Aperture 3: Is It Time To Switch?

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Feb 212010
 

Apple has finally released an update to its image processing software application. Aperture 3 arrived on the scene several days ago. With this release we photographer humans once again raise the question “Is it time to switch?”

Since you are reading this on a site called Lightroom Secrets you must know how this will turn out. Right? But the answer may not be as black and white (no pun intended) as it may seem. There are many factors that go into a decision about which application to choose. Either will be a major investment in time, learning, personal/professional workflow, and so on. So let’s start with a little background.

I was a long-time Windows user and switched to Mac about two years ago. I still use both platforms but do prefer Mac. Obviously, as a Abode Certified Expert in Lightroom and one of the Adobe Community Professionals for Lightroom, I am a Lightroom user. I am not, however, an Adobe employee.

I’m also comparing Aperture 3 to Lightroom 3 Beta. In the past Adobe has always included more features in the final release than they exposed in their public betas so there may be things coming that we’re unaware of right now. So there you have it. What follows is editorial in nature and, to the best of my abilities, objective. Let’s get started…

Operating System

Aperture 3 is only available on a Mac. So if you are a Windows user there is no question to be answered here. Apple does not provide an alternative for you. And therein lies the first advantage that Lightroom has. According to the Professional Photographers of America 65% of Professional Photographers use a PC, 14% use a Mac, 11% use both, and 10% don’t use a computer. The Digital Photography School has more recent numbers: 50% for PC, 40% for Mac, 7% Both, and 2% Other. Either way, that’s a large number of photographers ignored by Apple.

Ecosystem

Both Aperture and Lightroom gain strength by being loyal to and well integrated into their respective ecosystems. And this is a matter of personal preference which will inform your decision.

If you are comfortable in the Apple ecosystem of iPhoto, iMovie, Final Cut, etc. then Aperture will make you feel more at home. It will seem more intuitive and the workflow will make sense to you out of the box. Lightroom will seem like an intruder. It won’t integrate as elegantly in the Apple ecosystem.

If you are a fan of the Adobe ecosystem with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Premier, InDesign, etc. then Lightroom will probably make more sense to you. In this ecosystem, Aperture is the intruder.

Both applications can play nicely with your other applications. Both handle integration well and have brilliant moments and clumsy moments. Your first question to answer is which ecosystem have you grown accustomed to.

Footprint

Aperture 3 is huge! It weighs in at 585Mb versus Lightroom 3 Beta’s 68Mb (Mac) 120Mb (Windows) download size. Aperture’s library and vault seem to grow exponentially as you work on images. Lightroom catalog barely grows at all while performing equivalent tasks. Many photographers working on the go on laptops are drive space conscious and Aperture 3 seems to pay no heed to limited drive real estate.

Responsiveness

Aperture 3 wins the import contest for speed. It performed much better than Lightroom 3 Beta. On the other hand, I found Aperture 3 sluggish in many other areas. Lightroom stayed speedy overall and didn’t make me wait as much as Aperture did.

Responsiveness while working is more important to me than during import. I can let import run while attending to other tasks but I want speedy performance while I’m editing. Lightroom 3 Beta wins this one.

New Features

Many of the 200 features touted on Apple’s website are merely catch up features to Lightroom 2.6. Things like presets and non-destructive localized adjustments are features Lightroom users have enjoyed for some time now. Given that it’s taken Apple nearly two years to do this, I remain unimpressed.

Aperture 3 does have some outstanding features that the Lightroom team over at Adobe should pay attention to, however. Photo books in Aperture continue to be an amazing thing. The ease of creation along with some stellar templates make this a hands down winner for Aperture!

Another way out in front feature is Aperture’s slideshows. Lightroom made some inroads here during the version 2.x time frame but it pales by comparison to Aperture’s robust and feature rich slideshow implementation.

Photo books and Slideshow alone might tempt me to add Aperture to my tool set but it’s not enough to make me switch.

Lightroom wins the website battle without question. Its Web module is far more flexible that what Aperture has to offer. Several developers I’ve spoken with commented on how they can easily develop website engine for Lightroom but cannot get cooperation from Apple to open up web development in Aperture.

Lightroom 3 Beta introduces custom print layouts. Its Print module yields superior output than Aperture. Aperture remains more flexible on the layout side.

Geo-tagging goes to Aperture with it’s Places feature. Aperture 3 implements a very robust interface for working with GPS data. Lightroom does work with GPS data once embedded but is no where near Aperture in this regard.

Faces, while interesting, doesn’t have much of a place in a pro application. I think it’s amazing in the consumer iPhoto app but there are a limited number of situations where this technology is useful for the Pro.

User Interface and Workflow

This is an area of much debate. I think it goes back to which ecosystem you are more comfortable in. However, there are some points that should be addressed. Aperture 3 touts full screen browsing and image editing as an advantage over Lightroom. Sorry, Lightroom has had this for quite some time. Command-Shift-F (Control-Shift-F on Windows) puts Lightroom into full screen mode with all panels out of the way. That works in the Library Module as well as the Develop Module. You can set your panels to auto hide and show so they slip in and out of view quite easily.

Some Aperture users complain of having to scroll and scroll to reach tools in the side panels. Set the sections to Solo Mode and they will expand and contract as you need them. No scrolling needed.

Here is where I am biased by which ecosystem I’ve grown accustomed to. I find Aperture to be horribly disjointed and unorganized. The modular approach of Lightroom just makes so much more sense to me. I can easily jump here and there from the keyboard yet I can also concentrate on one logical task at a time when I need to. Aperture can do this but it takes some effort to get it organized and set up an efficient workflow. I’m sure devoted Aperture users will argue the other way but again, this is a personal preference item. The workflow has to work for you. If Aperture’s approach fits you better then that’s a good thing.

RAW Interpretation

Comparing Lightroom 3 Beta’s RAW engine to Aperture 3′s I found that Lightroom did a better job at processing RAW data. Adobe Camera Raw is the underlying technology for Lightroom and remains the industry leader here. Combined with flexible camera profiling and much improved noise reduction performance in the Beta, Lightroom wins on this.

Corporate Culture and Developers

I found that when I tried to use many plugins, Aperture required me to restart in 32 bit mode since the plugins weren’t 64 bit. Other plugins just weren’t compatible. While this will be addressed by developers in the coming days it raises an important difference in the corporate cultures at Adobe and Apple.

By being open and soliciting input from the user base, Adobe’s public betas have gathered useful information and helped make the product superior. Additionally, developers have a chance to see what’s coming and have adjustments made to their plugins so that on day one of the final release, compatible plugins are usually ready to download.

Apple’s obsession with secrecy means that the general user population doesn’t get any input until the product is released. Developers are kept in the dark so their plugins need to be updated after the release date for Aperture.

Adobe remains much more nimble at addressing Pro photographers needs. Lightroom has a much more lively development cycle with frequent dot updates and timely version upgrades. Apple just seems to not care. Why does it take nearly two years for a new version of Aperture to arrive? That’s just not the kind of cycle I want to get involved with.

Wrapping Up

I am going to revisit the feature for feature comparisons later on after the final release of Lightroom 3. That will be more of an (and here comes another pun) apples to apples comparison. For now I will answer the question “Is it time to switch?” with an unequivocal no. Lightroom, even at version 2.6, remains a better application than Aperture 3.

As I mentioned going in… this is my opinion and not a statement of fact. I still recommend that you download the free trials for both and see what fits you better. More to come…

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About the Author:
Contact Gene


Gene is an Adobe Community Professional, an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop, and InDesign, and an avid Lightroom fan. He has written several feature articles for Photoshop User Magazine and is the author of Explore Lightroom 4: A Roadmap for Photographers.

He belongs to the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Gene is the Co-Founder, Manager and a frequent blogger for the Dallas Fort Worth Adobe User Group (DFWAUG).

In addition to running Lightroom Secrets, Gene also contributes to O'Reilly's media blog, moderates on the Adobe forums, and helps out on lightroomforums.net.

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  • davidjschloss

    Sorry, I didn't see your comment earlier about the multiple libraries— the trainer would not have been drummed out for telling you to split libraries. Lots of people do. So many in fact that Aperture 3's library management tools now include exporting any project or folder or album as a library, and the ability to seamlessly merge or import that into your library.

  • http://lr-blog.com/ Sean McCormack/Lightroom Blog

    That's a big presumption David. Lightroom Preset stackability depends on how they were saved initially. If someone makes a preset that has all the settings included then, yes it will overwrite anything that precedes it. But if it only stores things it affects directly, e.g. Tone Curve settings, then presets can be cumulative. I've posted before that a good working practice is to only include the settings that the preset actually requires.

  • davidjschloss

    “I am really going to have to disagree with you on image quality. LR3 is well beyond any of its competitors in this area. I've also run images that range from well exposed through extreme noise and every time LR3 yielded the best results. That's at least what I have seen and, with few exceptions, “better results” is mostly a subjective assessment. ;-) ”

    Maybe that's part of the issue here. Better results aren't subjective. If you shoot test images in controlled ways then you can easily check for the color accuracy of your images, the artifacting resolved or not resolved by the RAW conversion engine and most specifically noise handling.

  • davidjschloss

    “Yes, as much as I enjoy their products, Apple is a generally condescending company. “We know what you need and that's what we'll give you.” They are a very secretive organization and don't reach out to their users for input. Case in point, a closed 2 year development cycle for Ap with no public beta or general user input.”

    This one drives me nuts. Both Apple and Adobe are secretive. Adobe's goals in delivering a beta aren't purely feedback driven. If their product managers haven't understood after a few years of LR 2 being on the market what their customers want, they're not going to get it from a beta.

    Apple ran a A3 program with their Aperture Advisory Board and they attended countless workshops, seminars and photo events to get feedback on the program They read every bit of email that came in from the feedback tools on the web, just like Adobe does.

    Adobe released a beta in October. It's March. They haven't announced any new features, didn't drop an update the LR 3 that gives people the ability to test newer cameras, haven't said when the ship date for LR 3 is, what the pricing will be, what features it will have—all customers have is a beta that's edging on six months old.

    Where is the huge customer interaction and feedback there?

  • davidjschloss

    If a preset has to be saved without saving “all the settings included”, it's not a preset. It's a partial preset. Aperture saves in the presets all the things being applied, and they're all able to be applied cumulatively.

    It's just like Apple used to say that Aperture 2 presets were fine only saving the set for each Brick, because you could apply a few changes to one image and then lift and stamp. But since you couldn't save that combination, it wasn't an adjustment preset.

    LR's presets are great, the point here is that Paul felt that only LR has presets, and that's not the case with AP3, and ALL of the presets in AP3 are cumulative and can contain all the settings you want.

  • http://lr-blog.com/ Sean McCormack/Lightroom Blog

    Lift and Stamp is hardly a comparison to LR Presets David, and I know you know that. Because the normal mechanism to create presets includes the ability to be selective about what they contain, that makes a preset that only contains a single setting change as much a preset as one that changes everything.

    Now, I'm not saying that LR Presets are some magical thing, because while they are incredible time savers, I'd still like to see relative, stackable and fadeable presets. Asking a lot? Probably. I'm playing with onOne Suite 5 currently and I'm quite likely the ability to stack and fade.

  • davidjschloss

    Right, what I was just saying was that Aperture didn't have true presets in 2, does in 3.

    But if you'd like relative, stackable and fadeable presets, come to one of my Aperture workshops. :)

  • http://lr-blog.com/ Sean McCormack/Lightroom Blog

    Thanks, but I'm really preferring the tools in LR3Beta for my work :) Not to mention my heavy investment in SDK learning.

  • http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

    There are two ways to approach this David; Art and Science. What may be technically “better” may not be artistically better. I still maintain that better results are subjective. I personally like the results from LR better in this regard. That is not to say that someone else can have a different result.

  • http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

    Patience is a virtue. Adobe continues to gather input from its users. That input will be incorporated into possibly a second beta. There's a give and take here that Apple just doesn't engage in.

    Don't get me wrong, I really like Apple's products and the quality and sense of style they bring to the table. I just don't like the “we know what's good for you” attitude. I'm not the only one to observe this. Many people have the same opinion of Apple's secretive ways.

    I'm also not saying that Adobe is an angel in this regard. However, head to head, Adobe is much more up front and open about what's going on. Every company has some things they keep under wraps but Apple is overboard in this area.

  • Zaph

    While I agree that Apple's IP secrecy can sometimes be a hinderance, and Aperture may be a bit less of the product than it could be with a public beta and more feedback … I think you may be falling for the Adobe PR hook, line and sinker. It's primarily not about the feedback, it's about getting you to use it in your workflow, and depending on it, and getting large libraries in it, so when it comes time for the release, you are invested. You are already using the product, and buying it is a almost inevitable. They are a corporation, not a charity. Feedback is a handy by-product, but it's not why they do it.

    Also, why does no-one ever mention that Lr is double the cost of Aperture? (More than double in Australia)

  • http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

    Thanks for the comment Zaph!

    Adobe's interest in getting users committed to their products is no different than any other corporation's interest, Apple included. That's just how the world works. Obviously, the more you dedicate yourself to an application and its workflow (whether LR or Aperture) the more invested you are in staying in that application.

    I prefer LR. Others prefer Aperture. And that's fine. Whatever works for you is what you should use.

    I don't have any insight into Adobe's pricing practices but I will agree with you that their international vs US pricing does seemed rather skewed. It would be best if they could shed some light on why there is such a discrepancy.

  • Zaph

    Thanks Gene. The pricing comment wasn't so much about the international pricing, but more about Lr costing twice as much as Aperture, but everyone expects them to be equal. We don't expect the same out of a camera or lens costing half the price, but software somehow doesn't seem to have the same cost considerations when it comes time to compare.

  • http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

    Software is indeed a much different animal than hardware. Looking back, LR came out at $199 when Aperture was at $299. Then Apple dropped the price to $199. LR went up to $299. I believe the upgrade prices for both have been stable at $99. So who can tell where these two will eventually end up. ;-)

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  • Dscott

    Adobe Camera Raw is the “industry leader”? Based on what? Certainly not on the quality of it's raw conversion output.

    I have extensively worked in Phase One's Capture One Pro 5, Apple's Aperture 3, Adobe's Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 3 beta applications. Capture One continually produces better resolution, better color accuracy, cleaner colors, better tonal separation, and better contrast — local and global then Aperture or LIghtroom to date. Aperture comes in second with Lightroom brining up the rear. In our business, producing the finest quality digital image from capture to print is paramount.

    As for features: We do like Lightroom's Split Toning and Lens Correction features. Aperture may behind the curve on Adjustment Brushes, but their implementation is far superior to Lightroom's Adjustment Brushes. Lightroom is severely lacking behind both Capture One and Aperture when it comes to Curve Adjustments. Other than that, all of these application are far from perfect.

    One last comment I would like to make is that Apple is not the only one guilty of putting amateur type features into a pro level application. Adobe has been doing that for years since version 4 of Photoshop. CS5 is loaded down with amateur features with nothing really useful for the Pro. Try working with a 500mb file in Photoshop CS5 and you'll begin to understand.

  • Annie

    Aperture is a joke. I say this after using it extensively. Save yourself A LOT of misery and don’t switch. I’m going back to Lightroom.

  • Annie

    Aperture is a joke. I say this after using it extensively. Save yourself A LOT of misery and don't switch. I'm going back to Lightroom.

  • http://www.sameerchavan.com/ Sameer Chavan

    Aperture is a toy for some family guys to add photos and view simple slideshows. ITs not for professional photographers. It lacks the perfection that lightroom gives. I am experimenting both for last 2-3 days and running it parallel with 5000 photos. The aperture is damn shit slow and takes lot of time for rendering. The brushes for lightroom are easy to control then aperture though aperture has some good brushes.
    But again, the lightroom looks an outdated product with technology and features (faces, gps, videos). Its like nikon products vs samsung products.

  • Max

    FYI – I was curious as to why the Aperture app is 10x the size of LR. It turns out that the bulk of Aperture’s size (643MB of 694MB total) is due to the localizations for English, French, Japanese, and German, including full manuals in each language (183MB total). LR3 doesn’t include an on-disk manual — it takes you to Adobe’s website.

  • http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

    Hi Max!Interesting. That’s a lot of things to download if you don’t need them.Regarding the manual issue; that’s not entirely correct. The help function does take you to the online help section if you have an internet connection. However, if you do not then LR falls back on it’s local copy and will still offer help. Additionally, you can download the entire manual as a PDF if you want it in “book” versus website form. In the upper right of the help site you should see a link to download the PDF.

  • Max

    Also, the places POI database is an additional ~200MB. Ex: so you can type in things like “Yellowstone Park” (or ‘Parque Nacional de Yellowstone’) and it will know exactly where that is for the geolocation stuff.

    Re ALR3 local docs:
    Must be different with the purchased version. The 30 day trial (90.7MB) doesn’t seem to have any help on the local disk. If I disable my network access and try to pull up the help I just get a dialog box that says “Cannot display help”. But hey, those handy “5 rules” are there locally. ;-)

    BTW: The Aperture PDF manual is 900 pages, compared to ALR 3 PDF manual which is 183 pages.

    Of course, none of this is really all that important (IMO) — even a 2GB application is still peanuts compared to the size of the RAWs. Still, I think it’s interesting to see how dramatically different the two beasts are in this respect, despite basically doing the same thing.

  • Norv

    I do not agree with this – edits to images are written in the form of xml data (not kb but bits in file size). This holds true for referenced files too – the xml data are stored in a accompanying ‘cart file’ in the same location as the master image.

    I can not understand the ‘expanding’ of libs that you refer to. Aperture gives you the option of creating, saving and switching to different libraries for different projects to avoid ‘bloated’ single library approach.

    By-the-way, Aperture has been editing images non-destructively since the first version, so to say Aperture was playing catch-up simply is not true.

  • Nigelash

    I have a question here.
    I applied a vignette to 10 images in Ap3. It crawled through the task. I wondered why it was so slow so I went looking in the file structure.
    Amazingly I found 10 TIF files with the shape of the vignette!! They were not small files either. What is going on here??

    Is this how Aperture mimics Lightroom’s none-destructive editing, by writing files (and rewriting them when you make changes) to your drive with the image adjustments?
    I’m not a tech and so I may have it all wrong here but this seems a little odd.
    Lightroom adjustments are near instantaneous on the same machine.
    Anyone?

  • Zaph

    Sounds like you have turned on the “Create new versions when making adjustments” in the Advanced preferences.

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