Aperture vs. iPhoto

There might be a comparison matrix but I have not come across it.

I have many cameras and keep iPhoto for the "point and shoot" style material and use Aperture only for DSLR with RAW image files. No use mixing-in pocket camera snapshots with high quality image management (IMHO).

There are some new things in iPhoto 6 that Aperture doesn't do: calendars, greeting cards, and such.

Other than that, off the top of my head, Aperture is a superset of anything that iPhoto can do.

Have you looked at the text and videos at http://www.apple.com/aperture/ ?

Aperture is really lacking in the web publishing department, especially compared to iWeb, which is part of iLife 06. Don't plan to publish to the web with Aperture for more than a basic page with unchangable data until version 1.1 comes out. (the included templates are severely limiting). In a bind, you can make a simple proof page and publish to .mac if you have a subscription.

You can also export images and then have fun with iWeb or your favorite web authoring tool.

Here are a few of the more significant differentiators between iPhoto and Aperture:

RAW handling: iPhoto imports and reads RAW images, but immediately converts to JPEG or 16-bit TIFFS for all edits. Aperture offers fully native RAW file processing throughout entire workflow, until you explicitly export the file in a specific format. The RAW Fine Tuning controls that will be included in v1.1 (which let you customize the parameters of the RAW decode, to tweak contrast, noise reduction and sharpening) are not available in iPhoto.

Image processing: iPhoto creates a new file when adjustments are made. To create five different variations of an image means duping the file over and over. Aperture's adjustments are non-destructive; all adjustments can be removed, modified, and reapplied anywhere in the workflow. So you can create as many different versions of an image as you want, without ever having to duplicate the original file.

Metadata: iPhoto supports basic metadata, such as comments, title, film roll, and keywords. Aperture has full support for EXIF and IPTC metadata formats, with flexible display of metadata via tooltips, inspectors and overlays. Also, keywords can be organized hierarchically, instead of in a flat list, and can be attached to buttons for one-click application.

Multiple-image display: iPhoto can do 8-up; Aperture can go to 12-up, and can do simultaneous zooming and panning across multiple images (with iPhoto, you have to zoom and pan one image at a time).

Then, of course, there are all the features that are not available in iPhoto at all. The following are all unique to Aperture:

Stacks and auto-stacking, Light Table, Loupe, watermarking, color management/ICC profile support (for printing and export), multiple display support, Lift & Stamp (batch adjustments & metadata), monochrome channel mixer (for high-quality black-and-white conversions), Highlights and Shadows; black, white, and gray tint controls, white balance eyedropper, quarter-tone controls in Levels, color meter (in v1.1), Vaults.

There are others, but these are the biggies...

- Joe

How about some of the "significant differentiatiors" that are present in iPhoto and not Aperture? I am thinking of the far more powerful selectors for smart albums in iPhoto (like "is", "is not", "contains", "does not contain", etc.). Maybe there are some others - I don't know - I have used iPhoto very little since I started fighting with Aperture. (I am stubborn.)

PowerMac G5 2 x 2.3 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.3)

How about some of the "significant differentiatiors"
that are present in iPhoto and not Aperture? I am
thinking of the far more powerful selectors for smart
albums in iPhoto (like "is", "is not", "contains",
"does not contain", etc.). Maybe there are some
others - I don't know - I have used iPhoto very
little since I started fighting with Aperture. (I am
stubborn.)

Those selectors are all in Aperture as well. You just need to access them through the IPTC keywords custom search field instead of the simpler "Keyword" only field pre-included in the search dialogues.

I am pretty sure there is not a search you can do in iPhoto you could not do in Aperture.

Aha! Thank you. I do have a quibble with "Image Date", however - in iPhoto (if I remember correctly) you can select dates with a calendar - evidently in Aperture you have to type them in? (If so, what is the right format?)

Aha! Thank you. I do have a quibble with "Image
Date", however - in iPhoto (if I remember correctly)
you can select dates with a calendar - evidently in
Aperture you have to type them in? (If so, what is
the right format?)

You use a calendar in Aperture as well - that's what the "Calendar" checkbox is for in the search dialogue! You can shift-select date ranges or different single dates to group.

Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by that? I think that's doing the search you want, but you may be talking about the "Date" or IPTC "Date Created" custom search criteria. It's true you can only search those like text, but again I think the Calendar is searching on the same thing the Date box is searching on, the date the image was taken.

(Too bad we can't past window shots.)

I mean in a field EXIF: ... Image Date .... is in the range ... **,

I can't figure out how to easily fill in the range bounds.

(Too bad we can't past window shots.)

I mean in a field EXIF: ... Image Date .... is in the
range ... **,

I can't figure out how to easily fill in the range
bounds.

I am almost positive that using "Calendar" is searching exactly that same data, basically when the image was taken. So use Calendar for doing a date range search instead and you should get what you want.

just to add to your comments, since i started using aperture, i have pretty much stoped using iPhoto all together. However, the one advantage it has over aperture is its tight integration with the iLife suite, and other third party software for that matter. For this reason, i tend to export a lot of my photos back into iPhoto to use for iWeb projects etc. i know you can get software to do this such as aperture2iphoto but i tend to prefer my method.

this is all probably obvious, but may be of use to someone..

As far as I know iPhoto doesn't alter the original image and as soon as you alter or modify the image it creates a new separate imagein your iPhoto folder. If you need to go back to original image you can do it. What you can't do with iPhoto is to compare both original and modified images.

What I am not sure is if iPhoto exports the images with the same quality as in Aperture.