Aperture 3 vs. Lightroom Review

SUMMARY

I have used Lightroom for a few years since its first release.  I tried Aperture 1 and Aperture 2 and never found them compelling enough to switch from Lightroom.  Unless Lightroom 3 has video support (like Aperture 3) when it is released,  I  will be buying  a copy of Aperture 3.

My biggest headache before I used Lightroom  was getting through the editing process for weddings.   I was using Photo Mechanic for file management, Capture One for RAW processing,  and Photoshop to do any special effects or cleanup.  It would take me days to edit the 400 to 500 images from each wedding.  Lightroom cut that time in half.  The RAW processing wasn't as good as Capture One but the productivity gains far out weighed the image quality difference.  In my opinion, for smaller jobs where you have less than a couple dozen photos that you edit,  the editing workflow / products you use isn't going to make that much difference in your productivity. For bigger jobs, products like Lightroom can save your marriage.

The other headache that I have had was managing my photos and videos for my personal/home photography.  I see myself adding video to my professional work in the near future, so this fusion thing is important to me.  I tried IPhoto with IMovie but I found them kludgy and I just never liked how Apple would try to make the programs simple for the novice user and take away the ability to really manage your files (if you wanted to).   I also tried to use Lightroom and IMovie but that was not very elegant either. Aperture 3 allows me to manage my home photos and videos in the same program, store files where I want them, and produce great sideshows that integrate still photos, video, music, text and transitions in a very elegant manner.  

SO WHY DON'T I SWITCH MY PROFESSIONAL WORK TO APERTURE 3?

IT IS TOO SLOW!!!

What do I mean by slow.  The Aperture 3 user interface does not allow me to edit photos as fast as Lightroom, and the system is just too slow to keep up with my editing.  I found I was constantly waiting for the program to catch up to me.  These two things would kill my productivity when editing  large jobs ..... TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. On the other hand, when it comes to my personal photo and video editing,  Aperture 3 cut my editing time in half, made the management of photos and videos a breeze, and my output looks better than ever .... A REAL WINNER.  

THE DETAILS

Lightroom Beta 3 vs. Aperture 3

WHY IS APERTURE 3's INTERFACE SLOWER TO USE

The interface is not as intuitive as Lightrooms and many things take more steps in Aperture 3 than in Lighroom.  I tried to not critique things that I felt were "better" in Lightroom because I was more familiar with them.   When I began to use Lightroom years ago I don't remember struggling with the interface like I do with Aperture.  This may change with more Aperture usage ... we'll see.

• Cropping and Straightening - I use these tools on almost every photo ... this is big ... in Aperture 3 you hit the C key which brings up the crop window, instead of giving me an open crop window that fills the frame like Lightroom, I have to drag the window from end to end. If I want to straighten a photo in Aperture 3 I have to hit the G key and then hold down my mouse and move up and down to tilt the photo one way or the other.  The Lightroom crop  tool also allows you to straighten the photo by tilting the crop box.  The Aperture 3 straighten tool seemed a bit jumpy and was much harder to control than Lightrooms.   For five photos no big deal, but for 500 photos it adds up.
• White Balance - This is something most photographers adjust on almost every image so you think it would be fast to get to, you have to hit Command-Shift-W in Aperture 3 to bring up the White Balance tool vs. just hitting W in Lightroom.  There is no Auto WB in Aperture and I had to go up to the presets drop down menu to get options such as Flash, Tungsten, etc..  In Lightroom all the options are right there in the white balance box. 
• Crashing - Aperture 3 just crashed on me as I am writing this article ... Lightroom isn't perfect in this category either, but seems much more stable than Aperture 3 at this point.  I haven't lost any work in Aperture 3, but it just frustrating when it  keeps crashing. 
• Retouch - I  love the ability to make free-form strokes with Aperture 3's retouch brush. In Lightroom you are restricted to circles.  But if you make say 10 adjustments in Aperture and you want to edit the first retouch adjustment you made, you have to DELETE the nine adjustments that you made after the first adjustment to that to get to the first one.  I found this almost unbelievable.  And there was no way to bring up another retouch panel in Aperture to try to keep them separate and editable.   In Lightroom you just hit H and it brings up little circles to designate where your retouches are and you can click on them and edit them individually. 
• Adjustment Brush - Aperture 3 added this feature in this new release ... it was badly needed.  It gives you more parameters that you can "brush" onto your image than Lightroom does.  Things like curves,  blur (Lightroom doesn't have this at all),  and noise reduction.   But one thing that I like about Lightroom's implementation is that it allows you to paint the mask of the area that you want to adjust and then you can change multiple parameters (brightness, saturation, contrast, color, etc.) of the area that is masked.  In Aperture 3 you can only change one paramater per mask and if you want to change another parameter you have to repaint the mask.  I couldn't find a way to lift and stamp a mask from one adjustment brush to another.  The way I work, the Lightroom method seems to be quicker and more flexible.
• Speed - I have a MacPro  .. here are the specs

• Model Name:    Mac Pro
•   Model Identifier:    MacPro1,1
•   Processor Name:    Dual-Core Intel Xeon
•   Processor Speed:    2.66 GHz
•   Number Of Processors:    2
•   Total Number Of Cores:    4
•   L2 Cache (per processor):    4 MB
•   Memory:    7 GB
•   Bus Speed:    1.33 GH

• •  and a Mac Book with 2.4Ghz processors and 4GB RAM.
  • Neither machine is brand new, but I  would consider them a bit above average.  
  • Lightroom runs fine on both machines.  
  • I find that the "Processing" indicator is flashing a lot in Aperture 3.  More importantly I find that  when I change something in Aperture it takes a second for two for the program to catch up and reflect the changes on the screen.  This can be REAL FRUSTRATING.  When I would use an adjustment brush I would go over an area and nothing would appear on the screen and my first reaction was to do brush over the area again, only to find out a few seconds later that Aperture did pick up my first stroke but it took a few seconds to appear on screen.  This is a SHOW STOPPER for large volume work.
• PHOTOSHOP Interface - Lightroom allows you to select multiple images and have Photoshop open them as layers.  I don't  do this that often, but when I need to it sure is nice to do this with one click of the button.  From what I can see Aperture can't do that.  Also, you can choose in Lightroom to pass your RAW file directly to Photoshop without creating a TIFF, PSD, or JPEG file.  This is possible because Photoshop and Lightroom share the same RAW engine, Adobe Camera Raw.  If you make adjustments to your file in Photoshop, Photoshop will have to generate a TIFF, PSD, or JPEG file to send back to Lightroom.  On a number of occasions I go into Photoshop to "tryout" some enhancement and decide I didn't like the way it looked and I just closed the file without saving it and there was no 40MB PSD file that was created unnecessarily.  Aperture can't do this. 
• Gradient Tool - Lightroom has it, Aperture doesn't.  You can try to brush in a gradient in Aperture but it will take time and probably not look as good.
• Syncing Adjustments -  both products can sync adjustments that you make on one photo and sync them with other photos in the library.  The Previous button in Lightroom is a big  time saver, it just takes the last photo that you just worked on and applies those adjustments to the current photo.  If you select multiple files from the browser and hit the sync button in Lightoom a window will all the adjustment parameters and you can select which ones you want to sync.  Aperture allows you to hit the O key to bring up the Lift and Stamp menu box and then you have to hit the little triangle to expand either the Metadata or Adjustments options and then you can select which options you want.  To me the Aperture way seemed kludgy, but maybe this is one of those things you get better at with time.

In my opinion the above items are what keeps Aperture 3 from becoming my editing tool for my professional work.   Aperture only runs on a Mac, so if you are using Windows,  Lightroom is your only choice. There are some great things (that I didn't mention above) that Aperture does that Lightroom  doesn't incorporate.

• VIDEO SUPPORT - this is huge.  With the fusion thing happening, this really is needed. The video editing is pretty much limited to trimming your video in Aperture, but being able to manage it in the same database as your images and create very professional sideshows that integrate video, stills, music, and text is a game changer.
• BOOKS - Aperture has had a very nice book creation feature.  This is great if you want to design albums or photobooks.  Lightroom doesn't have anything like this. 
• Face recognition - I don't use this, but some people really like it.
• Places - You can use GPS data or locate where the photo was taken on a map
• Blur - the ability to add blur is really helpful, it saves me a few trips to Photoshop.
• Skin Softening - Aperture does a nice of this. Lightroom tries to do softening by reducing the contrast (Clarity) in a given area, but it isn't as good as Aperture.
• Tether Support -  Aperture can tether to a number of DSLRs.   Lightroom can't do it directly.  You have to use a third party program for tethering with Lightroom and Lightroom just monitors the directory with the images and imports them into Lightroom.

There are things like camera support, camera calibration, sharpening, noise reduction, web galleries, printing, etc. that both do but implement them differently.  For some photographers, these may be show stoppers for them, they just aren't critical for me. There are a lot of other things that one program has over the other, some of them are objective and some are subjective.  I tried to stay away from the subjective.  As I continue to use Aperture 3 and learn more about it I will update this post.

Comments

[mbmedia]

Thanks for your review. I have an almost identical machine combination as you, but don't experience the lag you describe in aperture. I also do large volume work, and use aperture primarily because the raw decode itself is about 2-3x faster than both lightroom 2/3 on my hardware. If I click on a raw file, and time how long it takes before I can start making adjustments, its about 2-3 seconds for a 5d2 raw in aperture 3, and about 7-10 in ACR. To me this is a bigger show stopper, but I don't have any of the Lag issues you mentioned when making adjustments on both my mac pro and macbook pro.

If you have a radeon x1900, that is definitely an aperture bottleneck for making adjustments in real time - your laptop would be much faster. There are some settings that are always on by default in aperture that can lead to UI slowness. Particularly "automatic preview generation" turn this off in your preferences and that should affect some things. As well as "faces".

[Len Spoden]

Here are some comments that were made by someone from DPReivew:

Missing from this review:

How many images? What settings for each program were being used? Why the processing in the background?

Cropping comments: closed window vs open window? Okay. I prefer closed and starting from the point in the image I wish to include/exclude. Either way, the amount of adjustments made to the crop box is virtually the same. What about the presets in Aperture and ability to customize the crop size for multiple photos?

Straightening: I agree. Lightroom straightening is more fluid and has quicker access.

White Balance: The slider/values are in the inspector window. What has to be brought up? Why are photographers adjusting this value on every image? Custom white balancing images prior to the shoot is the easiest way. Not many photographers are changing every photo's white balance, are they? Either way, the tool is available on the inspector box. It is not buried, nor requires a keyboard shortcut.

Crashing: It will crash if you are still processing images. Which brings me to my question: How many images in the library for comparison? Was the faces feature enabled and was the computer processing faces? Sounds like your import wasn't finished.

Retouching: Agree. Linear undo and redo is limiting.

Thought it was possible to reuse the mask. Perhaps not, but I haven't tried this yet.

Speed: Lightroom is very quick and responsive for certain adjustments and tasks. But this can be debated depending on whether your computer is continuing to process images in the background.

Comments at the end of your review should be elaborated:

The Book tool is really a layout tool in Aperture, allowing you to create PDFs without the need of a separate program. This feature of Aperture is growing and becoming more useful with each generation.

Slideshows can be output in different sizes/formats. Though not as capable as quicktime Pro, it is still very useful and presents less of a need for video editing software for decent slideshows/presentations, especially on the fly or in a shooting event situation.

Places works very well and is sophisticated in its execution. If you plug in an iphone, GPS device, etc.. and then import your photos, Aperture scans your photo library or GPS data on each device and then asks if the photos being imported should be tagged with the place associated with the device/GPS coordinates based on similar time/date stamps.

Not mentioned:

If photoshop is used as an external editor, Aperture must flatten the image and it balloons in size to be more than 3-4 times as large as the original file. Not an elegant solution.

Plugin Architecture of Aperture: For wedding photographers, certain high end book publishers make plug-ins for Aperture to allow easy layout/exporting directly from the program to the publisher. In addition, other plugins available for Aperture (lens correction, noise reduction, special effects, additional adjustment/controls, portrait tools, etc.. make Aperture a platform with which one can build upon the feature set and ease of Aperture use without leaving the program. The penalty for this kind of delay, say to export a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop for editing and then back to Lightroom, is considerable for some users.

Quality of Raw Conversion: Lightroom may have the advantage here as it may retain a little more dynamic range. This is somewhat subjective, and both programs can be made to appear similar, but many would agree that Lightroom RAW conversion is top notch. In addition, Adobe updates RAW conversions quicker than Aperture. This is not a subjective comment. Just ask a Panasonic GH1 user. GF1 users may still be out of luck with Aperture....

Price: Aperture is, at this time, less expensive than Lightroom.

Platform synergies: Aperture is woven into the Apple Platform seamlessly with other Apple software. Lightroom cannot output to mobileme galleries directly from within the program, for example. iMovie, FCE, FCP, etc.. integrate very well with Aperture. In addition, Aperture integrates well with other devices such as AppleTV. Therefore, many Apple multimedia users may find Aperture worthy of consideration for integration alone. Lightroom is multi-platform and will appeal to users with a combination of hardware. Lightroom has many synergies with Photoshop and InDesign.

Aperture is for the prosumer user with multimedia focus. Aperture is also a good choice for studio users who wish to have more features than say...Capture One which competes directly in this type of space. Lightroom is for user trying to achieve professional publication results for printed media and a user of InDesign or Photoshop as layout/editing tools.

Also not mentioned are the differences from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3. For example: One major difference is that the mouse wheel can no longer scroll through photos in the viewer in full screen mode or regular mode. Arrow keys only. Another difference is that a double click on the viewer in full screen mode calls up larger thumbnails or previews which CAN be scrolled via Mouse wheel. This may change workflow for many users accustomed to the prior version of Aperture. There are numerous other differences.

Just a few thoughts. Thanks for the link.

[AlexK]

(Background: I've been using Aperture from its beginning, but started playing with the LR3 beta when it came out.)

My biggest gripe with Aperture is that the adjustment brushes behave (to me) oddly: in Lightroom as in Photoshop (and for most media, in real life, too) brushes are additive, in that if you first draw a stroke at 50%, then go over it repeatedly with a "10%" brush, you can eventually get it to 100%, which I really like for fine adjustments. In Aperture, in places where multiple strokes overlap, you get the "max" of the two --- in other words, to add a little strength to a preexisting stroke, you have to remember what %age that was drawn with, then set the strength of the new stroke to that plus a bit (which is hard to do if you're touching up work you did, say, an hour ago). [Note: I dodge and burn images a *lot*, enjoying that it's *so* much easier (and powerful) than in a chemical darkroom. YMMV.]

Oddly enough, the "eraser" version of the Aperture brushes *is* additive. So it's not like Apple is unaware of that approach.

Also, I find that even at maximum softness, the Aperture brushes are still very "hard", roughly comparable to 60+% hardness in Photoshop terms. Makes it harder to build gentle transitions.

And finally, there's the fact (pointed out by many others) that in LR, I can paint in one area and apply multiple adjustments to it, whereas in Aperture, I have to manually recreate the mask for each adjustment.

Normally, Apple beats competitors hands-down on usability/interface (still like Aperture's interface a bit better than LR's), but on this iteration, they (to me) seem to have goofed.

What are your experiences with brushes?

[Art Colley]

I am working with Aperture for one main reason, and that is over the years I have accumulated a very large digital photo file, including scans of photos dating to the '40's. So I am looking at 30,000 files, which include TIFF, JPEG, and some RAW from my digital cameras.

But "Faces" is like a miracle to me because for the first time since I started going digital with my photos in 1999, I can let the computer help me find photos of people so I can organize this mess. Faces is certainly not perfect, but is quite good, and I have found many photos of people I did not know I even had any more. But... Because of the database size, it is slow. I don't mind much because it is cleaning up the mess.

Here is the question I have: Once that basic cleanup is done, can the database of files be broken up into different Libraries, like "Family", "Friends", College", and well you get the idea. The resulting folders of files (libraries?) would be smaller, and the question is could that relieve the speed issue? New Photography would easily be loaded into these folders, or imported into the libraries? It seems straightforward to me.

That process was described crudely, because I only have a few hours experience with Aperture 3, but have already organized thousands of photos-a miracle!

Despite the crudeness of my question, would a process like I describe work?

Oh, and for information, I have an older mac pro like the one described, but I have 8GB RAM, and a much more advanced (newer) Radeon 3870 card, and only one monitor on it (Cinema 30). In a spare slot I have an older NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT to run 2 smaller monitors, but they are not usually used in the Aperture work flow. Could they be an issue if they are just "idling" with the wallpaper on them?

Thanks for your consideration.

I hope you understand, for me the organizing feature is such a breakthrough that I simply have to have it. So I am willing to do what I need to do to make just that work. I have always had Photoshop, and can still use it, though I do not do much post processing.

Arthur

[Kevin H.]

Having tried LR3beta for 6 months I now use A3 exclusively. My computer set-up is similar to yours MBP but currently with 4GB installed.

I thought your review a very fair reflection in most aspects and certainly not a LR3 fanboy review. However just a couple of points from the article and responses above :

1. I don't see the lag on my MBP you are seeing.
2. Auto WB. If needed as you stated it can be accessed from the menu however since one of the first steps in my workflow is to go to Curves there is usually no need for any WB adjustment as that has been taken care of. If necessary then the WB Brick is more than capable of quickly & easily making any further fine adjustment you may feel is required.
3. I have to wonder if you are working in Full-screen ? I almost always work in full-screen and calling up the HUD (H) or working from the one-click pop-up menu at the top of the screen puts all my tools in my hand immediately.
4. Straighten - same as 3. working in full screen mode the grid pops up and it is simple (and smoothly I should add) implements adjustments.
5. Speed - loading is extremely fast in comparison to LR3, especially on start up and when importing. Though Bibble Pro 5 is like lightening compared to either LR3 or A3.
6. Mouse wheel scroll - this is now used for brush size adjustment, which works very well indeed when working on a photo, except as mentioned when in thumbnail view.
7. Retouching - absolutely agree, this is a pain if required.
8. Crashing - in A3 it hardly ever happens, certainly far less than LR3 or Bibble Pro 5.
9. Blur tool - this is fantastic and I actually also often use this instead of the noise reduction tool to create noise-free ultra creamy bokeh.
10. Intuitive interface - having tried LR3, A3 and Bibble Pro 5 I actually found the A3 interface the most intuitive, however I really do think that this depends on your experience of other products too (PS or Elements for example). BP5 is very much like LR3.
11. One of the huge advantages of A3 is managing your library, it is so easy in A3 whereas I found LR3 to be anything but.
12. There is a vast library of plug-ins, and especially pre-sets, for LR3 that I greatly enjoyed using and found to be a big timesaver - A3 does not have anything like that number of pre-sets currently offered by 3rd parties. Of course in all of those three products you can create your own. That is particularly needed in BP5 as there are very few pre-sets for that product.

In conclusion I must say I enjoyed working with all 3 products, A3 works best for me but if your needs vary slightly LR3 maybe better. If you don't need all the plug-ins or have a less strenuous work-flow / smaller library, then Bibble Pro 5 is definitely worth a look.

Arthur - you can very easily set-up Smart Folders that have a whole plethora of parameters so that photos you work on stay in their original locations but are also 'copied' to your smart folder as soon as they meet the parameters you have set. This is a huge timesaver as you don't physically have to do anything once you've set-up the folder.