Aperature vs Photoshop

Im not a proffesional but wouldn't mind fooling around with some of my images and was wondering which one is best for ease of use. I am a Mac user.

Im not a proffesional but wouldn't mind fooling around with some of my images and was wondering which one is best for ease of use. I am a Mac user.

They are different programs; if you want to do complex post-processing then you will need Photoshop. Aperture on the other hand (Lightroom as well) is a workflow program that will allow you to organize, sort, allow you to do most if not all of the editing you want to do, and then print or email or post to the web - all in one program. If I were starting from scratch I would buy Aperture or Lightroom first ,and later progress to Photoshop if you need it.

I use Aperture and PS Elements. I could not justify buying full PS as this is just a hobby for me. Anyway I'm quite happy with these two. I do most adjustments in Apertture working on full 16-bits and than do final edits (remove backscatter etc.) on selected images in PSE (8 bits).

Another vote for Aperture.

I'm not a pro, nor do I have hours and hours to mess with my images.

Shoot a good image in RAW and Aperture has all the tools you need.

I also use Elements 4.0 on the rare occasion that I need to remove a background etc...

Since I started to use the Lightroom (still in evaluation) I almost not uses the PS.

Few things that I still need the PS for:

- Signature (watermark) before upload an image to the net, The Lightroom don't have good solution for that.

- Adding meta data keywords to the image, actually the LR have much better option then the PS but I use a plug-in that makes my work much easier.

All other activities that I'm doing can be done in PS Elements that is much cheaper or GIMP that its free.

Third software to make the dilemma harder is the NX for the Nikononians.

Hey guys

Just to add to the mix: I've used Rawshooter Premium for some time for initial tweaking - and it has been excellent. "Sadly" the company was bought out by Adobe and the program was overtaken by LR - which I just havn't got to grips with. I then used PSE for the fine-tuning.

I'm now experimenting with Nikon's View NX for initial sorting - and then Capture NX for fine tuning; and PSE for cataloging. NX has the neatest system (U-touch) for manipulating "selections" of a pic. But I suspect I may go back to Rawshooter backed up by NX. Rawshooter is such a simple but effective program especially good for quick, initial tweaks, re-numbering, sorting and prioritising and exporting to JPG, TIFF etc.

If you are looking for something simple to do the initial work, see if you can find a copy of Rawshooter. Its well worthwhile.

I'm a Mac user.

In Sept 07 I decided on Lightroom over Aperture though, it was a tough decision.

I'm very happy with the decision. Lightroom is much, much easier to learn than I originally thought (and I'm not tech savvy at all). But it probably helped that I went to a seminar on Lightroom by Scott Kelby too, you can't beat learning from some of the major contributors to the development of the program.

Good Luck! Carol

I'll throw in another raw converter which is awesome with better details than Aperture and Lightroom... Capture One 4. The raw conversion is probably the best in the market.

The UI is a bit hokey but it works very well and simple to understand, even if the instructions seem too translated from Danish.