Lightroom Vs. Aperture

Nonu writes "Adobe has officially released its Aperture killer, Lightroom, and the reviews are starting to come in. Ars looks at Lightroom and concludes that it's a better choice for those without bleeding-edge hardware. 'Aperture's main drawback is still performance as it was designed for bleeding-edge machines. On a quad Core 2 Duo Xeon, it is very usable but Lightroom just feels faster for everything regardless of hardware. Since Aperture relies on Core Image and a fast video card to do its adjustments (RAW decoding is done by the CPU), it's limited to what the single 3-D card can do. Lightroom does everything with the CPU and so it is likely to gain more speed as multicore systems get faster.'"

Hardware woes

[zeropointburn]

This is something useful... Real photographers often don't have the cash to shell out for a top-of-the-line graphics processing server. Something like this should make it easier for smaller photography businesses to get into digital tech. Less actual film, less darkroom time/space/supplies, faster turnaround... all good for the little guy.

Riding along with video card performance is smart

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple obviously noticed that graphics card performance increases like CPU performance does, or even better. Aperture will have better performance in the long run since it uses both the CPU and video card. In my MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM, Aperture runs well. I've only got 128MB video card RAM too.

What's Aperture

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe has officially released its Aperture killer, Lightroom,

Kill it?! I don't even know what it is!

Better summaries please

[Bazman]

Any chance slashdot editors could actually do some editing? So that summaries aren't just the spiel of the poster but also tell us *what* Lightbox and Aperture are? There's no mention. I had to guess it was something to do with graphics and maybe something to do with pictures....

Re:Video card limited

[Txiasaeia]

I haven't used either program, but I read most of the review, especially the part about performance.. but their test hardware was a macbook pro and a g5. Neither one of those can have a particularly stellar video card. They don't specify the g5's video card, but I'm guessing it's as out of date as the machine. and the x1600 in the macbook pro isn't a screamer.

Isn't that the point? Not all of us have screaming fast computers or even top-of-the-line video cards, but I, for one, have a C2D iMac with a x1600 video card. Photographers, as a post above me pointed out, like to shell out the big bucks for important items like cameras, lenses, filters, and tripods; processing equipment doesn't need to be top of the line. The point is that Aperture is pretty painful on a slower system, but Lightroom looks to work well on mid-range systems, which is what people (like me) are excited about.

How Professional are You?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm a little uncomfortable with the ways these programs are being marketed. First of all, why isn't this program the latest version of Photoshop? I've seen this happen in music products as well. They'll say X is the product to use if you're professional. Then a year later, a new program costing twice as much comes out, doing the same thing only better and they'll say but this is the program to use if you're really, really professional.

If you've been selling your customers a flagship product for editing digital photographs for years, why come out with a different product for editing digital photographs except to prevent your customers from expecting an upgrade version?

The capabilities of Lightroom should be part of the latest version of Photoshop. If it's a better interface, then that should be the new interface of Photoshop.

Re:What's Aperture

[megastructure]

Why is this flamebait?
I've never heard of either program.

Some background for people who aren't on the prow of graphical processing would be appreciated.

Do...

[cosmocain]

...Apple and Adobe have some kind of contract with the camera manufacturers, so that ist's sure that Aperture and Lightroom will support the next-gen, encrypted and proprietary RAW-format? othewrwise the software could be rendered useless when buying a new cam...

Please, make it stop!

[ksdd]

Can we please stop assigning the "killer" label to abso-freaking-lutely EVERYTHING? iPod killer, Flash killer, Aperture killer, ad nauseam. Have any of these so-called "killers" actually killed the product they were supposedly released to kill?

I guess the word "competitor" doesn't make for sensational copy.

Re:Better summaries please

[nietsch]

So you mean that if you have not heard of it you don't need to know? What about posting the next item about some french software in french? If yo can't read it you don't need to know that either.
Both are pretty annoying.

Re:Riding along with video card performance is sma

[Jeff DeMaagd]

In one sense, you are right, it seems as if a new major generation of video chips are released every year. In another sense, it's expensive to get a good video chip in a Mac, and expensive to get a machine that can get one. Lightroom would probably work far better on a regular MacBook than Aperture can.

Re:Video card limited

[jedrek]

a real "pro" (i.e the camera is already $15k+)

except that if the real pro is shooting sports, then the best camera + system for them would be the 1D MkII N - that's only $3k. and to really have to go $15k+, you need to move into MF camera + digital back territory. the truth is that most of the $15k+ camera pros don't do their own post processing, but work with a specialist, and those specialists know about video cards and raw processing and so on.

and i can pretty much guarantee that the number of pros working with $3k cameras exceeds the rest of them 10 fold.

Re:Video card limited

[drgonzo59]

1D MkII N - that's only $3k

You have obviously never bought lenses, my friend.

Re:Video card limited

[Vidar Leathershod]

I would agree with most of what you are saying. However, I am seeing more and more pro-photographers doing the post processing themselves. Several that I work with have bought Aperture, a newer high-end Mac (MacBook Pros, mostly) and easily paid for it by not having to hire a tech to do the grunt work (grunt work which costs a lot of money). Those who do fashion/"on location" stuff have really shaved a lot off of their budget. Hiring a good tech was costing them thousands per day on the shoot. Now, they do a lot of the post processing themselves, and they are very happy with *both* Aperture *and* Lightroom.

Now that Lightroom is a fully-fledged commercial product (as opposed to a Beta downloadable for free) I have a feeling they will drop the ducats to get it. $200 is nothing when you are billing $5000-$7000/day. Even if you are just shooting sports, the time savings and saving the use of a tech or lab makes it almost instantly pay for itself.

Re:I still prefer the Darkroom

[bruce_garrett]

I've been a camera bug since I was a teenager back in the late 1960s and I still love to work with my film cameras. And yes, it's really great that since so many folks are trading in their film equipment for digital you can get some very fine deals. I bought the Hasselblad I've always wanted a couple years ago...second hand, but in cherry condition. I have almost all the great lenses for my Canon F-1s now that I just couldn't afford back when I was a kid. I love it.

But my darkroom is only for developing film now. I bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED last Christmas, and I'm working on scanning in my entire library of negatives and slides. I'm using Aperture for its cataloging capabilities as much as for its great image adjustment tools. I use Photoshop mostly for dust speck removal (I have other non-photographic uses I put Photoshop to otherwise...I'm a cartoonist too). It's great not to have to deal with paper contact sheets. I can just scan my film in and have metadata linked to each image so I don't have to rummage through hundreds of contacts to find the shots I'm looking for. And now I can protect my images by storing backups offsite. I've always been afraid for my negatives and slides.

I never had the money or the time to invest in a full blown color darkroom, and nowadays I can produce great results, absolutely great results, with the Hasselblad, some rolls of Fuji Velvia, the Coolscan, Aperture and my Epson Stylus Photo R1800. And I can tell you for a fact that touching out dust specks in Photoshop beats doing it with a brush on the final print hands down.

Once you get the image into the computer endless possibilities open up. Yes, I still love film photography. I don't think I'll ever give it up. And, yes, I agree that large format black and white silver prints still beat what you can produce with even the best digital cameras and inkjet printers at the moment. They're absolutely lovely. If I wanted to I could probably still produce really fine black and white silver prints in my own darkroom. On the other hand, Kodak has stopped making black and white photographic paper.

Re:About Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking, or do you just not know about the fact that by putting two fingers on the track pad and clicking, you are right-clicking on a MacBook. You can also scroll by using two fingers on the track pad.

Have you tried these computers, or are you just out to bash them?