Aperture & Lightroom: Still evaluation while others have made their decisions

I’m still setting on the fence about which photographic workflow application, Aperture or Photoshop Lightroom, to fully commit to. I’m running them both (trials) parallel and are finding various likes and dislikes in each. This has turned out to be one of the hardest software decisions I’ve ever made.

Joe Barrett at The Image-Space recently made his decision to switch to Lightroom from Aperture after running them both for a time. His post “Five Reasons why I Switched from Aperture” details the main reasons for his switch. On some points I agree with Joe but on others I have a slightly different perspective.

The first reason Joe listed was Folder Management. Lightroom mirrors the disk folder structure and there by makes it easy to use a “smart” directory structure without having to do complex searches. I can understand Joe’s point because in some ways that appeals to me as well, but I believe that Aperture’s Project, Folder and Album structure has more flexibility in allowing you to group photos without being confined by the physical disk folders. Keywords and other metadata along with smart folders give Aperture an advantage for overall file management flexibility while perhaps giving up some simplicity. For me it would be advantage to Aperture.

Metadata Browsing was Joe’s second listed reason, in particular the date browser. I agree that with it’s drill down Metadata and Keyword menu queries Lightroom clearly shines over Aperture although the same basic function can be achieve in Aperture with a little work. Advantage in this area goes to Lightroom.

Develop Module Tools was the third reason for Joe switching to Lightroom. He related that he felt the Lightroom tools was much more intuitive and powerful. In some areas I would agree, however it’s not as simple as that. There are tools where Aperture has a clear advantage. For example, sharpening and the Loupe tools are both very powerful in Aperture. I also like the fact that I can edit or develop a photo anywhere in Aperture without having to switch to a particular module as you do in Lightroom. While switching in Lightroom is simple, it seems to interrupt the work flow. In this area I would judge it a split decision between Aperture and Lightroom depending upon your taste. I’m edgeing towards Aperture.

Joe also listed Performance as a deciding factor for his switch. This would of been a easy victory for Lightroom but there were some clear improvements made with Aperture v1.5.2 that for me has this area about even. On start-up Aperture is actually faster then Lightroom for me. As a reference I’m running them both on a Mac Pro 2.66ghz with 5gb of memory with a library of approximately 36,000 photos (many are stock photos). They are both using external or reference photo files and are set up as nearly alike as I can make them. Perhaps it’s a matter of hardware, but I would have to give the performance edge to Aperture.

Printing was the final reason listed given that Lightroom has a simple and easy to use printing interface. I think this is similar to Folder Management situation above. While Lightroom has a simple to user basic printing interface, Aperture gives more features and functionality. Also by user the “Project” management system Aperture allows you to store Photo Books or templates with you projects so that if you ever need to recreate or change your final output they will be with the rest of your project. For me it would be advantage to Aperture.

There are two other areas that I think would need to be considered before making a decision between Aperture or Lightroom.

Since Aperture has been on the market longer then Lightroom there are a number of plugin’s that interface Aperture to on-line photo storage and service applications such as Flickr. Aperture also interfaces with the Apple iLife and iWork suites. Lightroom does not currently have this level of support, but I’m sure that this situation will improve as Lightroom becomes more mature.

If you plan on using Photoshop as you master photo editor both applications will work. Naturally the integration will be tighter with Lightroom. From what I understand all of the metadata will be passed between Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom, reflecting any changes or additions made to it in either applications. This is not the case with Aperture.

As I said in the beginning, I haven’t yet made a final selection between these two great applications. I wish I could take the best features from each!

Best of luck to you Joe with Photoshop Lightroom.

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