Aperture3 v lightroom3

[FocusOn]

Hello!!

Does anyone know which is better. Aperture 3 or Lightroom 3?
I have a Mac so using Aperture isn't a problem.
I have Photoshop CS5 but like the idea of also having simple editing software as well.

[98kellrs]

I use LR3 and love it, realy simple and great for improving and streamlining your workflow. Can't comment on A3. I beleive they both offer a free 30-day trial so download them both and see which one suits you best.

[FinancialWar]

Lightroom is the industry standard, even in the Mac community.

[ricktas]

Both are good. Both do basically the same thing. What it comes down to is personal preference. People tend to find ones 'feels' better to them than the other. Download the 30 days trials of both and have a play and choose the one that suits you!

[oldfart]

Lightroom 4 beta is available, and well worth the look.

[BillB]

I have both and use Lightroom 3 probably 99% of the time.

[Kym]

Lightroom is the industry standard, even in the Mac community.

I use LR on Windows and like it, but that is a big statement. Aperture has a big and passionate following in Mac land, with good reason.

From another forum...

Aperture in general has always been much better than Lightroom as a DAM program. Lightroom just places images in a standard folder hierarchy, and even though they added "collections", they are kept separate from the folders they belong with. Apple's concept of having "projects" that can have Albums, Smart Albums, Book Albums, Slideshow Albums, etc, inside the Project is genius, and being able to arrange those Projects inside higher level folders, with Albums and Smart Albums at the root level also, together with arrangement of Albums inside of Projects with folders is also genius. And, if you allow AP3 to do it's job of managing your images, you can use the Vault concept for total Backup security. Now, in AP3, they have added the ability to split a large Library into smaller Libraries, or to merge smaller Libraries into larger single Libraries. And they have added the ability to switch between Libraries without restarting the program. So they have taken a program that already was way better than LR as a DAM program, and made it better. And, by the way, you can now use it for your video clips and audio clips!!

LR 4 has some improvements to collections vis-à-vis they are now integrated.

[FinancialWar]

Aperture has a big and passionate following in Mac land, with good reason.

Lightroom's Mac marketshare is four time bigger than Aperture's. When you can in PC, it's even bigger.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09...erture_09.html

[I @ M]

Lightroom's Mac marketshare is four time bigger than Aperture's. When you can in PC, it's even bigger.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09...erture_09.html

Replying with figures from last decade are pretty obscure ways presenting statistics warakawa.

Both programs have plenty of followers for many reasons.

Fanboyism is possibly one of them ----

[Kym]

Lightroom's Mac marketshare is four time bigger than Aperture's. When you can in PC, it's even bigger.

Never said that Aperture had more than LR. And a larger market share does not mean better either. (M$ Windows as a case in point)

[FinancialWar]

Replying with figures from last decade are pretty obscure ways presenting statistics warakawa.

Both programs have plenty of followers for many reasons.

Fanboyism is possibly one of them ----

if you can provide me with a more updated reliable data, I'd be more than happy to study it.

[arthurking83]

What I want to know is .. how is a piece of information such as total useage numbers relevant as an argument for whether a product is 'RIGHT FOR YOU'?

The fact that a large number of people use a product doesn't necessarily make it better than any competing product.
To me this is only indicative of a more aggressive marketing campaign by the manufacturer!

I for one can't stand the workflow method that LR forces the user into adopting!
Have no experience with Aperture, but with LR, the forced use upon the operator to catalogue each image when all that may be required is a simple and quick edit.... is unforgivable!!
Did they ever stop to consider that not every image HAS to be catalogued!!
From my searching, you can't turn this feature off.

So far from what I've seen with Corel's new AFP(the old Bibble) this is not forced onto the operator and you can choose to simply open the file and edit.
Of course you can also catalogue the images if you wish to do so. ... but the point is that the company allows the user to choose how to run their software.

FWIW: I choose to stick with IDImager for cataloging my images.. but again that's not the point.

Ultimately, I've decided to uninstall LR3 as I never used it as much as I thought I would.. the noise reduction tool worked well tho, but my main use of it was to simply have the ability to open raw files from manufacturers other than my chosen brand.

Even if I were in the 'industry' myself as a paid professional, I'd still prefer not to use this 'industry standard' software.

Software is the type of product that needs to meet the users specific requirements, not to meet some kind of standard.

The only standard required of the software is to produce industry standard output formats(which they all do), as that is where compatibility and consistency is required.

As Kym said, Windows has the largest user base and would therefore be the industry standard for computer usage requirements, and yet many people prefer to use Apple and any flavour of Linuxes too.

[I @ M]

if you can provide me with a more updated reliable data, I'd be more than happy to study it.

Well, I can't provide you with any newer stats actually.

The main reasons are,

#1 I am not interested in either program so I am not interested in hunting down figures on which program has more users currently in exactly the same way that I am not interested in giving any credence to 3 year old statistics.

#2 The fact that it was a survey of a very limited number of users ( 1045 North American ) by a company that is paid to do surveys always makes me wonder who is paying them and are they open to being paid for selective results.

[Kym]

BTW Neither Windows nor Lightroom are industry standards!
I.e. show me an ISO/IEEE/IETF/W3C/IEC/ECMA reference that makes them a standard?

In fact M$ implement things that are anti-standard ... but that is another story.

[FinancialWar]

BTW Neither Windows nor Lightroom are industry standards!
I.e. show me an ISO/IEEE/IETF/W3C/IEC/ECMA reference that makes them a standard?

In fact M$ implement things that are anti-standard ... but that is another story.

sorry, this maybe due to my limited experience in the photography industry, I went to apply for a part time tafe course, and in the interview they asked me if I know how to use photography and lightroom.

And also in many other photography on the internet, Lightroom is when people about.

[arthurking83]

sorry, this maybe due to my limited experience in the photography industry, I went to apply for a part time tafe course, and in the interview they asked me if I know how to use photography and lightroom.

......

So you have based this notion of Photoshop and Lightroom as the industry standard on the premise that a TAFE institution has asked you this question?

You should have replied with a question as to how this is relevant to photography.

Did they teach photography prior to the widespread use of digital imagery(whether scanned or directly captured), or the introduction of photoshop?
If so, what software did they choose as the standard back then.

While it can be used for processing images, there is no law that stipulates the use of either program, and if they were truly an institution of any worth, the use of particular branded software wouldn't be cause for concern.
Maybe they were simply asking the question for the sake of asking the question .. ie. they had no other question to ask, and simply needed 'fill in time'.

[FinancialWar]

as with typical photography scene, this thread is full of Mac fan boys.

[Kym]

as with typical photography scene, this thread is full of Mac fan boys.

Hardly! I don't use a Mac, but I recognise that Aperture has a strong following because it is a good product.
Photoshop started as a Mac product, and was not ported to Windows til v2.5,
and was one of the reasons Mac's have been strong in the graphics market
(as well as other Mac only products, Freehand from Macromedia being another example).

Given that Mac has been the graphics industry platform of choice for many years,
it is no surprise that a lot of photographers use Macs.

Dissing the posters of this thread as being Mac fanbois seems to have bought you a two week ban from one of the other mods.