I am sure we are all eagerly awaiting the new version of Lightroom, but as we wait I will be one of the first to admit that I have been tempted by Aperture 3.

Having used Aperture 3 – and yes it is the 3.01 version – for over a week I am now convinced that I am staying firmly with Lightroom.

I have had many attempts at using Aperture during the last few years as I need to understand both Lightroom and Aperture in order to be able to contrast it with Lightroom.

Lack of Synchronisation … the deal breaker

I keep my images on an external hard-drive and reference them. This works flawlessly with Lightroom. Resynchronising folders works like a dream. I can remove images from the folder structure  and add new ones. Then a quick synchronisation and Lightroom sorts it all out.

In Aperture the only way to do this is to use ‘Import as Files and Folders’. What results is new Aperture project which contains any new images. You then have to manually move the new images into there corresponding projects. Deleted images are not flagged. This is way to time consuming for me.

Lots of new features but way too slow…

Aperture has a lot of exellent editing tools and has always had the edge in terms of image organisation – it is complex to use but very powerful.

Lightroom on the other hand has a simple Folder and Collections system. You can do the vast majority of Apertures’ complex filtering using Lightrooms’ collections feature.

It seems that all this complexity means slow performance. Even on high end hardware its slow. Lightroom has never had a performance issue like this.