Aperture, Lightroom and Me
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
It seems I’m at a crossroads with my photo image editing on the Macintosh (again) and I hate these types of big decisions, they paralyze me. Maybe going slow is good in that there are many things to consider and I have a hard time crunching all the data easily in one fell swoop.
I bought and have been using Aperture for almost a year now and I’ve noticed something that I don’t like: because of it’s poor system performance on my computer I find myself avoiding using it unless I quit other applications first, which means I have to plan to use it. This has had a negative effect on my photography because processing, cataloging, and printing images is an essential part of the photography process and I want to be able to do those things while I also answer email or browse the web. Committing to an expensive, high end program like this means you stick with it for more than a day unlike a free or inexpensive piece of shareware that you might try and toss quickly. Couple that with the fact that I’d rather buy Apple software if possible and you have a recipe for paralysis.
Here is what broke my paralysis
While at the recent PhotoExpo in New York, I had occasion to watch a fellow flickr member use Adobe Lightroom on a MacBook Pro (newer than mine) and besides his facility with photo editing which was impressive, I was struck by how quickly he was moving around in the the application with absolutely no delays: no color-wheel from hell and incredibly snappy performance. He likely was showing off a bit but so what? I couldn’t show off with Aperture like that, it would be impossible. I went home from New York determined to give Lightroom another try (I had tried the beta and hated it for slowness) and downloaded the demo and have been using it ever since. It is far from perfect (as is Aperture) but on my computer, it’s fast and works right along side Safari and my daily mix of running applications. In other words, on my setup it’s less of a memory and resource hog than Aperture is.
Now what?
I realize that many reading this think I’m just spewing silly psycho-babble here but in fact, many Mac users who use(d) Aperture went through this when Lightroom came out. I just stuck with Aperture longer and it was a slower process of realization for me.
My rationale for switching to Lightroom
1. I’m a Macintosh user (since 1984) who knows the Mac well and has made a commitment to the Macintosh. My computer is the center of my life and I use it for communication, organization, web site support, photo editing and more. In other words, there is no single thing I do with my computer that outweighs another. They are all interdependent on one another.
2. I prefer using a laptop computer (MacBook Pro) and prefer a single computer in my life, not one for photo editing and another for everything else.
3. I do realize that many serious photographers and graphic designers who use Photoshop or Aperture buy hardware to support that single application because it has steep memory and speed requirements, but I would prefer not to do that for my image editing software because I like having it integrated into all of the other things I do with my computer.
4. My 2.16 ghz MacBook Pro has a Core Duo processor and 2 gigabytes of memory. The current version of said machine has a Core2 Duo processor in it and will address 4 gigabytes of memory. I’ve already put a new 7200 rpm hard disk in this machine to help Aperture run better (it did, marginally) but I’d rather not buy a new machine and add expensive memory just to support a single application. Again, there is a limit to how far I will go to support an application that is really meant to run best on a Mac Pro with a lot of memory and a fast graphics card.
5. I have iPhoto ‘08 and it’s a great improvement over earlier versions (thanks Manish) but its tools don’t touch Aperture’s or Lightroom’s and for the kind of photography I do I need many of those tools. However, if it worked for me I’d have no problem using it; I’m not above using consumer software for professional purposes.
6. Aperture and to a lesser extent Lightroom is/are built for professional photographers who take hundreds or thousands of big RAW images (for example, a wedding or event photographer) and need to look at all of them, sort and group and process them. Aperture is built for a user with a Mac Pro (tower) with a lot of memory and a large screen (or two). If I were that user, I’d be in hog heaven with it (although still might choose Lightroom at this point). I’m not. I routinely take a few dozen images and then sort, cull, and process them on my MacBook Pro on its screen. The iPhoto UI has been ideal for this for years and I’m finding Lightroom a bit closer to that than Aperture which feels like way too much app for the likes of me and my needs.
7. Aperture and Lightroom are not inexpensive applications. I got Aperture at a discount price because a friend at Apple helped me (thank you Manish) but I will be spending full retail for Lightroom if I get it ($279) and that gives me pause. I’m not complaining about the price of these applications, they’re worth their prices and for me, it’s an essential expense, less than the price of cheap lens, just that it’s not trivial. Aperture’s slowness really bothers me. Lightroom solves that. Even with $400 combined investment here we’re still at far less than people routinely spend on Photoshop.
8. Lightroom has not been upgraded to work with Apple’s new OS, Leopard yet but I’ve not upgraded to Leopard yet and am in no rush to do so. The most compelling piece of the upgrade, Time Machine for backing up is not something I’m desperate for as I use SuperDuper! daily to backup and have been for a while. So, the fact that Lightroom is late with Leopard support doesn’t bother me as I’ll be late to do this upgrade anyway.
So, there you have it. I’m sure it sounds like I’ve made my mind up already so why write this and in fact, I have and will order Lightroom soon. I post this because I know many other people are struggling with a similar issue and maybe a bit of my experience will tip them one way or another.
Postscript
In the shower just now (after posting this, of course) I figured out a better way to frame it: Are you an Aperture user looking for the best hardware to run the product or are you a MacBook Pro user looking for the best image editing application that will run easily on your computer? I’m the latter and it took me a while to figure it out.
Resources
Here are a few of the many posts and articles I’ve been reading the past week to help me figure this stuff out.
Inside Lightroom
Inside Aperture
A Tale of Two Tools
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: the Ars Technica review
Lightroom Journal
Analysis: There’s room for both Aperture, Lightroom to thrive
Aperture or Lightroom: which is for you, which is for me?
Which is Better: Aperture vs Lightroom? The Test Results
Aperture vs Lightroom - An O’Reilly “Inside Aperture” Field Test
Fantastic post, Richard. I’d actually been meaning to ask you about how you handle image editing, as I’ve been facing a similar problem — though I’m behind you a great deal. But still: I often avoid opening iPhoto due to its system resource hogging tendencies, and this is a problem. Thanks for sharing your experience; I’ll check out the links. I’ve often felt that iPhoto feels bloated for what it accomplishes, which in my case is pretty simple image editing. Maybe I need to search for an app with a smaller footprint. Or upgrade my memory and hard drive.
Newley: iPhoto is a sports car compared with Lightroom and Aperture. You need to rebuild your iPhoto databases and/or reinstall it. It is a super fast application, faster than most anything out there.
However, its tools and features aren’t quite up to what I need.
I repeat, iPhoto is the best in class so work out what’s wrong with your install of it and you’ll love it (again).
Great analysis! I’m in the same boat. When I’m at my iMac working in Aperture I’m also usually doing iTunes work such as ripping, organizing or editing. Plus I might have Photoshop open. The iMac slows to a crawl! I’ve been considering Lightroom for a while now, also because I’m doing more and more with Photoshop.
I made the mistake of installing Leopard and it turns out Leopard (and especially Time Machine!) and Aperture are not compatible. As soon as I insert an SD or CF card into my reader it loads into Aperture and then suddenly ejects. I can’t download any new photos at the moment! Lots of chatter about these issues on the Internet right now.
From my research I can’t tell if Lightroom and Photoshop work within Leopard. Photoshop started up just fine and opened a file just fine. I may try the Lightroom demo.
The sad thing is Lightroom and Aperture don’t read each other’s libraries. once you commit to one you have to keep it around and use it for the photos within it. There should be a single standard file format to move libraries around, IMO!
Andrew: Lightroom will be updated to work correctly in Leopard next month. Adobe has posted about this. For me, it’s less of a problem in that I was going to go slow on Leopard anyway. I think it works well enough in Leopard so that you could download the demo and try it on a few images to see if you liked it.
Lightroom on Leopard in Mid-November
Richard
Interesting analysis and I think it all boils down to what you said after the shower (always a good place to think).
“Are you an Aperture user looking for the best hardware to run the product or are you a MacBook Pro user looking for the best image editing application that will run easily on your computer? I’m the latter and it took me a while to figure it out.”
and if you are a person that uses a computer for everything in your life you need to get the best tool that will run on your computer. there are 2 more things to consider here.
1 learning curve for the new tool and if you are comfortable with lightroom then you should go with that tool
2 is output quality and over all quality if lightroom does a better job then aperture then you should go with lightroom.
and realy it is all about to you bye a computer to fit your tool and if you are a graphic designer that know photoshop then yes or do you bye new software that fits your computer if you are a computer user then i would get lightroom and since you have stated just that you should get lightroom.
i ran in a similar issue a few years ago i was using now software and apple came out with a better product it was a total pain to swich but i just had to do it because it was a better product.
hope i make sence here
Another consideration is camera updates for Raw support. Aperture doesn’t handle camera updates, OS X does. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage. The advantage is that when OS X adds camera support, every app gets it: iPhoto, Preview, Aperture. But when OS X isn’t updated, nobody gets it…you wait until the next incremental OS X update.
Case in point is the Canon 40D. When it came out, Apple and Adobe fans were both screaming at their companies to add Raw support. After about a week, Adobe completed testing their 40D update and made it available for download for Lightroom and Photoshop.
It’s been a month later and Aperture users who bought the 40D are either still waiting, or they finally got their 40D update through Leopard this weekend. Those who don’t want to pay $129 for Leopard yet are still waiting and whining on the Apple forums; it’s said the camera will be added in 10.4.11.
For me, the die was cast when Aperture wouldn’t run on my PowerBook G4, and Lightroom would.
As for your Leopard decision, post #4 already mentions the Lightroom update coming in November. Aperture works now, but Apple has a tech note recommending against the use of Aperture with Time Machine…one of the reasons you wanted to upgrade. I think I read something that said that it was best not to use Time Machine with Lightroom for now. It has to do with their databases. Time Machine is going to have trouble with any app that maintains a large file, like a Parallels disk image…every time you update that huge file, Time Machine will make another huuuuge copy of it…..
Edward: Thanks for your great comment. One thing I’ve been doing is exporting some of my better RAWs from Aperture and redoing them in Lightroom, printing and looking at the differences. I have to say that I’m not enough of a pixelpeeper to see much which means for my eye, Lightroom is keeping up.
Tom: All great points and I’m aware that Aperture uses system core image and other resources where Lightroom is more self contained. I’ve heard many gripes about 40D support but frankly, I would never have bought a 40D if Aperture were my game, I’d have waited until the 40D was supported so those who are crying are simply crying over their own mistake.
This holds true with me and Leopard as well. If I go with Lightroom I won’t do the Leopard upgrade until Lightroom is updated to work in it.
Of course, one of the reasons I’ve always tried to use as much Apple software as I can is so that application upgrades are in sync with system upgrades but there’s a limit to how far I’ll go to support that and I’ve just discovered it.
Time Machine, while a genius part of the OS that will no doubt sell a lot of boxes is not a reason for me to upgrade as I already have a workable backup solution in SuperDuper! And, frankly, my system is pretty stable these days so I’m in no rush to muck around with a new system. Trust me, this attitude is new for me, I’m generally one of the first to do system upgrades.
So, I’ll order up Lightroom at some point in the next week or so and then start moving my images from Aperture into it and learning more about it.
It feels good to be moving on this, even though in the end it’s going to be double work for a while.
Richard… Should we start a support group for this subject? I’m Greg and I’m torn.
I’ve been using Aperture since Jan when I started shooting. I bought Lightroom the minute it went on sale with the early-bird price of $199. That being said, I’m constantly kicking myself about what to use.
I feel more at home in Aperture. It simply makes sense to me and the file management is much nicer. You already know that, we’ve kicked that around before. However, I like a lot of the tools in Lightroom better; such as the clarity tool, fill, recovery etc. Making fine tuned adjustments is easier in LR.
Why is it that I feel like if I abandon Aperture and make a switch, I’m being unfaithful to Apple/Aperture? I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with such a decision about software. I surely wouldn’t choose gimp over photoshop. I wouldn’t choose a another tool over flash or illustrator.
I personally don’t have any issues with speed in Aperture anymore and you and I are on the same model MBP. I guess now it boils down to ease of use and what’s going to get the job done better, faster, smarter. I still haven’t answered this question so I’m still stuck.
Enough rambling. Where’s my prozac?
Greg: I had a feeling I might find you here, fellow traveler.
I’m actually not done testing Lightroom yet and I’m going to test its supposed weakest mode today: printing. What I like, so far is the non-modal print feature. Unlike Aperture which tosses a modal dialog up, LR just makes it another tab. I like this. Of course, that’s just UI, if printing doesn’t work well in terms of output it matters little (although I’m confident that Asobe will make it right).
One of the nice things about LR being so popular, and among Mac users as well, is that Adobe can’t ever abandon it now. Apple could let Aperture slip (as they have) and few would complain, they’d just move back to PS or move to LR.
I can’t remember if you and I are processing the same size files or not. My RAW images are quite big and that’s one of the things that’s slowing Aperture down. Amazingly, iPhoto never chokes at all on my big RAW images. Lightroom is generally faster at this point but I only have a few dozen images in it. Still, I only have a few hundred in Aperture and it’s insanely slow, even if I don’t bring new ones in and just browse old ones that have previews built already, slowness abounds.
I still have a few weeks to work this out and I’ll take as much time as I can.
I’m sorry my post gave you second thoughts but since you have both it’s really not an issue. And, it’s not like I’ll trash Aperture if I move. I can easily see using both for a while in parallel and seeing which one wins. Still, one wants to make a choice and settle in and get facile with one or the other.
Hang in there, let me know your thinking and we’ll get through this…
Yeah. I’m lurking around. I can’t find your email address since I upgraded to leopard so shoot me an email if you have time.
You are correct that Adobe will be in this for a long time. Unless they buy someone else (like they did with macromedia ala freehand).
We are processing the same. Only difference is your on a 5D and I’m a D80. I’m yearning to get a 5D by the way. Anyhow, Lightroom is faster to import them than Aperture.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been struggling with this since Mayish or whenever LR came out.
Cheers!
greg: rwanderman @ gmail.com
You beat me in the struggle time, I let go of lightroom during beta but then bought it for $200 from amazon when it came out and never opened the shrink wrap (stupid) and sold it as new for $200 when it seemed I wasn’t going to use it. Should have just kept it, no harm as I could have now sold it for more had I wanted to bail.
I’m still not absolutly sure of which way to go as printing is a bit weaker at this point on LR but I’ve been reading so many complaints about it from folks that if Adobe is listening they’ll fix it soon if not in the next release. It’s not bad, just not quite what Aperture is. Still, I like LR’s non-modal print dialog.
Struggle on.
I’m surprised Adobe doesn’t have a competitive price reduction.
I have to print in LR instead of Aperture. Or use iPhoto. I have a kodak printer and Aperture just doesn’t like it. It will not print to the edges of the paper like it’s supposed to in Aperture. Wierd. I should dump the printer and buy something better but I really don’t print too many shots.
greg: Are you sure you’ve got Aperture setup to use the printer driver? Borderless printing is not part of Aperture but part of the driver and Aperture should use it. My Canon Pro 09000 does borderless printing on certain size paper and Aperture recognizes those driver choices if I choose them (I don’t). LR will recognize the driver’s choices as well. The control for this is in the page setup dialog under “paper size.”
Yes, I agree, Adobe could kick Aperture’s butt with a competitive sidegrade price, that would get me moving faster. Even if it was the introductory price of $200 that would help. Of course, they don’t need to, people buy it anyway.
Regarding the 40D topic and RAW support updates, is there any talk of a universal RAW standard? Seems like that would benefit everyone. It must be frustrating to both application manufacturers and end users to have to make and wait for updates for any new camera. Is there a real benefit to having different RAW standards for every camera?
Andrew: the problem with the 40D and Aperture is not just the standard, it’s that 40D support is not part of Aperture (nor is any other camera support), it’s part of the system. In Lightroom camera support is part of the application. It’s easier to update applications than the system (I guess).
I don’t know about a universal RAW standard as RAW is linked to the sensor it comes from and each camera has a slightly different sensor and so, spec. The other piece is, each maker, for instance Canon and Nikon have different processors in the camera bodies that may have some effect on the way files are created and written.
All speculation. I really have no idea.
Richard,
Great post and very interesting…. As you know, I was / have been in a similar boat, possibly the same one as a few people here ;-)
I tried Aperture, found it rather slow (even on a powerful Dual G5), and so went with Lightroom. Indeed, as well as the sluggishness of Aperture, I never did “sync” with it and found it almost too much / too busy.
With Lightroom, the UI just seemed to suit me better. I got to know my way around easier and really liked the web galleries it produced (especially the flash ones) and the ability to upload via http://FTP. Then the speed, much snappier and less of a strange on the system. I am sure I read somewhere that Aperture uses the GPU (requires a good / powerful graphics card) and Lightroom makes more use of the CPU. This may play a factor in the speed differences.
TBH, I am sure, given time, I would come to love Aperture. However, like a lot of software, I have come accustomed to it and would find it hard to change. So Lightroom is it for the mo, but I don’t plan to use it much until the update from Adobe to make it fully compatible with Leopard.
Jon, your point on getting used to one and then sticking with it is a very good one. At this point I have no clue what to do but it’s not that big a deal as there’s no law against having both and letting the best one win over time. I’ll buy LR soon, then just keep using it and referring back to Aperture and see what the next version of each brings.
Nice to have options.
Richard,
thanks for the analysis and clear reasoning for switching to Lightroom. I have been struggling with Aperture on my MacBook Pro at some stage this year. The performance become sluggish to say the least. It turned out that my library file was too big and consumed a lot of work from the processor just to get it loaded. I followed the advice of the consultant at the local Apple store to split up my library into smaller libraries.
That helped a lot, though I don’t think it is the ideal solution.
So, I also checked out Lightroom via a demo version. Impressive was, how much faster everything seems to work. It is a really nice piece of software with lots of features.
On the other hand, switching to Lightroom would mean to learn a new way of doing things and get accustomed to Lightroom’s setup.
For now, I decided to stick with Aperture and wait what the next version will bring. If iPhoto 08 is any indication on what might come, I am excited.
I haven’t upgraded to Leopard yet and don’t know if there would be an improvement in the software’s performance.
I really got used to the interface and how to get things done within Aperture. I would hate to move away from it, though it might be necessary if the next version does not deliver on improvements.
Right now on this 4GB Vista PC i run Lightroom, Photoshop, Burning a DVD and playing music with Winamp, running 5 messengers (msn, yahoo, gmail, skype & aol) and 1 P2P sharing program.
The Significant part of this is Lightroom. Had i chosen to use photoshop CS3 to edit my CR2 files i can confidently say this box would freeze like the world came to an end.
The lightness of lightroom is what is most impressive about it. I love the canon DPP software, its simple and effective but lightroom has the edge and flexibility canon DPP does not offer.
I’ve used it for over 4 months now and im loving it and guess what i got it for free as a gift. hee hee!
Dilip: That’s great. I only have 2 gigs of memory so I’m more limited in what I can run at the same time as Lighroom or Aperture but given that LR has a smaller memory footprint and I’m getting more comfortable with its tools, it looks like it’s the winner, for now.
Hi there. I’m sort of in the same boat right now. I was wondering if you’re willing to post some sort of status update at where you are today with the said dilemma? Thanks!
Rubin110: Sure, good idea.
I used Lightroom for 20 of my 30 day trial and decided I liked it so I ordered it from Amazon where I knew if, somehow, before I opened the shrink wrap I could return it (that’s how cautious I was being).
I ended up keeping it, opened the shrink wrap and didn’t install it as what I had installed was later but just put in the serial number so now it’s “official.” Later the 1.3 update came out and I downloaded and installed it, no problem and it makes things faster without a doubt.
If, like me, your most important factor is the speed of your hardware, then Lightroom is the application of choice. Aperture is slow enough on this machine so that at times it’s unusable and, as I said in my post, I don’t want to change the way I use my computer simply to run one application, even an important one.
So, I can keep Lightroom running at the same time as Safari and other apps. It, like Aperture, is a memory hog but not as much of one and doesn’t slow down all that much when memory is maxed out.
The other part of this story is that I’d put a 7300 rpm internal hard disk in this machine to help Aperture and now that I’m sure that I’m sticking with lightroom I ordered yet another internal HD, this time a hitachi 250 gig model but it runs at 5400 rpm. I’m finding the 7300 rpm drive considerably hotter on my lap than my past drive which was 5400 rpm and the computer’s battery doesn’t last nearly as long on a charge, so I figured I’d put a bit more drive space in at the same time I downshifted in drive speed to keep things cooler and hopefully get my battery life back up again.
I have yet to export all of my RAWs from Aperture. Now that I own both, I’m waiting to see what Apple does with an upgrade and of course, if they upgrade Aperture in a way that allows it to run better on my computer (unlikely) I might consider it again.
The problem with this problem is that there’s not an even way to compare the two applications. I might actually like Aperture better than Lightroom if it ran as fast on this computer but in fact, its performance is so bad that that fact undermines whatever appeal the application has.
To be fair, I do like Lightroom a lot on its own merits and I might not have even considered Aperture at all had I bought Lightroom first.
Lastly, I’m not absolutely sure that the images I’m processing with Lightroom are better processed than those done with Aperture but I do know that Lightroom has some different tools that I’m finding useful and some of the same tools are done better in lightroom, for instance, the spot healing tool. LR does this far better than aperture.
Feel free to ask questions Rubin, I’m happy to help in any way that I can.
So yes, I’m very much in the same boat as far as speed goes. I have a Mid 2007 MBP 15″ with 2GB worth of RAM. A friend of mine put it best to me, “The notion of Aperture running on MacBooks is strictly complimentary from Apple.” At this point I think it’s a fair bet that I’ll be switching fully. Sadly I am having some “getting to know a knew way of doing things” woes.
- Migrating images from Aperture to Lightroom. This wasn’t a big deal but I wish it was a little simpler, more so because I had Aperture set to run via a Library/database and not the mode that’ll leave my master images alone.
- File/item/object management is different under Lightroom. This is the source for many of my woes. With my previous management setups under Windows and then later on under Linux, I kept my files in place through a directory tree of year/month/yyyymmdd - name of shoot or event. This worked fairly well as back then my needs were simple. My needs grew a little, and so I got Aperture. I learned how to deal with photos as object within a database and how to consider things like photo date to find files over file name and location on the file system.
Lightroom slightly flips things backwards on me with this. The main way to store/manage files is through a standard directory structure. Any metadata and changes made to masters and virtual copies are still stored under a database. I can reference files in collections (much in th same way you can add photos in Aperture to multiple albums), so all is not lost. This is just something I need to readjust to.
- Stacks only work when viewing photos through the file/directory view, that don’t exist under collections. This is rather annoying. The workflow I created for myself under Aperture makes use of stacks heavily. Once again this is something I need to readjust to.
- What is a master under Aperture isn’t exactly the same under Lightroom, no automatic virtual copies. Under Aperture, if you have a master image then begin to make changes to it a virtual copy is automatically created, the master will never ever allow changes to it. Aperture keeps the notion of master as a visual representation of the untouched original. Under Lightroom you can apply changes to the master all you want, no magical virtual copy is every created. The original image is never touched as all the changes are just through the database and applied to the image whenever viewed. One can also go through an undo all of the changes and be left with the original at any time. But the visual representation of a master image (the one that Aperture planted into my brain) is lost unless you undo the changes or create a virtual copy before making changes. This I feel is the biggest hurdle I’m having to deal with switching from Aperture to Lightroom.
So that’s where I’m stuck at. There are many many other things I’m really enjoying about Lightroom. It’s so much more like Photoshop, which is grand. Speedy as hell. Better idea of where I’m at in my workflow. Cleaner UI in my mind. Also much easier to backup my stuff. The database doesn’t vomit all over everything if you move files around (Aperture really enjoys vomiting with this sort of stuff!)
Mind me asking if any of the issues I listed above have been a problem for you or anyone else?