Photoshop versus Aperture

[calmaxgan]

I was in a shop this morning looking at the iMacs and asking about all the things I would need to do to convert from a PC, the cost of photo editing software being a major one. The guy in the shop suggested looking at Aperture as an alternative and I had seen it advertised only that morning on the Apple site. However, it concentrated on the galleries, browing etc rather than editing capabilities.

How does it compare to Photoshop? I am currently using CS3. Does it still work with layers? If I can get around picking up a student version on CS4 using my niece's student ID, there's not a lot of cost difference, but still thought it worth an ask to see who uses Aperture and how it measures up.

Thanks

[Calxoddity]

Hi,
You need both - Aperture is equivalent to Lightroom, not Photoshop.

Aperture is good for raw processing and digital asset management, with some basic editing capability. CS3 gives you layers and heavy editing capability.

Now that I have Aperture, most of my photos don't touch PS - only those ones where I want to play with gradient layers or stitching into panoramas.

I have the 24" 2.8GHz iMac with 4GB RAM and am very happy with it. For the same price I could now get a quad-core 27" unit!!

Regards,
Calx

[calmaxgan]

Great, thanks!

I currently use Canon's DPP for raw processing and converting and then do anything extra in CS3. I'm assuming (although I haven't checked) there will be a Mac CD for DPP so I shouldn't need to look at Aperture.

Pretty sure the guy in the store thought they were comparable... might have to enlighten him!

[Calxoddity]

Go back to the Apple store and locate an iMac running Aperture and have a play - you may find you like it better than DPP. I no longer used Nikon ViewNX - it's all done in Aperture.

Regards,
Calx

[jev]

No, DPP is no replacement for Aperture. The main goal for Aperture is digital asset management - as a bonus it does provide some basic (and often enough) editing capabilities. DPP is a RAW convertor pure sang. No DAM, no advanced editing (not even a free rotation).

[Colourised]

being a photoshop user for quite sometime, i tried Aperture for a short while. eventhough the interface is fairly easy and straight forward. imho it doesnt suit me i guess. and there is only little editing enhancements compared to CS4.. which made me turn back to CS4 anyway. (as mentioned, working with layers/filters/etc) and now i never touch aperture.

but then again, its up to u to try it out and decide which would be best for you!

[Calxoddity]

being a photoshop user for quite sometime, i tried Aperture for a short while. eventhough the interface is fairly easy and straight forward. imho it doesnt suit me i guess. and there is only little editing enhancements compared to CS4.. which made me turn back to CS4 anyway. (as mentioned, working with layers/filters/etc) and now i never touch aperture.

but then again, its up to u to try it out and decide which would be best for you!

Interesting - after getting both PSE and Aperture (not being sure which way things would end up), I found 95% Aperture and 5% PSE usage. I rarely "edit" - it's more WB adjustment, keywords, rating, raw tweaking, collection management - and Aperture rocks at this.

A common subtext in many fora seems to be that if you have been using PS and have become immune to Adobe's interpretation of what passes for interface design, it's hard to change to something else. I'd love to test this theory some day....

Regards,
Calx

[chaz]

I'm moved to CS3 on an iMac 24" 2.8GHz with 4GB RAM last year and am very happy with the system. Made the move because I did a Photoshop night class at the local uni and the lab was all iMacs, and I really enjoyed the simple elegance of the MacOS. My PC system was 2005 vintage so was due for upgrade anyway, so i bit the bullet and went Mac. Truth is I only use about 10% of PS, but am gradually working my way into its inner depths (dark in there). Go Mac and be virus-free happy.

[calmaxgan]

It sounds as though it comes back to where you do most of your editing... I'm nowhere near the level of most of you with what I shoot in the first place, so I usually only do any white balance, colour etc tweaking in DPP and do everything else in Photoshop (levels and curves, healing brush etc). When I make the jump to Mac I don't initially want to be spending any more than I need to. Hopefully as my photos get better SOOC I can switch.

(That being said, though I have just been processing a bunch I just shot of my cat (for his birthday!) and was pleased I did very little to them in PS - just some overlays to boost the contrast and up his colours).

Thanks for all your thoughts/opinions. So many decisions to make!!

[Colourised]

yes i guess it definitely comes down to user preferences and individual usage. if you think that less is more/more is less) then by all means go for which suits!

i guess i enjoy tweaking raw in PS4 and is abit lazy to start a new learning curve with aperture

[HItching]

I believe that a lot of it up to taste as others have said.

My workflow is
import to Lightroom
sort and catalogue
Then out to Photoshop if necessary
Back to lightroom

Lightroom is my main workflow management tool, an I believe it has a few advantages over Aperture. The biggest is presets. I have made or boought no hundreds of presets - like actions for photoshop. These signifigantly reducing my processing time and invaluable to me

If it help aperture has less that 6% of it's target market i believe. Have tried both but prefer Lightroom.

Yes I use now mostly mac but also have pc as well
Hope it helps

[chaz]

Hitching I'd be interested to know what your workflow volumes are? I'm still using the last Raw converter in CS3 (4.6?) but understand that its been upgraded in CS4 and Lightroom. Because my volumes are modest - maybe a few 100 shots a month averaged - I use Bridge to take care of the front end workflow of images, including the step into Raw processing, and that's fine. I'm not inclined to upgrade to CS4 because I doubt I'd notice the difference except to Bridge and the Raw converter, but I have thought of getting Lightroom? Presets sound helpful, what are your major ones?