Ok, so I have been using lightroom for ages and Aperture since they announced the trial version (just over a week), already I am finding Aperture's workflow and organizing features to be better than those in Lightroom. Also given my relatively modest spec mac (iMac 17" Intel with 1gb ram) I am finding that Aperture is at least as fast as Lightroom if not faster- that suprised me, given the negative press apwerture got on it's speed/
Having used both, what do you prefer, and why?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=84384\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
May be too early to tell. Over at PhotoshopNews there was a picture of the new Beta 5 of LR where they specifically pointed out the new Library folders structure. If it is more akin to Bridge, then that will certainly be an improvement.
In addition, LR has too many ambiguous sliders/controls. This may change in the final release. At least I hope so. Not in the least for the many instructors and/or instruction books and videos. It's one thing to tell people how to do fancy tricks, it's entirely another to tell them a decent procedure to achieve an optimal result. They unfortunately haven't prepondered that procedure (or the entire application for that matter) prior to implementation, and certainly haven't given a completely new or innovative approach to many of the possibilities in RAW conversion. Where's the colorcast slider for example? Or a truly modular develop module? Masks for every module? (idem for Aperture mind you).
It's interesting to see them go back to a folder structure. There's something very re-assuring about the good old OS structure when handling your precious images. And that is my biggest gripe about either application. There should be a clear one-on-one relation in the image management departement. And if you simply replicate all the RAW conversion capabilities as all other offerings and do nothing innovative in that area, then at least build relatively decent DAM capabilities. There is a certain minimum requirement that would help the majority of the users, and Bridge was getting very close to that requirement.
I really look forward to a possible improved Bridge in CS3. As for Aperture and LR (b4), they equally fail in the file management area. Yes, even the A1.5, see if this seems familiar to anyone:
- You import the images from multiple CF cards.
- Clearly you want to rename the files during import and add general keywords. Not a problem in either app. Because of using multiple cameras you might have incoming images with similar numbers but very different time stamps. Not really a problem and you're renaming anyway.
- You select the obvious duds and dispose of them or move them to the trash or a duds folder. In the latter case: is the duds folder replicated in the finder/OS?
- You re-order some of the images in an attempt to make a first preselection. Now the indexing obviously needs to be redone. Is the new naming replicated in the finder/OS?
- You categorize the images, for example in separate folders to end up with chewable chunks. You make another selects round. Again you may want to rename the files by category, but at least change the indexing. Is the new structure replicated in the finder/OS?
- Once you're organised you make your first backup. At this point it would be useful to have some sort of tracking option for back-ups. Aperture already has it, LR will have to follow at some point, i surely hope Bridge will follow as well. The latter apps will have a chance to it better than A, because A screws up everything, including the aforementioned steps for referenced files. It will consolidate the files into a backup, but it will not rebuild any tree structure to the referenced files when rebuilding your system. bad dog...
What's so hard to comprehend about the OS tree structure that it can't be represented in any of these Apps? Bridge seems to do a pretty good job of it! Add some minor backup & tracking options and you have a perfect DAM utility. Sell it separately, or integrate it into LR, but do not, I repeat DO NOT try to do the same thing differently in two places and certainly not half-heartedly in one of them. (Seems a repeating theme come to think of it: remember the ambiguous controls?)
It's beginning to sound like a rant. So here's my vote: they're both equally great Apps... in theory that is.