Aperture vs. Lightroom: What do the Pros Use?

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/10/aperture_vs_lightroom.html' target='_blank'>http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/10/aperture_vs_lightroom.html</a><br /><br /></div>"It's been exactly two years since Apple threw its hat into the professional photography ring with the introduction of Aperture. Adobe responded shortly thereafter with the introduction of Lightroom. So, how does the pro photography market look now? InfoTrends recently surveyed 1,026 professional photographers in North America to determine which software they used for raw file processing. Here's what folks reported: <br /><b>66.5%</b> using the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in <br /><b>23.6%</b> using Lightroom <br /><b>5.5%</b> using Aperture"According to the article, it might be helpful, or rather more of an even comparison, to remove Windows users from the equation for a moment. Even after doing so, Lightroom's usage among Mac-based pros is still nearly double that of Aperture (26.6% vs. 14.3%). I would recommend looking at the article and specifically looking at the comments after the post. There are some really good insights there.

[Phronetix]

I think Aperture is a colossal failure on the part of Apple's software development team. The performance is so dismal compared to using Lightroom that I did not see any other reason to keep using Aperture. What pisses me off the most about the Photo library situation with Aperture is that Apple started doing the exact same thing with iPhoto in iLife 08.

Talk about idiocy. Doesn't anyone at Apple actually use their photo software? How could it be that making it so difficult to deal with individual folders when needed actually make the product better?

I need to email to them. I haven't bothered to do that yet. They tend to respond, eventually to what users want. Fortunately they are skiled at knowing most of what we want right out the door.

D

[jeffd]

im pretty much a lightroom user myself. I used to use PS alot but on my laptop, lightroom uses less resourced and I dont have to go around finding photo editing plugins. Its simple to load a raw in... do some tweaking, and then export.

[djh]

Personally I have never liked Adobe Camera Raw and always used CaptureOne Pro. Problem came when I switched to Vista and C1 wasn't happy any more.

So I played with the beta of the new C1 version 4, but don't feel the same love I used to have for 3.7.

Now I'm using Lightroom (got the free license as a Pixmantec customer) and I'm getting to like it. I'm finding that I can process the 2,000 or so images from a wedding as quickly as I could with C1 and the results are as good if not better. I'm sure that the fact the main C1 guys left to start Pixmentec, then ended up with Adobe has really halted C1 development and we are slowly starting to see the benefit in LR.

I wouldn't rule out switching back when the C1 V4 issues are finally sorted, but I'm happy for the moment.

[jeffd]

djh, what do you let lightroom do to 2000 pictures that works for all 2000 pictures?