Should you use Lightroom or Aperture?
Over on Macworld.com, they‚ just posted my comparison review of Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture. Ben and I have been working on the two image-management and editing applications for quite some time, and it’s hard to say which one is the clear winner. Aperture is without a doubt the more polished and mature product: its organizational structure, with “smart” albums and Web galleries, are really hard to beat when you‚Äôre working with lots of different projects. Lightroom doesn’t have that core organizational strength, but it does have a wonderful editing module in Develop, both HTML- and Flash-based Web galleries, and slightly better printing flexibility (although it lacks Aperture’s great book-printing module).
We get asked quite a bit, “Which product should I buy?” but there’s no simple explanation. You can do the same tasks in both programs‚ really is more how you want to work. If you’re the type of person who works on multiple projects at different times, and you want to be able to jump in and out of them without losing your train of thought, Aperture definitely is a better choice. If editing is more important than how you organize your photos‚ you’re willing to be a bit more involved in how you store your images‚ Lightroom might work better for you.
Luckily both Apple and Adobe offer fully functional 30-day demos of both programs. If, after reading the piece, you’re still on the fence, we suggest downloading both programs. Put 100 or 200 images in each and work with them and see how they feel for you. (It’s also a good way to get a sense of how well they will perform on your system‚ it’s hard for us to come up with a clear-cut way to measure performance, given the wide array of Intel and PowerPC systems out there, especially when you factor in video cards, which also affect performance.)
Of course, if you’re a Windows user, you’re pretty much limited to Lightroom, which isn’t a bad thing.
A Bridge Too Far? What Editing Software Do You Need?
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The world of digital post-production is a lot more complicated than it was when Photoshop CS2 came out. If you read my Photoshop CS3 review, then you know that the latest rev of the industry leading image editing application is well-worth the price of an upgrade. But once you spend a bunch of money on Photoshop CS3, which includes the much-improved Bridge CS3 file browser, do you really need to spend more money on a "workflow" application such as Apple Aperture or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom? |
My Favorite New Bridge Feature
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Bridge CS3 offers a lot of important improvements over the Bridge 1.0 that was included in Creative Suite 2. Interface improvements, stacking, comparing, importing, and much much more have all been added, and Bridge remains an excellent cornerstone for a Photoshop Camera Raw driven raw-workflow. I covered most of the the new Bridge features in my Photoshop CS3 First Look book, but Adobe managed to sneak in one or two more before the final release of the software. Here’s one of my favorites. |
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