Visit the Apple Store page. Price has been reduced to $199, upgrades are $99.

Interesting.

Anyone keen to volunteer at least 3 reasons why I should switch away from Lightroom? A cursory glance at the '100+ features' seem to be mainly catchup stuff. Some are also hard to verify just yet (e.g. new RAW engine).

Any takers?

If you have Lightroom and are happy with it, then no, I see no reason why you should switch.

If you are looking for more library features, something I felt was missing with Lightroom, then yes, Aperture is very much worth a look at. There is a lot more to it than meets the eye.

I have both installed at home, but after some using, I decided that Bridge was just as effective as Lightroom is, with a less crowded interface, and Aperture is very slick for cataloging and doing mass editing in one swoop on many images, as well as having very nice auditioning tools for comparing images side by side.

It will be interesting to see if Aperture 2 has ironed out most of the issues found with 1 and 1.5.

i have used LR since beta and looove it....
but:
tethered support directly in aperture for all supported cameras!!!!!
lightbox!!!!
loupe!!!
16bit printing
softproofing!!!!
highlight/shadow recovery, clone, clarity all there now and feel...better
maybe better conversions then LR (i haven't played enough with that, never liked them before, but what i saw today looked better then LR)
if someone can tell me if aperture does presets/snapshots/history i am sold...

Can someone tell me if Aperture supports importing XMP metadata? I tried the trial, and there didn't seem to be any way to get IPTC metadata from XMP sidecars into Aperture. Until Apple fixes this fatal flaw, there is basically no way to migrate from some other DAM to Aperture.

Is it really true that in order to use Aperture with RAW files from the latest high end DSLR's you need to upgrade to version 2?

USD 99 is not a lot of money but if it is the case Apple are a bit naughty to strong arm people in to an upgrade so early in the life-cycle.

I also see a moire utility

Doesn't seem to be, and information on Rob Galbraith's site (http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9258-9278) confirms. XMP in a DNG may be, but I haven't tested that out yet myself.

Hi Fellow Photographers

I am quite new to digital photography and can only be a user of these programmes for post-processing. Its hard for me to dissect the anatomy of the programmes and make my own assessment. I am at a stage where I need to know which way to go Lightroom or Aperture. I am using MacBook Pro 4GB RAM and 2.6 Hz, 200 GB HDD 7200 RPMs. I love the machine.

But I do not have money, energy and time to switch over to any of these later. Apart from the programmes, I need to invest money to buy books and video tutorials to learn how to use one of these. So, I request you to let me know if there is future with Aperture. I have a copy of Aperture 1.5 which I got after 1st Jan 2008 and I am eligible for upgrade to Aperture 2, by sending only US$ 10 (approx.).

After having read your discussions, I find that Aperture is good for few things, but not yet matured for professionals, which I always heard in the past as well. With the release of Aperture 2, I expect it to get closer to LR. Is it the right assumption? Still far?

May I request you to help me to know if Aperture 2 could help me for professional post processing of my images. My photography is visible here http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildhiss/

You may reach me via my e-mail, if you wish, wildhiss@gmail.com

Unfortunately, I don't have time to perform extensive testing of DNG metadata importing. Aperture does import some of the IPTC metadata from DNGs, but not all of the data is imported successfully. In my limited testing, creator in Bridge comes through as byline and description is placed into Aperture's caption. Keywords and copyright notice also make the cut. However, other creator fields such as state, country, and website are not preserved.

Edit:
A photo's city, state, and country name do make it through the import process, but location is lost. Star ratings in Bridge are also ignored by Aperture.

[quote=GregW,Feb 12 2008, 10:25 PM]
Is it really true that in order to use Aperture with RAW files from the latest high end DSLR's you need to upgrade to version 2?

I don´t see why this would be true. The RAW capability is NOT inside Aperture. It´s at the OS layer, so you´d need to upgrade to the latest OSX

[quote=brucepercy1,Feb 13 2008, 07:27 AM]
[quote=GregW,Feb 12 2008, 10:25 PM]
Is it really true that in order to use Aperture with RAW files from the latest high end DSLR's you need to upgrade to version 2?

I don´t see why this would be true. The RAW capability is NOT inside Aperture. It´s at the OS layer, so you´d need to upgrade to the latest OSX

[/quote]

Actually, just had a look at RobGalbraith and it does appear that you need to upgrade to 2 to get some of the new camera support

Support for the viewing and processing of RAW files from the newest cameras, including the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, Nikon D3 and D300, requires Aperture 2 and either OS X 10.5.2 or OS X 10.4.11. In OS X 10.4.11, RAW file support for the latest models is limited to Aperture 2 and iPhoto 7.1.2; other Apple applications such as Preview, the Finder itself and perhaps third-party applications can't decode the newest digital cameras' RAW files. In OS X 10.5.2, however, support for the newest RAW files is effectively system-wide.

THe two programmes are now very close. My original question was it there anything in Aperture 2 to make me switch from LR1.3 to Aperture 2.0? The answer on balance of having read this topic is a clear 'No'. I think that if I started from scratch I would be tempted by Aperture's new interface but the functionality of the two programmes is very similar. Ap2 is probably slightly better than LR1.3 but LR2 cannot be too far off.

In conclusion, if you can upgrade from Ap1.5 to Ap2, just go for it!

By the way the tutorials on the Apple site are a good introduction to BOTH AP and LR if you re new to this type of programme...

I have been a very happy Lightroom user for more than a year. The one issue that would tempt me to switch to Aperture is integration with iLife. Is anyone aware of a workflow solution for integrating Lightroom with ilife without having to export the files as jpegs and then import them into iphoto?

_____________________
Jose Antonio Rosas
www.joseantoniorosas.com

Reading the manual, the moire function is just a chroma blur.... Not that it helped much to remove some high ISO chroma noise. I'd dearly like them to put in plugins for image processing, then I could help there.

Graeme

OK, I don't pretend to know much of this Mac stuff, but in iDVD at least one can point to the Aperture library as the source of pictures. Does that help? I doubt it's worth switching though.

Going back to an earlier question in this thread, it looks like Aperture still fails to read sidecar XMP metadata but does seem to read it if it's embedded in DNGs. Weird, they make it easy to migrate away but more painful to migrate in.

John

I went through the same questions last year when I had to choose between the two. I am happy to do all my work in LR and to keep iPhoto simply as my 'show' gallery, which means I never do anything with any of the iPhoto controls. It also means than when I only have a few snaps which I know are either temporary or I will not bother retouching, then they go straight to iPhoto.

I think that the Aperture integration is important if you build lots of photo albums or use iWork applications all the time. Although you can import other pictures into Keynote and Pages, the Apple media browser is so dominant, that it is a pain to go elsewhere.

As an existing LR user it should not normally be an important enough reason to switch.

The one thing that still annoys me with LR vis-à-vis using iLife is that LR will not let you re-export unmodified jpgs. I shoot lots of jpgs for sport which do not need 'developing'. Unfortunately LR recreates fresh jpgs which are twice the size of the original! So I need to create separate folders that include both modified photographs and originals of those not needing modification. Then I export the lot to iPhoto. Apparently this will be addressed in the next version.

The lightroom development team and those on it's periphery are very approachable and quite open. During the beta phases there were regular podcasts with the developers and many of the user requests that came from the beta phase were implemented.

Following the production release numerous support groups, forums, information sites and 3rd party developers have popped up offering support and tools; my favorite being the SlideshowPro interface, to enhance the product.

Adobe continues to actively listen, respond promptly to new camera launches and is generally proactive about the product.

I'm sure that with both products it's possible to develop really good images, it's just that one is largely open; or as open as a large software company can be, the other quite secretive forcing us to second guess what's coming and when.

Given it's taken Aperture so long to arrive at it's current position, I think it will never be able to compete with the size of the Lightroom community and the number of 3rd party developers out there. It's clear Apple have far fewer people dedicated to this segment so I expect we will also see more frequent update from Adobe.

I purchased appleturd 1 after drinking all the kool-ade a mac fanboy gave me. I too am a mac zealot except for Aperture. I had terrible installation problems that took apple three days to sort out. I have always had problems with the vault feature corrupting and failing. I also never cared for the raw processing engine and hated their implementation of highlight and shadow recovery.

Its not all bad when it works but I end up using it only for the cataloging and image selection, basically a virtual lightbox of sorts. I export everything out for processing in ACR or C1. For me it is a 300 dollar cataloging engine with flaky backup.

I would like to see a standard plugin architecture for each camera maker to provide their own raw developing. Then Aperture and LR can have the best tools and the stellar cataloging as well. Apple also needs to improve their support for this product. I wish their development team all the best with the new product and I would love to see a true alternative to other products out there. I will evaluate this when it becomes available but I am not handing apple my CC like I did last time without making Aperture 2 pass the test first.

Just my .02

Have you seen ANYTHING related to a Lightroom roadmap since version 1.0 shipped?

Naw, didn't think so. In general, EXCEPT in the LR beta phase (when Adobe was trying to avoid TOO many people going to Aperture whole hog) they were open with the beta program, but since they've gotten some share back that's changed.

True... with the odd indirect comment from Jeff in Michael's video tutorials...

Yep, with Jeff's loose lips we were lucky our ship in Antarctica didn't suffer the same fate as the one a couple months back