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.Originally Posted by David Hedley
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks