Switching from Lightroom 5 to Aperture 3.5? Seeking input from those who've done the same

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Switching from Lightroom 5 to Aperture 3.5? Seeking input from those who've done the same

Long and short, I love Mac as it streamlines every process I want to do and "just works". While iPhoto is a simple program, I found it largely effective in managing my photo library for years.

Then I had a baby and bought a DSLR... I went from a taking few hundred photos a year to a few hundred a week. Right now, I'm just importing the photos directly into Lightroom 5 (upgraded for free from Lightroom 4) and occasionally doing the "round trip" from Lightroom to Photoshop Elements and back. That said, I don't have a lot of versions.

I can't put my finger on it, but I just don't like Lightroom. I feel like I'm dumping pictures into a repository that's hard to view them in. It's rather anti-intuitive to use the various modules and I find that my photos aren't any better organized than simply being dumped into folders by date. I've found them difficult to browse. Maybe there's a better method, but I haven't found it yet. I miss the simplicity of iPhoto but could probably benefit from some pro offerings. Perhaps Aperture is that happy medium that I'm locking for?

My biggest want: Importing, sorting, tagging and most importantly, organizaing and viewing photos is a simple, streamlined process.

If I were to switch to Aperture, would I simply import my Lightroom folder(s) (it organizes by date in a very Windowsesque file structure - no library like iPhoto/Aperture)? I would love for Aperture to intelligently orgnize photos into Projects by their date/location (not all are GPS tagged). I'm not worried about losing updated file versions as any changes I've made have been very minor and few in total.

Also, I read that Aperature doesn't keep versions of files that have been edited in Aperture or Photoshop. Is that true?

Any help is much appreciated.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 28, 2013 9:49 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 28, 2013 8:12 PM in response to DrivinWest

I'm with you; while Lightroom can do a good job with my images, I don't like the workflow and I don't like the UI.

Aperture is better at organizing and viewing images. It's a great asset manager.

It's work to get images from Lightoom to Aperture with metadata intact. You can Google search for details on how to do it; it's beyond me to do a step-by-step here.

Aperture's organization is different; there is not a direct relationship between pictures and their location on disk (as there is with Lightroom's "folders" view). It's not something you should worry about. You can create lots of smart folders in Aperture (akin to Lightroom Smart Collections) but they are more flexible.

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Answer 2

Oct 29, 2013 4:12 AM in response to DrivinWest

Yeah, I've nothing good to say about Lighroom's user interface. It was clumsy and unintuitive back in the pre-1.0 betas, and subsequent releases haven't improved the situation. Besides a vastly superior workflow, you'll also notice that Aperture makes far more efficient use of screen real estate.

Aperture's Smart Folders will let you view by date/location to your heart's content. See also Five Simple Rules. You really want to understand the different kinds of folders and how they relate to projects before you get going. Aperture will read metadata from XMP sidecars during import. See metadata mapping.

Likely the thing you'll miss most are noise reduction and lens/perspective correction. Aperture's noise control is laughable by today's standards. Do note that there's a noise slider in the raw adjustment brick of the adjustment HUD. But for anything serious you'll want to run through DxO. Same with lens/perspective correction outside of micro 4/3 lenses. Aperture now relies on Apple Maps for geotagging, the resolution of which is just awful in backcountry areas.

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