Aperture or Lightroom?

[duane_mills]

<p>Hi folks. When I started in this forum several years ago I used Photoshop CS3 on a PC. I have since moved over to an iMac and have been using iPhoto as well as Photomatix. I was planning on purchasing Aperture but Apple is discontinuing it. Presently; I'm trying Lightroom but am wondering if Aperture is worth purchasing at this stage in the game. Any thoughts? Anyone who has used both?</p>

[steve_t.1]

<p>Hi Duane,</p>

<p>I guess I would not put my money toward Aperture if Apple is calling it quits. I'm a CS5 user, heavily dependent upon Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). (Nowadays I only use some healing brush functions and simple layers for making borders around images in CS5, I really don't use anything else of CS5.) I've not used Lightroom but understand that the editing function is based on the same ACR system, which has become more powerful since its use in CS5. When the time comes for me to upgrade I think I am just going to go straight to Lightroom.</p>

<p>Scroll to the bottom of this page, you can download a free 30-day trial of either Lightroom or the full Photoshop Creative Cloud suite. https://creative.adobe.com/plans/photography</p>

[Peter_in_PA]

<p>No way should you buy a program that's being discontinued imho.</p>

[michael_elenko]

As suggested, try LR for a month. It is great, but I would allow three weeks of learning time to "get" it.

 

Apple will replace Aperture with Photos & who knows about its capabilities?

 

LR has lots of online & support resources.

 

ME

[JDMvW]

<p>Much as I am uneasy to join in with the Lightroom boyz, they have right in this case.<br>

Unless, of course, in the closedown you can get Aperture for next to nothing in cost ... then, it might be a ploy for the short term.</p>

<p>I'm still using CS5 Photoshop myself, and will continue to do so until it dies on me in some future OS cataclysm. Then, maybe GIMP will do me. I know I'm not going to "subscribe" on the Cloud.</p>

[duane_mills]

<p>Thanks for your thoughts. I agree. Also, I have started with the 30 Lightroom free trial. Here's my first effort…The youtube Adobe tutorials are very helpful. Cheers.</p><div></div>

[duane_mills]

<p>With a few minor changes in Lightroom...</p><div></div>

[bmichel]

<p>If Aperture works for you now -- it does for me -- you can keep it -- albeit unchanged -- at least through the new OS X (Yosemite) cycle. We simply do not know what OS X Photos capabilities are. I am concerned about any Apple dumbing-down of the capabilities. I could not care less about being able to see all of my photos on my Mac automatically also on my iPhone. Or vice-versa. The preview for iOS 8 at https://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/photos/ is not encouraging if that is also the rationale for the OS X incarnation.</p>

[mggm59]

<p>The problem with lightroom and the whole CS is the lifetime commitment to pay or lose access to your stuff. I just don't like this system. I like to own my stuff and do whatever I want with it. What if Adobe decides to raise the prices, and you're stuck with an investment of hundreds of thousands of hours of work? I am staying with aperture (which i pad 300€ and not 60 as it costs now) and see what Phots does. Hopefully someone else will come with some other solution, or I'll keep this Mac just for this version of Aperture.</p>

[michael_elenko]

<blockquote>

<p>The problem with lightroom and the whole CS is the lifetime commitment to pay or lose access to your stuff.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What are you talking about? You are free to purchase LR retail and have it on your computer forever. With Adobe CC, nothing is keeping you from accessing your images in the future. You save the images to your local computer. You can easily export everything you work on in Adobe CC to a standard file format such as TIFF and then use software from a different publisher to continue working on them or to simply view and print them.<br>

A lot of melodrama there.</p>

<p>ME</p>

[mggm59]

<p>Adobe is bringing everything to the cloud, they mentioned keeping Lightroom available as a package "for the foreseeable future" which for corporations is rarely longer than a development cycle or two. I hope to live and take pictures for longer than that.</p>

<p>I don't trust Adobe anymore, the same way I don't Microsoft and am starting not to trust Apple, at least on pro SW (ask video professionals about Final Cut).</p>

<p>If Adobe stops supporting the package at some point I would be in the same situation as today with Aperture, only having spent some more money on a dead end, not to mention the effort to learn it and move 136 687 pictures with their organization (not sure how the export tools will work, but I don't trust them either, migrations are a pain in the neck more often than not).<br>

<br />Should I decide to start paying for CC and then I wish to stop, I have the images in my HD, true, but lose a lot of effort to archive them and the non-destructive edits, not to mention the hassle of exporting a few tens of thousands pics in TIFF (thus freezing all changes, so for instance if I want to apply some mods to another picture I have to do it all over again instead of just "lifting and stamping" them) and keeping these huge files along with the originals. Convenient, right? Call it drama, if you wish, or is there anything wrong in the above (I just tried the trial of Lightroom for a few weeks, so it might be)?</p>

<p>Today the minimum for CC is 146€ per year (i.e. paying more than a copy of Lightroom package every single year), tomorrow? I know I am a cheapskate, but I am no longer making money on photography and I am used to buy my stuff and own it for many years. At my age I'm not going to change that, at least until there is the possibility to do it and I can avoid being shafted by the likes of Adobe.<br /><br />I'll keep Aperture (and the MacPro it's on) and wait for Photos for the time being. Or for a cheaper CS offer (something like half today's rates might convince me). </p>