Lightroom - Five Reasons why I Switched from Aperture
In my first Lightroom post I stated that I was unsure which to use, Lightroom or Aperture. Well I am now using Lightroom all the time and have not run Aperture for at least 10 days.
Here is my reasoning:
- Folder Management. By using my simplified folder structure of Places, People and Objects I can now structure my library so that I can easily locate images without having to perform complex searches. One of the main reasons I used Aperture was the folder and file management. I can now do this just as well in Lightroom; and Lightroom has the big advantage that it directly mirrors the folder structure on the disk with Lightroom application view.
- Metadata Browsing. In particular the date browser which automatically sorts and presents your images by date. This can be set up in Aperture, but its a time consuming manual process and it lacks the granularity I require.
- Develop Module Tools. In my view they are much more powerful. The ability to do curve manipulation is much more intuitive for me than altering the histogram alone. The Targeted Adjustment Tool which allows adjustment based on a selected area of tonality is very powerful.
- Performance. Lightroom is just faster with big libraries. My modest collection of 12,000 images always slows down Aperture after relatively short sessions - 30 minutes or less. Lightroom does not slow down.
- Printing. I always reverted to Lightroom for printing as it has a very simple and easy to use print layout interface. I just works. I can select the profile I want in a few clicks of the mouse and it remembers my settings. It's one of the cleanest interfaces I have seen for printing. Bottom line is I don't waste time, paper and ink anymore.
At last I am not having to to keep two workflow applications running in parallel !
Hope you find this useful.
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