Photoshop or Aperture

[David Hedley]

I have just splurged on one of the new IMacs, and realised afterwards that my Photoshop software was Windows only. I do not use much of the Photoshop functionality - really only auto curves, sharpness and crop (!) on LF & panoramic scans - and as I can choose now between Photoshop or Aperture, I'd welcome informed opinion on the pros / cons of each. (IPhoto definitely doesn't have what I'm looking for).

[paul r w freeman]

I have just splurged on one of the new IMacs, and realised afterwards that my Photoshop software was Windows only. I do not use much of the Photoshop functionality - really only auto curves, sharpness and crop (!) on LF & panoramic scans - and as I can choose now between Photoshop or Aperture, I'd welcome informed opinion on the pros / cons of each. (IPhoto definitely doesn't have what I'm looking for).

You owe it to yourself to look at 'Lightroom' from Adobe. If you really just want to do the things you say. Its cheaper than either Photoshop or Aperture and has some fantastic and worthwhile features.

Its printing capabilities are almost worth the price alone.

If your scans are very big you ought to check if they can be handled first by downloading a trial copy and trying to import them. I find that it can't handle some of my 1-2Gb layered files. In that case, you'd need photostop

Lightroom and Aperture are more geared to digital raw images. But lightroom does work with tiffs and psd's and I use it to handle many of my scanned images.

[JW Dewdney]

You SHOULD be able to swap it out with Adobe for a Mac-only license. I did just that last year. Give them a call.

[Hugh Sakols]

Use photoshop first. Learn to use masks. You can organize using bridge.

Lightroom will not accomidate large 10000 x10000 files. I never could pull up my 6x9 scans using lightroom.

[Stephen Willard]

David, the best thing you can do is down load the latest trial software for both and give them a try. You should know fairly quickly which one will be the best fit for your needs.

On a different note, I am thinking about purchasing a new iMac myself. I am looking at the 24" LCD. Any initial impressions you could offer would be appreciated.

[Rory_5244]

I have Aperture and CS3. Aperture will open my large 8x10 scans, Lightroom will not. Aperture is not, however, a replacement for Photoshop. If the day should come when you want to do something more advanced than just crop and auto-curves, you will be stuck without Photoshop. On the other hand, Adobe Bridge, which ships with Photoshop, has been updated and looks pretty good, and will ,for the most part, eliminate the need for Aperture.

[David Hedley]

Thanks for the suggestions - I will indeed download the trial version of each and compare - that's a great idea.

Stephen - we went for a 20" IMac into which I added an additional 1GB of RAM. So far it has been excellent - some things work better on it than on a PC, and I think that ILife is a very well considered software package - possibly because my non-work life revolves around photography and music. I really like the way my photos are displayed, and I understand that the 24" screen is even more suited to image display. It is ready in less than a minute after power up - a real change from a PC which can take an age fighting through all the anti-virus software. Some things do seem a little more clunky than on a PC, possibly because I am so used to a Windows workflow. The Mac mouse is lousy and was swiftly replaced with my IBM two button mouse with scroll wheel - not having right click is like having an arm cut off. I do really like the new keyboard, however - it's the first one I've found since my PS2 'clicky' keyboard that I can really type at speed on.

IPhoto is OK - it is great to be able to view .psd, raw and other image types without fuss, and large files - 200 / 300MB in size - load in seconds, but it is obviously quite basic in terms of image processing capability.

[Jeremy Moore]

David, the mac mouse does have right click, you just have to turn it on in the mouse settings--but I still find right clicking with it a pain.

I concur with what JW said above. If you call Adobe you can get a serial switch to Mac; just did this last week.

[David Hedley]

OK - I will try that - although my version of Photoshop is several years old (version 6) - I've never needed to upgrade it - so they may not bite.

[Eric James]

I was allowed to switch platforms (PC to Mac) and upgrade from 5.5 to CS2 about two years ago for roughly $150 shipped. Adobe makes you sign a document stating that you destoyed your older PC version.

[Ted Harris]

Waht earlier posteres ahv implied but no post has come out and said is that Aperture is not directlyu comperable to Photoshop. Both Aperture and Lightrooma re primarly sorting and cataloging programs. Both can take images into PS for final editing, both have editing capibilities but they don't come close to those you have in PS. Neither is a perfect answer for any photog. As mentioned, Lightroom will not handle most LF scanned images, IIRC the maximum file size is 10Kx10k which is smaller than most of my scanned 4x5 and 5x7 master files. Aperture, OTOH is an incredible system hog. It takes up gobs of processing power and disc space and, while it will store large files, takes up a grat deal of overhead to run.

For the moment I have pretty much decided to use Lightroom, reluctantly, because I prefer the Aperture feature set but don't want to deal with the resource issue (and I have a very sppedy system), and will jsut save jpegs of my LF files into the Lightroom catalog.

[Ken Lee]

Photoshop is like Large Format. Tools like Aperture and Lightroom are like... Small Format. They appear to be designed for pros and advanced amateurs, to manage their "digital workflow": many (comparatively) small files obtained from digital cameras.

When pros return from a day of shooting on assignment, they want something by which they can perform bulk correction operations, catalog and retrieve images according to keywords, and breeze through thumbnails.

Lately, Photoshop has been extended to allow you to do a certain amount of this, but that's not what it's really for. It's designed to perform extremely rich and complex non-destructive adjustments. Similarly, tools like Aperture and Lightroom have grown richer, so there is some convergence, but only to a point.

As a large format photographer, you're much better off with Photoshop. As you learn about its capabilities, you find out that there's actually no such thing as "curves, sharpness, and crop". As with large format photography itself, it's the nuances that matter - and Photoshop is all about getting them.

[Kirk Gittings]

I have Lightroom, Aperture and PS3. Aperture shines as a database, but is no substitute for PS3. Frankly since I open almost every image in PS, Bridge does all the organizing I need (since they fixed it).

[Jeremy Moore]

Frankly since I open almost every image in PS, Bridge does all the organizing I need (since they fixed it).

hear, hear!

[ronald moravec]

You need to have CS to get a platform change and upgrade.

I suggest Photoshop Elements 4.

[shmoo]

With the new iMacs, you should be able to load your old Windows operating system and the old photoshop and run on either a dual boot or boot camp...

[Rob Hare]

If you really hate the mouse and you want something really good for image manipulation try a Wacom Tablet , it vastly speeds up workflow , you will never use a mouse again !

[Rory_5244]

Somehow I really like how Aperture renders my RAW files from a Canon DSLR, as opposed to Adobe's Camera RAW. Yeah, in case you wanted to know.