Software: Photoshop and Aperture

[Kalimah]

Does anyone use Aperture software? I know that Photoshop is the bees knees, but was talking with someone today who said that Aperture is just as good and has most of the same capabilities at far less the cost. Going to do some research, but curious if anyone has experience with Aperture

[tbob]

I just started using Aperture a month ago so this will be a somewhat limited opinion; plus I never use layers and do only minimal processing so again somewhat limited.

So far it is working well for me. I like the slider controls for doing adjustments, there is the option of using the mouse or finer movements with arrow controls on the end of the slider bar. The clone tool is simply amazing because it will match patterns. As an example I was removing an old plastic bucket in the grass in the foreground (never saw it in the viewfinder as the view finder only shows 90% of the final image). I was prepared to do the usual fiddling to get the grass to match. No problem: perfect seamless match immediately. And the brushes have the ability to detect edges so if you quickly run the brush along an edge it will do the adjustment to an edge, if you go slow it will ignore the edge and cross over to the next edge and so on until a really slow pass or multiple passes will use the entire brush size.

All this comes with a cost; it sucks up computer time. So unless you have a fast processor or lot's of RAM you will get what I do; a spinning processor icon as it recalculates the adjustment or the new screen image if I move the viewer at 100% to assess focus and sharpness. No big deal to me as I started using computers when they had punch cards so anything less than week for turnaround is pretty good by my expectations.

Hopefully someone who has used the program more will chime in

[kaneohebud]

I've been using Aperture 3 for 1 1/2 years. I'm still learning new things about it every week. There are different levels of controls hidden beneath the wheel icon in almost every function. Curves and levels are very user friendly and enable one to handle the mid-tones easily. Clone, repair, skin smoothing, red-eye elimination etc. all work easily.

I used to know Photoshop, even took a couple college classes on it. However, my knowledge base has deteriorated over time and now find it frustrating and non-intuitive. Aperture 3 has great capabilities if you take the time to explore it thoroughly (or take Apple one-to-one training).

[Colin Southern]

I know that Photoshop is the bees knees, but was talking with someone today who said that Aperture is just as good and has most of the same capabilities at far less the cost.

In a word, they're "dreaming". Photoshop & Aperture may both have all the tools that your associate uses, but in terms of image editing potential, it's like comparing a firecracker with a nuclear weapon

Going to do some research, but curious if anyone has experience with Aperture

Aperture & Lightroom are more comparable.