Deciding between Lightroom or Aperture.

[jonathans]

A little background: I've recently been getting back into photography after purchasing a digital SLR. I'm a

college student, and its time to upgrade my laptop for school-related reasons. At the moment I'm leaning towards

a macbook (a macbook pro would be stretching my budget *very* thin). The laptop won't be dedicated to photo work,

although I'm taking the opportunity to load it up with some useful software at academic prices. I'll probably be

purchasing Photoshop CS3 - I'd like to really learn to use it, and since I have the opportunity to legally

acquire it relatively cheaply, why not.

 

Anyway - since I'll be mostly using a laptop I'm planning on keeping the bulk of my images stored on an external

hard drive. Currently I may end up with 2 external drives - one that will travel with me and be used strictly

for photographs (I have a 160gb, bus-powered drive already I'm using for this), one that will stay home as a

backup, and then some storage space on the internal hard drive (I can foresee wanting to keep a selection of my

"best" photos on the laptop drive).

 

I'm looking at either Aperture or Lightroom for managing the photos. The question is - which to get? From what

I've read in terms of functionality they're quite similar, esp. since I'm planning on using Photoshop for most of

my heavy editing work. My main concern, then, is how well does each do managing collections stored on an

external hard drive - will the program have issues if I attempt to start it when the external drive isn't

connected?

 

From what I've read it's possible to manage this sort of setup in Aperture using different libraries - have a

working library on the external HD w/ all my photos in it, a select library stored on the internal HD, and then

backups using whatever backup method I end up going with for the system. What about Lightroom? How would it

manage the external drive?

 

In addition, I may continue using my desktop PC. The software licenses will be expensive, but Lightroom might

give me the option of using either the desktop or laptop depending on where I am and what I need to do - how easy

is it to transfer an external drive full of photos between two computers running Lightroom when one is a PC and

one is a Mac?

[david.elliott]

I'd suggest downloading the free trials of each and seeing which works best for you. Both are excellent programs.

[luckystokes]

I have spent time with both. With Aperture you can import files by reference, however you will not be able to use the vault.

Aperture requires a high end video card. I'm not sure it would run well on less than the macbook pro. I would choose

Lightroom, version 2.0 of which will do some local edits. It does not require as much hardware, and there is tons of support in

the way of forums presets etc. If you do go with Aperture, google a page named Bagelturf belonging to Steve Weller. It has

absolutely the best information on it.

[colin_mattson1]

Like David suggested, download and try them both.

 

While they accomplish mostly the same end result, they're very different programs. Some people hate the way one or the

other works, some people could swing either way.

 

It's your money -- buy the one that meshes with you, not the one someone else tells you to.

[patricklavoie]

i think both are really good, and like any other things, people like one of the other for many reason, like people buy nikon vs canon for as many reason.

I have tried Aperture 1 and didtn like the way he import file and how sluggish it was on a super pump station (i know all those thing have change since then), by that time i have swicth quickly to Lightroom and never go back.

 

Its a mater of choice first, but many user seem to go with adobe all the way, Lr & Ps is a good match.

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

Patrick - you should try the latest version of Aperture. Version 1.0 had issues.

[patricklavoie]

As i said Robert, i know they have fix all they had too..i have the latest version instal..but still prefer Lr v2 over Apperture. A simple matter of choice.

[r_johnston]

Ive been using Lightroom on my Toshiba Laptop since the beta version was released.

 

No Photo files are stored on my laptop, no room for them, but Lightroom works well with them on an external USB 200gig drive I"m using with two precautions that Ive taken.

 

1. When synchronizing the folders make sure you do NOT have the box checked to remove files which are not found. If you do, it removes the catalog for that folder.

 

2. If you happen to copy a days files to the HD, and work on them in Lightroom, then you move them to the external drive. Lightroom will still show the images as if they are there. But when you go to work on them, Lightroom II does not always say the file is missing. With the drive loaded, have Lightroom look for them on the drive. It will find them. Then it creates a Library heading for them on the external drive. They show in my system as being located on Drive E:

 

If the drive is not loaded, I just do not work on files located on Drive E:

 

Have not used Aperture ever since I began using Lightroom.