Aperture Available on Mac App Store for $80

I'm not really very "with it" as far as post processing goes but I've just upgraded my old C2D MacBook to Snow Leopard, so I'm in the position having a nice clean hard drive, and also picked up a copy of Elements 9 which I've installed but not used yet.

So what does Aperture or Lightroom offer me that Elements or iPhoto (which I think is part of the optional iLife purchase) doesn't?

 

FYI the full version of Bridge come with Elements 9 for the Mac, and iPhoto 10 does just fine by me and my Panasonic G2 so if you have iLife 11 it is even better.
I would highly recommend anyone download the free 30 day trial of Aperture before buying and test it out.

What you have now should work great for organizing and editing.

BK

 

I think you will find that Elements 8 was the last version to have Bridge. Elements 9 for Mac now comes with Organizer.

 

Even better : ) for non Photoshop / iPhoto users.
Thanks for pointing that out.

BK

 

cheap as it is probably now "losing out" to LR - maybe a poll on this forum would tell us if this is true

 

i'm a total machead and i went LR2 (haven't upgraded yet). But for me it was easy decision as Aperture did not support the GF1 at the time (does it yet?).

My dad, on the other hand, loves Aperture.

I hate the UI in LR2. I can never figure out how to do anything in it, despite being a programmer and mac user since they first came out. And there is no built in help - instead I have to go to the web, and I haven't found a good way to use their help system there. I get a long of articles in response to my query, and the answer is often easiest found in one that wasn't even written by Adobe. We're talking about simple stuff like "I'm using the crop tool and I want to see the dimensions I'm cropping to as I do it, so that I can crop to specific dimensions".

I'm sure it's partly lack of experience with Adobe products. People who used their stuff for years probably have some accumulated intuition that gets them in tune with the UI. But for a first-timer it really blows.

 

I recently upgraded to Aperture 3 specifically for the GF1 RAW support (RW2). Not that Aperture is any better in UI, but I'm so tired of Adobe products shouting at you "You must work and think this way ..." that I'm putting LR and PS up on the top shelf.

Aperture works well (as far as I can tell, I'm still a neophyte with the product) ... (and so does PS and LR for that matter). Both Adobe and Apple get the job done, both have quirks, but for 80 bucks it is a very good deal (that was the cost of my upgrade).

Gary

 

UI is of course in the eye of the beholder. I bought Aperture3 shorlty after my post above, and now just a few hours later I am already more proficient in it than I was in LR2.

So my advice is: if you hate LR2 UI, it may be worth the $80 to cheeck out Aperture3.

 

There you go! LOL ...

Good Luck and Good Shooting,
Gary

 

Sage advice from Ray regarding older vs. newer macs and the inherent issue that you will encounter on an older model as A3 is very hungry for memory and needs a decent graphics card to function well.

I use lynda.com and can recommend the basic Aperture 3 course taught by Photog Derrick Story. It can be very fundamental in some of the lessons, but overall, he does a good job and provides some good insight into how to tap into some of the more advanced editing feature in A3. You can sign up on a month-to-month basis for $25.00 (usd) and the basic A3 course runs 8 hours.

 

just my 2 pence here but really if ur MAC is old DON'T GET IT. My Imac is a 2007 and it can't run the program.   Gutted as did work for about 1 week then it went down hill from there  

 

sorry to hear that. my iMac is also circa 2007 (august aluminum version). i haven't tried Aperture on it yet. i ended up going with Lightroom 3 because my fiancee has a PC laptop and LR's cross platform ability really sealed the deal for me. (well, almost sealed... i still have about a week left on my trial before i buy it.) Lightroom 3 runs great on my iMac, btw. (24" 2.8GHz core 2 duo, 3GB Ram).

 

as a data point, it's working very well for me on:

2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, 4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB VRAM

 

Thanks for that. I only asked because my use of photo editing software really is near 0%. I had an older version of elements (possibly 4) on my iBook, before I got my MacBook, I probably put less than 5 photo's through it and this was back in 2006/7. So whilst I am essentially a virgin to it all, I thought I'd see which programme I might be best investing some time in. Am sure Elements will keep me happy for the foreseeable future though :smile:

As for my current MacBook, it's a 13", 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB ram. I was considering upgrading this year, but it looks like I'd have to go for one of the 15" i5 MacBook Pro's to make it a worthwhile update and, at around £1700, financially it doesn't make sense. This one is more than adequate for what I put it through and I probably won't throw myself into editing, purely because I don't have massive amounts of time where I can give 100% application to it.

EDIT:
In fact, this is the only one I can even recall editing. It was done more as a play around rather than to bring a shot to life, and I just followed a guide in a photography magazine to do it!

View attachment 156370

 

I'm just annoyed that I paid ~$250 for Aperture last year. :-(

 

I find a lot of people seem to use Aperture. Plenty of Pro's seem to mention they use it. Namely because the vast majority of well-known ones seem to be mac users.

Yeah, except Aperture is $80 for anyone =) I did like it better than LR, but I moved back to a PC. And performance of Aperture was far too dependent on a GPU I could not upgrade (iMac). And at $80, for any newer machine, it is certainly hard to argue for LR at $300 if you don't have an edu discount.

 

Really ... I paid around $90 at a brick and mortar store last year.

Gary