroom, you may need some guidance getting familiar with the program and its interface. Get the free trial, and take a few bucks to have a personalized guided tour. I’ll show you around, front to back, and offer you support for 30 days on all the topics covered. Can’t get a better chance to give it an honest try. Remember, if you are a member of my facebook group, F8, you receive 20% savings on any LR3 and CS5 group classes. Feel free to contact me with any questions concerning any class or workshop. Good Luck!