Explain Aperture to me.

[Parasitic]

Just to start this off, I'm not a photographer. I don't do any graphics manipulation.

I would like to learn something like Photoshop though, but the admission cost is a little too high. I could go with Elements, however, but the academic price of that is still higher than Aperture.

Enlighten me on this?

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Kmax82]

Aperture is not what you are looking for. It is strictly for editing and maintaining your photo library.

On a side note, I thought that Elements was only $99?

 

[Kaido]

Aperture is like iPhoto with Photoshop's color correction tools. It's not made for hardcore editing like Photoshop is. My wife is a photographer and uses Aperture almost exclusively now. If there's a special effect or repair she wants to do, she opens the image in Photoshop for editing, but probably 80-90% of the time she uses Aperture.

 

[Parasitic]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
Aperture is not what you are looking for. It is strictly for editing and maintaining your photo library.

On a side note, I thought that Elements was only $99?

Aperture 2 is like $55 for me - academic pricing.

 

[Kmax82]

Hmm.. ok. You must get one heck of a deal, because the Education Store at Apple lists it at $179 for the educational version.

 

[Batti]

Departmental purchases are priced much lower, though I paid more than $55. That's a steal.

 

[Parasitic]

Never mind, just double checked and I think that $55 is a special offer and the regular price is $69.

So let me get this right: the real difference between the two is that Photoshop is a graphics "creation" program that can make things from scratch while Aperature is a "manipulation" program that that needs an existing image as basis, right?

I don't have iPhoto installed so I don't know but basically is it very similar to a stripped-down version of Aperature? What features am I missing if I just used iPhoto instead?

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Parasitic
Never mind, just double checked and I think that $55 is a special offer and the regular price is $69.

So let me get this right: the real difference between the two is that Photoshop is a graphics "creation" program that can make things from scratch while Aperature is a "manipulation" program that that needs an existing image as basis, right?

I don't have iPhoto installed so I don't know but basically is it very similar to a stripped-down version of Aperature? What features am I missing if I just used iPhoto instead?

Disclaimer: I haven't used Aperture since v1.

Aperture is a photographer-centric tool, doing most everything but retouching. It'll generally be more efficient in processing lots of photography.

Photoshop does many of the same things but is less photograpy/photographer-only-oriented and includes tools to retouch, create, etc. This is the choice if you need to do more than basic stuff: color correction, resizing, cropping etc.

 

[jamesbond007]

One thing not mentioned above is that Aperture and Lightroom both are tuned for working with RAW camera files. JPEG files leave very little editing options and the dynamic range captured is very limited. Also, recovering for exposure errors is far easier and the results are a million times better.

I am also a photographer and I use Lightroom both on the Mac and my PC. It's part of my post-processing and photos are generally loaded into Lightroom for bulk processing and the sorting between the 'keepers' and the files I wish to discard or not work on.

As mentioned above, if you're looking for a true picture editor, Photoshop Elements would be where you'd want to start as it has most of the necessities found in Photoshop CS3 at a fraction of the cost.

~Travis

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Parasitic
Never mind, just double checked and I think that $55 is a special offer and the regular price is $69.

So let me get this right: the real difference between the two is that Photoshop is a graphics "creation" program that can make things from scratch while Aperature is a "manipulation" program that that needs an existing image as basis, right?

I don't have iPhoto installed so I don't know but basically is it very similar to a stripped-down version of Aperature? What features am I missing if I just used iPhoto instead?

Photoshop is a graphics manipulation tool too. Aperture is a workflow program, like adobe lightroom as stated. It's purpose is to provide a smooth, non-destructive workflow for use with raw files. tag, minor color corrections, organize. photoshop would then be use to further manipulate, or as you stated, create something from scratch.

Both Aperture and Lightroom have opened up a plug in system, so their capabilities are expanding, but the core of what they do is workflow/organization.