Dumping Grounds

This is by no means means to be an exhaustive review, as a) I have not had that long to play with the products, b) I’m hardly an expert on either one and c) I don’t care to type that much. But from a cursory glance, while Aperture 2.0 has closed the gap with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom… it hasn’t passed its rival, and still lags in certain key areas.

My reasons for this are many, and you can look up a number of comparisons and reviews of each in other places on the web. I’d like to focus on 3 key points:

• While Aperture 2 may be faster, I’m still not impressed by its speed. It seems quick enough when applying effects and filters and the entire photo is showing on the screen. But if you do the same effects with the display at 1:1 mode, Aperture slows significantly. Most effects, even what I would consider to be “complex” ones (sharpening and noise removal) are near real time as you drag the slider in Lightroom.
• Speaking of noise removal (this is a big deal for me, as I enjoy night photography, and I have not yet managed to buy one of the higher end Canon cameras [I'm on an Digital Rebel XT]), maybe it’s just luck, but Lightroom’s tools for noise reduction seem outstanding, and Aperture’s are lackluster, at best. I’ve even tried comparing to a dedicated third party tool (Noise Ninja) and I still thought Lightroom held up quite well.
• I wish I could quanitify why, but I simply get better results with Lightroom… maybe the tools are more clearly labeled, maybe Lightroom is just better suited to the way I think, or maybe there really is a difference in capability. But my tweaked pictures from Lightroom look better than my tweaked pictures from Aperture (1.5 or 2). I can’t explain what I may be doing differently, as I feel like I am following the same workflow, but the results are (even judged by other folks) demonstrably better with Lightroom. I have some examples on my Flickr page.

Keep in mind this is coming from a registered purchaser of Aperture. Version 1.0 of Lightroom didn’t impress me. It’s come a long way to 1.3.

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