Thinking of Purchasing PSE 11 or Aperture, not both.

They are totally different products with some overlap. Aperture excels at DAM management: managing your images and making them quickly available. PSE is more for image editing and compositing (which Aperture cannot do).

I think you should get both, but start with Aperture.

(From a previous post of mine)

Aperture isn't an editor in the sense of a PS. Aperture is a digital image developer, it develops the digital images much like a darkroom develops film negatives. Aperture doesn't do the type of cutting and pasting that a program like PS does. What it does do is give you the tools you need to take an image from the camera to the final print.

Many users of Aperture also make use of an editor like PS or GIMP from time to time in their workflow. Aperture gives you the ability to hook one of these programs into your workflow so that an image can be worked on in Aperture sent to PS and then returned to Aperture for further development and storage.

johnfromroyalton wrote:

Looking for a recommendation. Either or , but not both

I recommend you purchase software that enables you to do what you want to do.

What do you want to do?

Home user here with lots of pictures to deal with. I use both but Aperture predominantly. I resort to PSE (now 11) on some occasions like now, when scanning lots of old prints. Aperture organisation is fine for me and most of the time Aperture Adjustments work well enough but not always.

Since Aperture cannot "remove objects" - the "compositing" in my post - I guess you need PSE. Everything else points to Aperture.

For this use case, Photoshop Elements is a better tool.

For this use case, Aperture is a better tool.

Since Aperture cannot "remove objects" - the "compositing" in my post - I guess you need PSE. Everything else points to Aperture.

To remove large objects (where Aperture's repair and clone brushes do not suffice) I use the inexpensive tool "Inpaint", it usually does suffice. But if you also want tobe able to add objects from other images, then PSE is required. And for removing objects PSE is even better than the "big brother" PS CS6.

Same view as (almost) everyone else. I have both; I use both; I like both; I need both. Both will allow you to grow and learn A GREAT DEAL over, probably, a very long time. When you consider that $80 is the price of about six movie tickets or so, it's a very low cost to spread out over many years. FWIW.

Consider getting Aperture for $80 and Pixelmator for $15 (on the app store) or GIMP for free.

DLS

Google is one of humankind's great achievements.

(Added) Have you considered iPhoto + Pixelmator?

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

Or here

(you're much kinder then I am 👿)

One thing make sure you get the newest version for OS X as it no longer requires X11

GIMP ,,,,, What can it do??

It is a very versatile image processing and graphics compositioning tool, that supports transparency and layers, very similar to Photoshop. And it is free.