Apple Aperture 2

[lwireny]

Ok I'm new here And still feel like a newbie. So My question is I have a macbook pro and a IMac. So I ended up buying Aperture 2 Which Apple has Tutorials at their web site. I am not comfortable with Photoshop

So my next step would be the plug in's from NIK Software. ($300 full Suite) Which also has a trial version and easy to follow Tutorial. Seems everyone is using Photoshop Should I scrap Aperture 2
and buckle down and learn Photoshop or use them together.

[acedrew]

Photoshop and Aperture are not comparable products. Lightroom and Aperture are. If you're really just wanting to do post processing on your photography, eg; white balance, exposure adjustment, airbrushing, zit removal, etc. then aperture or lightroom will work great for you. However, if you want to get into compositing (taking multiple images and putting them together in layers to create scenes that never happened) you'll need Photoshop I have both Photoshop and Lightroom, as a photographer, I spend 97% of my time in Lightroom. If you told me I had to choose between Lightroom and Photoshop forever, I would go with Lightroom. The post-processing workflow is so natural in Lightroom that it is almost 10 times faster than Photoshop. Now I'm sure people will get on here and say Photoshop is just as fast as Lightroom/Aperture, you just have to set up actions and droplets, that's fine, but the level of control at the speed avail in Lightroom, not to mention completely non-destructive editting process is unbeatable for most edits.
I'm a PC user, so Aperture is not a viable option for me, but everywhere in this post where I said Lightroom, Aperture is a perfect standin. Their feature sets are almost identical

If you are interested in moving into photoshop in the future, you might consider buying lightroom now, it features seamless integration with photoshop, and you can add it anytime.

Also Adobe now has incredible community driven support, howtos and tutorials on their site, for all Adobe products.

Andrew Rodgers
"You can pry Lightroom from my cold, dead hands"
Perfected Perspectives -- Photography by Andrew Rodgers | Andrew Rodgers (acedrew) on Twitter

[lwireny]

I am going to the Photo plus expo/conference at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC October 22-24. I should be able to get a good idea from there NIK and Pixelmater will be showing off there software. I have heard Aperture 2 and lightroom are very similar I guess we'll find out. Thanks I may even try there free trial periods. Like you said PS has a larger support system

[eric_nelson]

As an avid MAC user and Aperture lover I have to admit that as I have continued to work on my PS (CS4) skills I had to make the transition to Lightroom. It makes editing, post processing and work flow easy. The ability to edit with PS directly from Lightroom it was a no brainier for me. I am still learning LR but it is as good or better than Aperture.

Don't get me wrong, Aperture is a great product and for most people who aren't doing alot of post processing it is enough. Also, I wouldn't use Photoshop as my primary RAW photo editor.

Good luck,

[benjamieson]

I use Aperture and Photoshop.

Aperture handles all my photo management needs and the grunt work on the retouching side for 98% of my images.

The other 2% that I want to get extra creative with, or run some of my PS Actions on, get a round trip to Photoshop, which integrates perfectly with Aperture, resulting in the PSD being saved back into aperture (and fully editable as a PSD if I decide on further edits later), without touching the original file.

At the end of the day the following rules seem to apply:

• Aperture users think its better than Lightroom.
• Lightroom users think its better than Aperture,
• Aperture and Lightroom users both get the most out of their images, and both love Photoshop.

That may not help at all!

Ben

[Winyari]

Originally Posted by benjamieson

I use Aperture and Photoshop.


That may not help at all!

Ben

Thanks for this post! It really helped me. I have Aperture 2 but have been feeling kind of like I'm missing something. I need to reinstall my CS3 and get back into my habit of going between the two programs.