Pixtus - Photography Forum, Photographers, Photo Tips

larrys · **Aperture or Lightroom? -** 09-13-2007, 02:47 PM

We have a Mac at home and I desperately need to learn how to process my pictures to add a bit of pop to them. I mainly shoot landscape stuff while backpacking. Which application would be best for me, Aperture or Lightroom? Thanks

JohnT · 09-13-2007, 03:10 PM

LR would certainly get the job done for you. I have never used Aperture, but it probably has more than you need.

Hogleg 44 · 09-13-2007, 03:22 PM

I inherited Lightroom from having RawShooterPro. and it is very good. I like it.
I never bothered with Aperture because when I asked the question about how useful Aperture is, the general consensus was negative.

bradc972 · 09-13-2007, 03:46 PM

I have used both and prefer lightroom, mainly for the ability to have presets. You can find some great presets out there and it can really speed up processing time.

-b

larrys · 09-13-2007, 04:39 PM

Thank you so much. Sounds like a Lightroom in my future.

zach-e2 · 09-13-2007, 04:41 PM

i've not used either..
whats the difference between the two & photoshop?

mycroft007 · 09-13-2007, 06:23 PM

I like Lightroom, but can't really compare.

billbunton · 09-13-2007, 08:04 PM

There's really not a lot of difference in terms of what they're capable of. There's a larger difference in how they look, and how good they are at the various things they do. I think LR/ACR is better at raw conversion, but overall I think Aperture is still better at DAM.

Remember Aperture is Mac-only, and requires the best graphics card you can get, as it uses the GPU for a lot of processing.

I own them both, and use LR.

d2creative · 09-13-2007, 08:30 PM

I used Lightroom all through the Beta versions and ended up settling on the latest version of Aperture. Either one will get the job done and all do similar things. I just like some of the features and interface better in Aperture.

picman · 09:22 PM

Give them both a test spin - they both have free trials. Be aware they both need 10.4 on the Mac. Also if you are looking for the download on the Adobe site they call it "Photoshop Lightroom"

If you like popping landscapes be sure to play with the Clarity slider - very cool.

If you like PM me and I'll forward you some Lightroom tutorial links (next week)

Brian

d2creative · 09-13-2007, 09:44 PM

I should add that I use this type of software mainly for downloading and organizing my images, picking the keepers, and performing minor tweaks. Then I export to Photoshop to finish them off or perform major surgery on them before finishing and saving to different formats. These apps never REPLACE photoshop for me. Photoshop and Aperture (or lightroom) are two totally different tools for me, each with their own purpose in my workflow.

jeffreyluce · 09-14-2007, 11:37 AM

I've tried out both LR and Aperture. I prefer LR. With the latest 1.2 update... it reset the trial period.

CallMeAl · 09-14-2007, 12:30 PM

In Lightroom, when you do your RAW conversion, can you convert straight to JPEG or do you have to convert to TIFF? When I was using the trial version, it converted to TIFF and that was an unecessary step for me. However, since it was only a trial, I wasn't able to explore all of the features.

Craig

JohnT · 09-14-2007, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CallMeAl

In Lightroom, when you do your RAW conversion, can you convert straight to JPEG or do you have to convert to TIFF? When I was using the trial version, it converted to TIFF and that was an unnecessary step for me. However, since it was only a trial, I wasn't able to explore all of the features.

Craig

You can export as JPEG, TIFF, PSD, DNG, or Original format.

jeffreyluce · 09-14-2007, 05:58 PM

I believe that the LR trial is full featured. And ditto to what John said about export file types.