Aperture v. PhotoShop

I think this is a wrong question.
Both applications serve different purposes. I use Aperture AND Photoshop. Aperture for having full control of my photo library and doing all adjustments. The adjusted photo is then sometimes edited with Photoshop: some more "creative" work, sophisticated adjustments, adjustments to partial areas of a photo, combining more photos to one, etc.
The result of the Photoshop work goes back to Aperture and ist stored in the AP catalogue system.

Tonden

Personally I use both. The ADobe Design Premium Creative Suite apps for decades and Aperture since v1. IMO Aperture for management and minor editing, PSE or PS for any editing that Aperture cannot provide. In an earlier post I analyzed thusly:

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Group A
Aperture is Apple's pro app for RAW images capture management. Lightroom is Adobe's pro app for RAW images capture management. iPhoto is Apple's free entry-level app for images capture management.

Group B
Inexpensive Adobe Photoshop Elements is for basic to intermediate image editing, adequate for most photogs. Very expensive full Adobe Photoshop is for pro graphics work and very advanced image editing.

Two apps are needed. Digital photographers ideally should own and learn reasonable competence with one app from each of groups A & B above. Note that Aperture and PSE are in different groups.

IMO the evolution of a digital photog is to start with iPhoto and quickly outgrow it. After that I recommend that the next step is to own both Aperture and PSE.

If one advances to the point of doing really advanced graphics work the upgrade from PSE to full Photoshop is easy enough, just expensive and with very substantial additional learning curve. I use the full Design Premium Creative Suite, and the upgrade to CS4 from CS3 is so expensive I am staying with CS3.

Bridge is Adobe's pro app that comes with full Photoshop and manages files handling within the Creative Suite. I do not include it in Group A above because it is far inferior to Aperture and Lightroom for digital photographers and managing DSLR image capture.

Bridge is a file-management app, not a database. The folks who like Bridge are usually very experienced Photoshop graphics folks (often coming from a long history with film scans, which involves totally different workflow than modern DSLR capture) rather than primarily digital photogs.
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Note that PSE should not be used for RAW image conversion because the RAW conversion engine in PSE is a compromised version of ACR, not the complete version of ACR found in full (very expensive) Photoshop. Use Aperture or Nikon software for RAW conversion prior to PSE edits if PSE edits are necessary. In my case for 98% of pix Aperture does it all, no external editor required.

HTH

-Allen Wicks

Tangerine23 wrote:I thought PSE was going the way of the dinosaur on Apple products?

Good point. I actually had edited my earlier post but was timed out by the forum software. Personally I am unaware of PSE's longevity, but PSE Mac has always received poor support from Adobe. I would not however trust rumors, only official Adobe pronouncements.

My edit was going to be:
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Group B
Open-source GIMP or inexpensive Adobe Photoshop Elements are for basic to intermediate image editing, adequate for most photogs. Very expensive full Adobe Photoshop is for pro graphics work and very advanced image editing. Other free and/or low cost editors are also available. Many folks consider the open-source GIMP a superior app to PSE.

...I recommend that the next step is to own both Aperture and GIMP or PSE.
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-Allen

When Aperture was first announced, no one thought that it would replace PS. Then Lightroom came along and sort of validated the Aperture type of product and concept each concentrating on Raw conversion, asset management, workflow and global adjustments with some minor local adjustments possible.

As it stands now, the only things I use PS for are:

1. Local adjustments to one or more areas of an image which can be accomplished by other plug-ins in Aperture and natively (non-destructively) in Lightroom. This is the kind of thing Layers and Masks are used for
2. Lens correction (CA, perspective control, etc)
3. Panoramas
4. HDR

Well, it woudnt surprise me if 1 and 2 are taken care of by a future version of Aperture as they already are in Lightroom.

That leaves very few things these two products cant do... so for photographers, not graphics designers, PS is being used less and less. That would make Elements a better choice or even some of the third party plug-ins that offer panos and hdr features.

So my advice is dont by Photoshop unless you can get it very inexpensively, i.e. an upgrade or academic purchase and even then wait until you discover there is something you cant do repeatedly without it.

Hope this helps and gives some context.

Agreed, for new entrants to DSLR image capture management/editing the need for full Photoshop is rapidly shrinking. My bet is that Apple wants v3 Aperture to fully obviate the need for an external editor.

-Allen

Boy, I cannot believe my luck to come across this discussion the very day before I take a digital photography course and will need to get ready to purchase software.

I've been very frustrated making the transition from 35 mm slide film for fine-art photography to digital. As some here so nicely put it (and this is the first time I've visited here), I want to take photos, not create photos. For slides, I did not crop or manipulate before sending to professional lab for enlarging onto archival paper (Ilfachrome). I want to keep things simple and elegant. I crop in the viewfinder, rarely pose a shot, and prefer to capture a moment, an experience.

I have a new iMac coming tomorrow with Aperture installed. I have not printing any of my images other than family photos since going digital because I had an older 2003 Powerbook, a Nikon D70, and basic photo printer. But I do have a large collection of RAW files waiting, gathering, growing. I thought I would have Aperture replace iPhoto then choose between Elements and Photoshop (leaning toward Elements to keep it simple, keep me behind the camera, and keep cost down). After reading the discussions here, I think I will learn Aperture and then see if that is sufficient. I do have Elements 4 unopened in a box (as you can tell, I have been stalling for some time) so could install that, try it, then upgrade to Elements 6 for Mac ($69) and/or try the open-source mentioned here.

Thoughts? Geez, never thought this transition would be so hard nor take me so long. Haven't even asked about fine-art printing options (buying vs. lab)....guess that's another Forum anyway...

I was using PSE, but have since changed over to PixelMator.
http://www.pixelmator.com/

Watch the videos to see what this thing can do. It is easy, full of features, accepts certain plugs & just works well. Best part .... Only $59.

I owned PhotoShop years ago, but could not keep up with their upgrade prices. Pixelmator, in my opinion, is worth a look.

Regards,
Peter

It's worth saying that if you're a student at an accredited college or k-12 school, you can get a student discount on Adobe products. I actually got the whole Adobe suite for 99 dollars through JourneyEd.com last year. CS4 had just been released and they were clearing out their old software I guess and offered a great deal on CS2, which works fine on my intel iMac running 10.5. My school is still on CS3 and there's not much difference in the version I'm using
Most college level photography courses that I know of require you to know photoshop so keep that in mind when making your purchase.