The Aperture vs Lightroom Shootout

11 Feb 2010 (update) review of Aperture 3

I have been caught in a frenzy of indecision regarding my photo management software for months now.  I have used both Aperture and Lightroom extensively and there are aspects to both programs which I love and others which could really do with some improvement.  They are so close in so many respects that it makes choosing between the two almost impossible; the problem with the indecision is that I’m probably not getting the most out of the one program or the other.

I thought it would be useful to share with you my [Dons flame retardant flack-jacket] view on the relative strengths and weaknesses of each program and then follow up with my selection.  This is not a post meant to start a flame-war between Aperture or Lightroom evangelists; I’m a lone photographer who has used both products extensively and has had to settle on the best fit for me.

Apple Aperture: http://www.apple.com/aperture/

Apple’s Aperture is one slick program; it just makes managing your photos so easy and I love it.  The interface is clean and uncluttered providing you excellent customisable visibility over the information that is useful to you.  The Adjustments palette is easy to use and provides all the standard camera RAW and photographic adjustments that Lightroom does.  I also find Aperture does a much better job at ‘hiding’ more complex aspects of itself until you need it – a good example of this is the metadata views and presets in Aperture which are very understated but an incredibly powerful feature whereas Lightroom seems to throw the lot at you in an often times confusing manner.  In my opinion, Aperture has some clear strengths:

Strengths

• Adjustments - Aperture provides a wide variety of easy to use adjustments which excel at allowing a photographer to tweak the photo.  In terms of standard features like white balance, contrast, levels, black and white point, vibrancy, sharpening etc… both Aperture and Lightroom are on a par with not much to choose from.  Lightroom has a few killer adjustments up it’s sleeve though.
• Photo management and work flow – It really doesn’t get better than this.  Tethered shooting, lightbox functionality, auto stacks, keyword stamping and a blisteringly fast set of views mean you don’t spend time waiting for the software.  Aperture is a clear winner for me here.
• Destructive plugin architecture – I’ve heard a lot of people punting a non destructive plugin architecture but the truth is that only gets you so far and then you need to go into a destructive environment like Photoshop anyway anyway.  Non destructive plugins are a lot harder to write, and not baking the changes into the image means there is a performance cost to opening photos with non-destructive adjustments.  Aperture has a lot of plugins written for it which include the fantastic suite of Nik plugins released as an Aperture bundle – good times.  Happy photographers when the software library is corrupted or lost – edits are burned into the output format (tiff etc).
• Export Options – Aperture’s export options are better than Lightroom.  You can easily create web galleries,  create print quality hard and soft cover books and send your photos to a virtual lightbox so you can play with combinations of photos and see how they work together.
• Integration with other Apple programs means your photos, albums and smart albums are available to your iPhone, MobileMe galleries, iMovie, Final Cut and a whole host of other programs.
• Vault provides an easy way to backup and manage all your photos.
• Speed – Faster than Lightroom, from moving between your photos to applying adjustments, it’s a lot faster.
• Managed mode - Photos are automatically imported into the library and managed there.  One click backup to multiple devices with vault.
• Metadata – create powerful metadata presets to append to existing photos or new photos on import.  Ability to add your own metadata information to photos.

Weaknesses

• Referenced Masters file management – Not quite as strong as Lightroom, Aperture still relies quite heavily on it’s library to know about file location.
• Raw Updates – they always come but invariable Adobe beats Apple to them.  Not sure if rushing to release new raw updates are a good thing.
• Big Library – The Aperture library is always bigger than the Lightroom one however as Aperture is 2-3x faster at rendering images and information the extra harddisk space is a small price to pay.

Adobe Lightroom: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

With a big brother like Photoshop you’d be correct in thinking that Lightroom has some big guns when it comes to photo adjustments.  It doesn’t seem as  polished as Aperture and it’s nowhere (I mean nowhere!) as fast as Aperture;  I have subsequently learned that this is because Aperture stores all previews of photos (hence a massive Aperture library file) whereas Lightroom does the more space-friendly thing and stores only recent previews.

Strengths

• Adjustment tools – In addition to all the standard adjustment tools Lightroom has some additional ones which mean business.  The non destructive localised adjustment brush is outstanding; to be able to selectively modify local areas of colour, exposure and other parameters and apply them without having to apply complex photoshop masks is incredible.  Note: Aperture users can export to camera RAW in Photoshop CS4 (Photoshop can be set to open TIF files and JPGs in Camera RAW) and have the entire range of lightroom adjustment tools available.
• DNG - Easily convert RAW files to the digital negative format an excellent way to future-proof your photos.
• plugin architecture – non-destructive plugin architecture.  Has it pro’s and con’s – it’s all very nice to have 1000 beautifully edit photos and then have the library corrupt itself.  There are always library backups – in both Lightroom and Aperture make sure you backup regularly.
• Cross platform – Windows – clear advantage here.
• Integration with Photoshop – Seamless round-tripping to Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop.
• Smaller library - Good for the laptops.

Weaknesses

• Speed – Consistently much slower than Aperture in all areas.  Displaying of images and editing.
• layout has always seemed a little clunky. Collapse some of the side toolbars and there is this annoying on-hover expansion – Coming from Aperture I really think that Adobe need to have a serious chat with the people in the UI department.  The side panels which, once hidden, pop out at you on mouseover are terribly annoying.  The other thing which I don’t like is the seperate areas you have to go to for viewing and editing,  in Aperture once you’re looking at the photo you can view, edit, export, send to lightboxes and perform a whole host of actions on it.
• Export options, books watermarking – The export options are not as strong as Aperture.  There is no support for my book creation, my favourite Aperture export option.

MY CONCLUSIONS:

So after going backwards and forwards for months I have finally settled on Aperture as my photo management software of choice.  I love the speed, the workflow tools, the ability to print books, the integration with my various web services and gadgets, the metadata presets and the ability to add my own metadata information and having the one-click Aperture vault backup.  It is a deceptive piece of software with much of the complexity and power hidden under the hood which won’t overwhelm newcomers.  Advances with technology in the new iLife series like facial recognition in iPhoto ’09 means Apple is not sleeping on their hands but are busy making huge strides in all the areas which are important to me as a photographer.

In the end both Aperture and Lightroom are sophisticated tools for both photographic workflow management and photo adjustments.  There is no right answer in choosing between the two of them and a decision boild down to a matter of personal taste.  If you are undecided then try both (both have demo versions) and decide which aspects win out for you.