I was flying from San Francisco to Paris to meet a Dutch colleague to fly on to Mali, West Africa, to do our first long shoot there for a book we were planning around a medical project. I was quite happily using LR-2 beta, when my access was terminated by Adobe upon the release of the commercial version. I immediately went to Adobe’s web page, to download and pay, but I could not get through… for 8 hours, until I had to leave for the airport. Jet-lag & all, I spent the next afternoon in my friends Mac shop on Blvd. San Germain, using his broad band to connect with Adobe’s page. Never got in.

With 45 minutes left to catch a plane for Bamako, I ran up the street… literally, to FNAC, where Lightroom was unavailable… but Aperture was. Desperate, I spent over 300 euro, including VAT, to buy a retail copy of Aperture that I did not want.

I guess, at this point, I should admit that I am a Mac evangelist. I admire the elegance of Apple products and have since I first rigged up a portable battery to an Apple IIc, and dragged ti around the world writing foto notes and reports. Which brings me to my point.

Although Aperture had some nice features, I hated using it every day of the rough month on some of the world’s worst hard-drive-busting bad “roads.” I never felt that I knew where my photographs were in a deep well of a proprietary data base, that kept growing larger & less manageable — this became a great concern for making multiple backups as hard drives failed one after another due to dust, 115° heat and a very bumpy ride. (fyi: rocstor drives saved the shoot…) It’s nice to know the monolithic storage defect no longer cripples a decent product, but that didn’t help me through this formative experience.

One of the first things that I did when I returned to the states was to walk into a store in Manhattan and buy a boxed Lightroom II, Since importing my images from Aperture I don’t think I’ve opened the program since, except to convert some old personal iPhoto shots.

Reading though the posts it seems like many of my Aperture complaints were fixed in Apple’s routinely excellent manner. I’m glad of that but it inspires me with no desire to run that experiment again.

A Matt wrote so incisively “Whether you’re a working pro or an avid hobbyist, nobody has the time to play the “switcharoo” every 18 months.” He got that right.

Aperture 3 has all the functionality I was missing in Lightroom. All the brushes and tools that I need for not using the destructive Photoshop. The synched connections to Flicker, Facebook and MobileMe and my portfolios. And the REAL FULL SCREEN editing.

I moved. I have more than 50.000 photos now managed by Aperture on all platforms.

Lightroom is a tool. Aperture is a photo manager. And it makes a big difference when you try to look at the application the way it was made – and not i the way you want to see it or use it.

Apple is serious, but honestly I hope they don’t. I personally like the idea of the Apple Pro apps being just that “Mac based only”

Elitist comment ? maybe, but it goes beyond that for me.

Once in a while I’ll fire up LR2 and no sooner just get back to AP. In terms of simply workflow and access to adjustment tools I’m sorry but you can argue until you are blue in the face – LR just isn’t written with non-linear thinking people in mind and that pretty makes up most creatives.

For what it’s worth 3 LR users here are simply going to start future projects in Aperture 3 purely for the adjustment qualities I’ve shown them with AP3.

I love Adobe and naturally use the CS4 but heck even in PSCS4 they’ve done something wrong wit the way curves effects adjustments.

any way,merely an opinion but not into detailing specifics just a simple general vote for Aperture.

Oh and “HUD in A3 blocks image in full screen mode” not a huge issue and now in AP3 try holding the shift key when you adjust a slider – see what happens.

Like I said I own/paid for LR so it’s not as though I’m sponsored by anyone

I was missing the ability to upload my photos from Lightroom to MobileMe. Since last week it is possible with this great plug-in created by Vlad from alloyphoto.com :

http://alloyphoto.com/plugins/mobileme-gallery-lightroom-plugin/

I used Aperture before LR came into the market. At first, I disliked the LR interface, but with time I found the Aperture a little annoying. I found the brighter panels distracting on Aperture. I guess I could get used to it with time. Below is a small compilation of pros and cons of Aperture in my experience. For me the edit history, which allows unlimited undo function and graduated filter in LR are sufficient to call it a winner. If I can’t stop the itch to buy A3, I might just use it for books, faces, places and some other easy-sharing features, if LR3 doesn’t come out with them. In any case, I will not be switching to A3. I submitted the following review (a slightly toned down version) to Apple a few days ago, but they have not published it yet.

Apple lists about 200 improvements in Aperture 3, but some “Improvements” like “Sizes Displayed in Megapixels” (instead of 600 X 400, now it also displays 240, 000) are not really improvements. It’s just marketing. I listed only things that are either new or special to Aperture, but not all of them. Many other features advertised as special should in-fact be standard in an application such as Aperture and deserve no special mention.

One feature I would like to see both in Aperture and LR is the ability to define color values of an area of interest to adjust WB. That way, you need one picture of any person with a gray card. Once you have a satisfactory WB for his/her skin tone, you can just use those color values to all his/her other pictures. I take a lot of pictures indoors and the amount of fluorescent light on the subject changes drastically with distance (inverse of distance squared). The combination of flash and variable indoor light makes it a nightmare to get the WB accurately in all the pictures. Back to the point….

Pros:
Good results with editing. Can’t really say better than LR.
iLife integration.
Face detection.
Easy sharing on Flickr & facebook.
Photo books.
Copy and paste GPS location. Imports iPhone photos’ GPS coordinates (without importing the photos) and assigns GPS location to the rest.
Improved full screen mode.
Brushes is a welcome addition.
Color monochrome is good feature. Also available in LR through split toning.
Create slideshow videos, which is not available in LR 2 (available in LR3 beta)
A3 Handles videos.
Library sync function allows you to carry a small portion of your large library and bring it back after editing on the go.
Consolidate library: referenced pictures from multiple locations can be consolidated easily. I reorganized the structure of photo storage a few times and every time I moved, I had to point the folders independently in LR. It would be nice to have this feature in LR as well.
Easy comparison with the master by pressing m. LR offers good comparison tools as well.

Cons:
Aperture is way too slow compared to LR. LR is blazing fast. Disabling face detection didn’t improve the speed much.
Too many crashes with only 57K referenced photos.
Poor results with some auto adjustments. No auto WB.
Having to click and navigate menus to access a desired preset, defeats the purpose. LR offers all presets one click away on one panel that can autohide.
You cannot use a preset on multiple pictures simultaneously, except during import. I think this is the case in LR, too.
LR has Graduated filter – allows you to apply a gradual transitioning adjustment (exposure, brightness, etc) easily. Graduated filter is a great tool for me in LR, which is not available in A3.
HUD in A3 blocks image in full screen mode, unlike the film strip, which can autohide.
Very limited undo function. In LR you have access to complete history of all the adjustments you’ve ever made. Undo is not limited in LR to one session. This I think is the biggest winner of all!
When you search and filter in A3, the default list does not have some routinely used filters. You have to add Date & EXIF data filters to the list every time you use search function.
You can only straighten the picture around it’s center. Cropping and straightening functions work seamlessly in LR and you are not limited to straightening around the center alone.
The lights off mode is superb in LR.

P.S. JAKOB: I can find you dozen of posts by Apple ‘reviewers’ that are less than objective, and sometimes downright lying about LR features.