# Lightroom or Aperture for friend



## Drizzt321 (Nov 5, 2013)

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.


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## Jim Saunders (Nov 5, 2013)

I suspect this will boil down to Coke vs Pepsi. I'm partial to Lightroom but consider that I've never used Aperture. LR5 has some editing features that nearly step on PS's toes.

Jim


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 5, 2013)

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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## Drizzt321 (Nov 5, 2013)

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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## neuroanatomist (Nov 5, 2013)

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 (Nov 5, 2013)

Hmmm...just saw elsewhere...what about Picasa?


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## dstppy (Nov 5, 2013)

Drizzt321 said:


> Hmmm...just saw elsewhere...what about Picasa?



Google is evil. Just say no to Google.

--- 
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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## Drizzt321 (Nov 5, 2013)

dstppy said:


> Drizzt321 said:
> 
> 
> > Hmmm...just saw elsewhere...what about Picasa?
> ...



Ok, thanks, just another options that occurred to me.


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## j1jenkins (Nov 5, 2013)

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 (Nov 5, 2013)

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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## Drizzt321 (Nov 5, 2013)

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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## Drizzt321 (Nov 6, 2013)

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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## jpaana (Nov 6, 2013)

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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## c-law (Nov 6, 2013)

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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## Northstar (Nov 6, 2013)

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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## Ruined (Nov 6, 2013)

I am very impressed with Lightroom. The latest 5.2 version runs flawlessly even on my ASUS T100TA Tablet convertible- which is a fantastic $399 1.8GHz quad core Intel Atom Bay Trail chipset w/ 2GB RAM. Impressive such a powerful tool is coded well enough that it is light on resources.


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## curtisnull (Nov 6, 2013)

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 (Nov 6, 2013)

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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## neuroanatomist (Nov 6, 2013)

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.


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## Dick (Nov 6, 2013)

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: 






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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## Arctic Photo (Nov 6, 2013)

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.


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.


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## j1jenkins (Nov 6, 2013)

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.


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## Drizzt321 (Nov 6, 2013)

j1jenkins said:


> 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).



j1jenkins said:


> 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.


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## keithfullermusic (Nov 6, 2013)

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.


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## BoneDoc (Nov 6, 2013)

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)


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## David_in_Seattle (Nov 6, 2013)

Drizzt321 said:


> 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.


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 6, 2013)

keithfullermusic said:


> 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.


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## keithfullermusic (Nov 6, 2013)

neuroanatomist said:


> keithfullermusic said:
> 
> 
> > i haven't read the replies,
> ...



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.


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## Drizzt321 (Nov 6, 2013)

keithfullermusic said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > keithfullermusic said:
> ...



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


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## kbmelb (Nov 6, 2013)

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.


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## Drizzt321 (Nov 7, 2013)

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.


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## F700 (Nov 11, 2013)

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


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