Photoshop or Aperture

[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.