i am currently using LR but am seriously thinking about switching to aperture...there are some things i can't find, that make working in LR a joy....
history....the way all my adjustments are listed step by step for every file and i can re-trace what i did....aperture?
snapshots....the ability to take a snapshot with certain settings performed and just keep on playing and go back to that point...aperture has versions (so does LR), not quite the same....
looks/saved sets of presets.....LR has several and i have several of my own saved....is there something in the lift/stamp dialog that i am missing?

Nothing like that in Aperture! No history, no snapshots (though you can make each adjustment into a new version). Each individual adjustment has a preset, but there's no way of combining them, so you can't have a "crunchy b&w" preset that combines b&w treatment, a certain noise reduction setting, and a clarity (Aperturespeak: Definition) adjustment - also see here. The closest I've seen is a suggestion to create a project of adjusted sample images which you then use as sources for lift and stamp operations.

Who knows what you are missing with Lift and Stamp but it is utterly unproductive by comparison with LR's Auto Sync mode, and even way behind the Sync button or Cut and Paste.

John

You can create versions, and each adjustment can be turned on/off. Versions can be close to snapshots... there's no "history" per se but frankly I'm not such a fan of the history... if I turn an adjustment on/off 5 or 10 times to see how something affects the image... that puts 10 or 20 items in my history, and I can't clean that up once I make some other adjustment. Maybe it's that I'm not all that used to history from Photoshop but I can't see how it's really better than what Aperture offers here.

i saw the workaround...not quite the same, but it works....
i think the whole lift and stamp feature is a little clumsy...just realized that there is no way to automatically apply settings to files coming in when shooting tethered...that is a big let-down...not very elegant to have people look at the files coming in and having to say"no that is not what it looks like!"
maybe there is an apple script for that?
either way...these are thing far easier to fix and add then all the features missing in LR right now....

Can I ask what you considering missing from LR. I'm curious because I'm contemplating switching from Aperture to LR. My main motivation is I think the adjustment tools are higher quality and more useful in LR. I don't like LR's interface much, and I would miss the organizational features of Aperture, but image quality trumps those, IMO. It's unfortunate that each tool seems to lack something important. I'm hoping LR2 will make this choice easier.

i would say that the adjustments are not better or more advanced in one or the other..just different..i am more used to LR, so aperture is a little new....imagequality/conversions are absolutely equal IMO, maybe this is different for every camera, but for me it works great (otherwise i would not even consider switching....)
aperture has no built in way to save groups of adjustments as looks....there is a workaround, but....
aperture has features that LR just lacks and that are important to me now....since adobe is vague on when and what will be added, i am going with aperture.....the few issues i have should be a lot easier to fix then adding a whole bunch of features...

I don't know that you'll get better image quality from LR than Aperture. They both do a pretty good job IMO. I actually think that often the default Aperture corrections are better than those with LR (I really need to do a GMB shot with LR to get those defaults toned down a bit -- they are WAY more aggressive than the in-camera JPEG previews or the DPP conversion).

You could always try LR on a 30-day trial and see if you can get better results. Aperture 2.0 somewhat "ripped off" the targeted adjustment tool (there are eyedroppers you can set to adjust HSL on 6 different color points), as well as vibrancy and a couple other editing things from LR. I guess turnabout's fair play for LR copying (and poorly :-( ) stacks ;-)

Admittedly judging the quality of these tools is subjective. I'm finding that when I push the processing further, to get more creative and less realistic effects, that in LR I get better results. It seems that in Aperture image quality seems to degrade quickly as I push the effects more. However, when I stay in more realistic territory, then I don't see much difference between the two.

But again, it is subjective and this is merely my impression.

OK, well I've spent more time in Aperture 2, specifically trying to duplicate results I've gotten in LR and I now have to agree that the two are very close in terms of the quality and look of the tools. Of course they aren't identical, but there doesn't seem to be anything significant that I can achieve in LR than I can't in Aperture.

So, I'm not leaning back toward upgrading to Aperture 2, and keeping that wonderfully improved UI.