Adobe Lightroom 3 (Beta) vs Aperture 3 from Apple Compared
This post is a collection of links to random bits of comparison information and quotes from various online resources such as blog posts, articles and forum posts listing down the pros and cons of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 (LR3 for short) (Beta) and Apple's Aperture 3 (AP3 for short).
Where necessary, I've edited the quoted text for clarity.
Forum Discussions
Johanfoto writes about the strengths and advantages of Aperture 3 over Lightroom 3 (LR, LR3):
I think it's LR that has a little catching up to do now:
- The Aperture organizer (known as the Library module in LR) is much better. Just to name one example: in LR, all (smart) collections are completely separate from the image hierarchy (the folders), meaning you get a mess if you use more than a handful of collections. In Aperture, (smart) albums are part of the hierarchy, so you always know exactly where they fit. To me, this is a MAJOR advantage of Aperture.
- Aperture now supports working with more than one library, merging libraries, etc. LR3 doesn't really support that.
- Develop: Aperture now supports much more local adjustments than LR does. Almost any adjustment can be brushed in. And Apertures brushes are more sophisticated. You can, for example change the brush so it only affects highlights or shadows rather than anything it touches.
- Develop: Aperture now has a full curves option, not the limited 'parametric' curve that LR offers.
- Develop: Aperture 2 already has a real clone / healing brush. LR 3 still only has the healing / clone circular stamp. Nice and fast for removing sensor dust, pretty useless for anything else like removing a power line.
- Photo Books: LR doesn't do books.
- Printing: Still no soft proofing in LR3.
Web export: This is the only place where LR3 is still better, especially because it supports third party web galleries. It's the only thing I use LR for.
Alpha Doug on Aperture 3 as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) application:
OK. First off, 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!!
Miscellaneous advantages Lightroom 3 has over Aperture 3
Destination folder and sharpening export options – Export presets in Lightroom 3 allow you to set values for destination folders and the amount of output sharpening.
RAW conversion – Brian Caslis writes:
My main issue with the RAW converter (in Aperture) is that even though it can be fine tuned, the fine tuning is pretty limited. For example, I can't change the color response. That's what I like about the camera profiles in LR, it's great for doing this and affects the image far more than the limited RAW converter options in Aperture.
February 18th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Aperture 3. is 64 bit. This is important when you need to work or just organize large images. Lightroom 3 crashes when I try to import images bigger than lets say 2 GIG.
February 18th, 2010 at 9:54 am
@thanos – LR3 can run in 64-bit mode too.
March 30th, 2010 at 2:50 am
Aperture does not have custom adjustment brushes, like lightroom. (or does it – I cannot find them)
May 25th, 2010 at 1:24 am
As a sports photographer shooting MLB baseball I need to process, edit, and caption after the game. The key for me is speed and accuracy (i.e. checking for sharpness) after loading Aperture 3.03 I can honestly say that Aperture now completely destroys LR in speed (yeah thats right) what a difference. This is taken from a guy that switched over 100k of images from aperture 2 to LR because I couldn't take the poor performance issues. I mean when loading an image LR3 takes about 5 to 10x longer than aperture and when I'm on a deadline viewing approx 1000 images per shoot. what a difference. Also looks like aperture worked out their Metadata compatability issue. (yes metadata can be read and saved so PM (photomechanic) can read it. Also bonus both rating stars can be transferred. I might consider just using aperture in my next game and eliminate PM. Thats how peppy aperture 3 is. Also, I'm not using a super duper labtop, mac pro 2.14 with 2gb ram.
May 28th, 2010 at 4:57 am
Not a comment – but a question for youz guyz that know BOTH LR and AP3 – I understand that LR has 'collections' – and AP3 has "albums" and "folders" and Projects" and 'lightboxes" – Which one of those AP3 most closely resembles the LR 'collection'? Is this a serious distinction? How are you using these in real life? And insight would be really helpful to me… Thanks!
May 30th, 2010 at 3:57 am
Hi Greg,
About a month ago I made the switch from Lightroom to Aperture.
An album in Aperture is similar to a collection in Lr. I haven't found any major differences between collection in Lr and albums in Aperture, except for the fact that you can place your albums right in a project which is very handy.
I have several folders for each kind of photography I shoot. I make a new project for each shoot in the right folder. When I've made a selection of images of a shoot I make an album for them in the project. If I have a lot of albums in one project I make a few folders in my project and arrange them the way I want…
I haven't really find a use for the light-table, so I don't really use it.
I would recommend you to download a free trial and find out yourself how you can make use of these organizational features in your workflow.
Hope this helps.
Vincent
June 6th, 2010 at 5:32 am
"Develop: Aperture now has a full curves option, not the limited 'parametric' curve that LR offers."
Not true. LR3 will have a fully customizable tone curve.
June 23rd, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Sorry I disagree with the user said Aperture 3 is fast on an older Laptop. I have a 2.4ghz duo with Onboard Graphics and 4GB of Ram. I have 140 images and after 8hrs it has only imported 30k. Lightroom 3 took 5 hrs for all. I even turned off create previews to help Aperture.
July 8th, 2010 at 12:32 am
I was a real defender on aperture, bun wen i upgraded tu Aperture 3 a was disapointed, because my mac turns really slow, I have a iMac 2.66 core2 Duo, 4GB in RAM it is incredible inhappens, I've tried everithing, clean caches, turned off the stupid face recognition, even, I've cleaned the preferences and Apertures works really slow. Ive tryed lightroom 3 ind i've falled in love because is fully compatible with PS and can export SMART LAYERS can personalize the interface, it is 64 bits and has LENS CORRECTION integrated!!!!