Where are all the Aperture users?

[stevesimon1]

I was suprised to see the ratio of Lightroom to Aperture posts to be so one-sided. I have embraced Aperture but wondered if it's as poular as I thought it was.

[RogerW]

I was suprised to see the ratio of Lightroom to Aperture posts to be so one-sided. I have embraced Aperture but wondered if it's as poular as I thought it was.
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Perhaps they've all seen the Light®

[DaveLon]

Perhaps they've all seen the Light®
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Or just causes less problems.

Dave S

[brucepercy1]

I think Aperture has suffered for many reasons:

1) It was in a poor state when originally released
2) It only works on the Apple platform
3) It's resource hungry compared to LR
4) It's raw converters weren't up to scratch compared to LR

It's maturing though, and compared to LR, it feels and acts like a professional product. I love the comparing modes, and many other features that I feel LR has. LR feel's a lot less professional, although it is a very, very fast application.

I'm sticking with Aperture for the time being, but I do feel I'm on the loosing side here. :-)

[Gabe]

I use it, although primarily as a DAM solution. I think it's great, although it does tend to want some very beefy hardware to run it properly (I find disk I/O to be a MAJOR factor in how well it runs).

I haven't tried Lightroom since the beta, but I really didn't like it in comparison to even very early versions of Aperture.

[paulnorheim]

This has probably less to do with the strengths or weaknesses of Aperture versus Lightroom. If Michael had provided as much material about Aperture as he has made for Lightroom, there would obviously be more posts about Aperture. I don´t say that he should. He makes his choices, and that´s fine. If you compare posts about Canon versus Nikon gear, you would find more about Canon products too. And I don`t think that has much to do with the weaknesses or strengths of one brand versus the other. For the moment, Michael is a Canon and Lightroom user.

People like Bernard Languillier, a Nikon man, provide valuable perspectives and opinions on Nikon gear at LL. To make the Aperture threads more vibrant, LL should have a couple of Aperture users who more frequently could provide their insights, experience and suggestions.

[cheesehead]

Having just bought Aperture and just about to give it up, the following are what I see:

1.  It just doesn't print as well (at least for me) as Iphoto out of the box.  After matching my monitor to the printer (at best an eye ball calibration) it prints as well, but no better. ( again for me ).  But my monitor now suffers.  One up/one down.

2.  As a editor it is some steps better than Iphoto but not nearly as strong as Photoshop Elements .

3. Organization is certainly easier but at 3000 or so photos a year, I can make do with folders or albums as a opposed to Aperture (not really a deal breaker either way)

4. Real deal breaker  There appears to be no easy way to move rolls of pictures from Iphoto  to Aperture after the initial import.  I can't slowly adopt Aperture as a learning tool. If I can't learn it as I go and maintain what works it stays dormant.  

With Photoshop Elements 6 coming out native for the Mac early in 2008 I will probably go there unless I conquer Aperture.

If anyone has suggestions to the above problems please let me know.

Tim

[jfricks]

You might want to visit this site:

http://www.apertureprofessional.com/

[Andy M]

Having been an Aperture user since day one, I'm now about to jump ship

I was hoping Apple would be the benchmark with Aperture - like they are with their other Pro software - but I think Aperture has been found wanting in many areas when compared to Lightroom.

[Bagelturf]

I was suprised to see the ratio of Lightroom to Aperture posts to be so one-sided. I have embraced Aperture but wondered if it's as poular as I thought it was.
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The traffic may be elsewhere. I get plenty on my site, and the Apple discussion forum is pretty busy. There are definitely more Lightroom users though.

[GregW]

- I know a lot of people like myself felt let down with the v1 release.  In many respects it was less stable and less preferment when compared to the then beta Lightroom versions.  

- Initial RAW conversion was pretty ropey.

- People were also very unhappy about the v1 pricing strategy.

- Adobe is a strong brand in a crowded market place that is RAW processing.  The pro video market was not so fragmented when Apple launched Final Cut.

- Perceived integration benefits with Photoshop

- Future availability of 3rd party plugins

Some of these points will be more or less important depending on your needs.

[paulnorheim]

- I know a lot of people like myself felt let down with the v1 release.  In many respects it was less stable and less preferment when compared to the then beta Lightroom versions. 

- Initial RAW conversion was pretty ropey.

- People were also very unhappy about the v1 pricing strategy.

- Adobe is a strong brand in a crowded market place that is RAW processing.  The pro video market was not so fragmented when Apple launched Final Cut.

- Perceived integration benefits with Photoshop

- Future availability of 3rd party plugins

Some of these points will be more or less important depending on your needs.
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Greg, why don`t you turn that argument upside down as well, comparing the current version of Aperture (1.5.4) with the beta version of Lightroom a couple of years ago. You never know: perhaps you could come up with some "more or less important" points that way too?

[pete_truman]

When I first used Aperture I tried and tried to like it but gave up. It was too slow and the idea of having everything inside its database (rather than referenced) was too much when LightRoom Beta came along. I transferred everything to LightRoom and enjoyed it, a great piece of software. When the penultimate beta of LR was released I took an instant dislike to the new interface. Call me stupid, irrational, or whatever, but I just didn't like it. So tried the then current version of Aperture (1.1 I think - as it then had the ability to reference files) and have been using it ever since.

My view on the question is that:
1. Apple Aperture just didn't get it right with the initial release
2. Many people had by then transferred to Lightroom, or had already started using Lightroom and had no reason to switch
3. The Adobe Beta programme effectively locked in many users who just continued to use it once the final version shipped - no compelling need to switch
4. Only Mac users can use Aperture anyway, and there's lots more Windows users out there than Mac (can't see why, but...!!!)

Or maybe its just that Aperture doesn't have as many gremlins as LightRoom to report and discuss!  

I have had a good few issues with Aperture (printing, camera support, database issues) but so far have managed to fix them and am a happy user (most of the time!)

[GregW]

Greg, why don`t you turn that argument upside down as well, comparing the current version of Aperture (1.5.4) with the beta version of Lightroom a couple of years ago. You never know: perhaps you could come up with some "more or less important" points that way too?
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Not at all Paul.  I think the current release is a very good product.  Had Apple released 1.5 instead of 1.0 the current situation would be quite different.  

The future looks good for both products but I do have two remaining concerns.  

Now that Leopard is due for release the developers drafted in to get it finished off should go back to the Aperture team. Apple should ensure that the product does not loose significance within an increasingly expanding consumer product line.  

LR is a small part of Adobe's offering.  Just like Aperture I hope it gets the focus it deserves.  In addition I'd like to see it get a free run and not become hobbled in order to preserve the differentiation between LR and PS e.g. soft proofing.

[paulnorheim]

I agree with your last comment, Greg.

I would guess that Adobe get a lot of Photoshop users to try Lightroom (and often in combination with PS).
   
Apple has all these nice free amateur programs - GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto – that come with the computers. And then they offer the excellent pro versions: Logic Studio, Final Cut, and now Aperture.
   First people may discover the iPod or iPhone, then the computers, and with the computers the free software. And from there, if they like iPhoto, and photography, they may be tempted to buy Aperture. (And after using Aperture for a couple of weeks, they realize that they need a better Mac, because everything is so slow...etc.etc)
   
The point is that the potential customers of Apple and Adobe come from different places.

Since Logic and Final Cut are among the best audio and video editing programs on the marked, Apple has to stay on top with Aperture too. But that argument applies to Adobe as well.
   
I use Aperture, and I have two serious problems with it.
1) They don`t update as often as Lightroom when new cameras are released (and not as many cameras, which is a problem for me, using the Ricoh GR-D as well as a Canon DSLR).
2) Ideally you need the best Apple computers to use Aperture efficiently. And that makes it a much, much more expensive program than Lightroom!

One problem for Adobe, is that their new customers may become confused, when they try to choose between Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom.
   You have to understand something about the principal differences between Photoshop and Lightroom, before you know what to choose.
   For Apple this is not a problem: you don`t need to understand much; you may as well misunderstand, or just think that one of them is "amateur" and the other one is "pro" – and go from there.

I can`t see any other solution for Adobe, than to offer Elements only to people who buy other Adobe products. Let´s say that Lightroom buyers get Elements for free (or, say, for 30 US$), as a way to tempt them to buy the expensive program as a supplement to Lightroom.

In any case, both Aperture and Lightroom (which I used a lot in beta) are great programs, and I hope the competition over time will only make them better.

[JKendig]

We're out here and still trying to convince ourselves that the switch to Aperture was a good decision. I am still trying to figure out how to export the original raw or masters on a project basis, not one image at a time. Any help from fellow users would be appreciated.

[john beardsworth]

I am still trying to figure out how to export the original raw or masters on a project basis, not one image at a time. Any help from fellow users would be appreciated.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=143790\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

File > Export > Export Masters

In Subfolder Format, select Project Name. Also tick Create IPTC4XMP sidecar files.

John

[stevesimon1]

I had been waiting for an image processing software to come out like Aperture. The one weak link in my digital system, was image archiving. I knew i would have to jump in at some point, but learning a new piece of software like Portfolio or I-View, well i just didn't have the time.

Aperture had it all and with version 1.5, so  I  decided to embrace this software over Lightroom, which I'm sure is good, I just don't feel the need to look further. My feeling is that Aperture's learning curve is a bit steeper and because you need a fast mac with appropriate graphics card, some who tried were turned off by its "slow" respones older machines or did not have the patience to learn to love it.

I think that as this software evolves, it's just going to get better and faster and I just hope that photographers out there give it more of a chance.

(I  should disclose that I chose to become an Apple Certified Trainer in Aperture, to learn the software better and hope to work with Apple at some point in the future. I also contribute to the http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/apple_aperture/Inside Aperture Blog. )

[Gregory]

I've used Aperture since the Intel version was released; i.e., April of 2006. it's fairly straight forward and works very well for me so I never need to discuss it.

that said, there are shortcomings that I would like to see improved hopefully real soon with a v2 upgrade.

sharpening
the new Edge Sharpen might work for some people and I've found it ok for printing but it's difficult to see precisely what the controls are doing to the image. if 1:4 is the most appropriate ratio at which to preview sharpened images, we're out of luck because there is no such ratio in Aperture unless your screen's viewing area just happens to be 1/4 of the size of the original images.

no matter what I do, I can never sharpen and export images for web viewing as nicely as Photokit Sharpener can (because Aperture's sharpening is applied pre-resizing and is not resolution dependent), and I don't really want to spend time trying to find the best sharpening parameters for each photo either. consequently, I've just purchased my first-ever copy of Photoshop so that I can use Photokit Sharpener (Adobe should pay the PixelGenius guys).

printing
printing passport photographs should be simple but it's almost impossible in Aperture. there is no way to change the page size of the (editable) books, and there is no way to customise the size, position and arrangement of photographs on a single page. in books, there is also no way to know what size you're resizing the images to except by trial and error.

one work-around is to export the images to another app, or use iWork's Pages which can link directly to Aperture's library. unfortunately, Pages doesn't have the same printing controls that Aperture has so if you're trying to get the best output possible, Pages may not be an option.

another work-around would be to use Pages with ImagePrint to combine flexible and powerful layout with excellent printing quality but that would be a very expensive work-around.

metadata
I would like to include metadata with my web images but only a subset. this is currently not an option in Aperture. it's either all or none.

speed
now that I'm processing 1D Mark III RAW images, I'm beginning to consider upgrading to the fastest iMac available. Aperture can be slow at times with 10 megapixel images and it's RAM hungry. my early-2006 iMac can only recognise 2GB of RAM so I'm pushing its limits with Aperture and 10 megapixel images.


everything else in Aperture is fabulous and I get excellent (to my taste) results relatively painlessly. again, there have been no rumors about v2 but I hope it's coming soon, eg January or April of 2008, and I think there's an excellent chance that this will happen. with the release of iPhoto '08, Aperture has almost no advantages over iPhoto which makes it a really hard sell to everyone except the real professionals. Aperture's sales have almost certainly been cannibalised by the new iPhoto.

regards,
Gregory

[julian_love]

I bought Aperture when v1.5 came out and used it as my primary imaging program for several months. Then I got a free copy of LR as I was a previous Rawshooter user on the PC, and I switched over to LR shortly afterwards for 3 reasons:

1) Dust sport removal - the spotting tool is so much quicker and easier to use in LR

2) Keywords - while Aperture supports keyword hierchies, it will only export the actual keywords you typed in, not those higher up the hierarchy. So the hierarchy feature is essentially useless for keywording images that you then export.

3) With 40,000 images in my library, it is a lot slower than LR, and this was on a brand new MacBook Pro 2.33 Ghz with 3GB ram.

I shoot a lot of stock, and have to dust spot and keyword every image I send out, so these are big limitations for me....others may not find them so important. I did prefer the modeless interface, loupe view and a few other features of Aperture though, but they didn't directly contribute to my workflow.


Julian