I'm getting ready to move my Aperture library over to Lightroom. If anyone has done this and has any suggestions, I sure would appreciate your advice.
Also, all of my images are in RAW. Do you know if I will lose all of my adjustments in the transition? I know I'm going to save my favorites as JPEGs before I do anything else, just in case. I'm just *hoping* the adjustments will come over into Lightroom.
@mabelkitty Good luck with this, I am in the process of deciding whether to use Lightroom or Aperture to sort out my file system, so I've been doing quite a bit of research today! From what I understand they aren't compatible and you will lose your adjustments. I am curious though, what made you want to stop using Aperture?
@charli321 First off, my Aperture is glitchy and freezes up more often than I like. I am upgrading my RAM this weekend, so that may help. But based on what I've read online, it is a known issue.
Mainly, I finally got to see with my own eyes Lightroom's seemless integration with the rest of the Adobe CS suite, which I will be getting soon. There are also so many more tutorials and classes on Lightroom to get the most out of it compared with not too much I've found for Aperture. Aperture was great for me for awhile, but I think in the long run, Lightroom is more versatile.
@mabelkitty Yeah, I think I might have to bite the bullet and go down the lightroom root. I wanted to get my work flow sorted before I start doing more and more photo's. I've got myself in a bit of pickle with the 10000 photo's I took for last years project, they are all still currently sitting on my macbook clogging it up and my edited versions of my raw files are duplicates which is soooo space hungry. I like the idea of lightroom a lot, but I'm not sure about the amount of work involved in getting everything from iPhoto into lightroom. I'm thinking I might just have to draw a line and start from scratch. back up my old iPhoto library twice and remove it from my mac. Anyway, I will watch this thread with interest, just to see if anyone else has some super shortcuts?!
I have never tried Aperture, so no clue about saving settings, But I do know Lightroom 4 is due for release or my already be available. Depending if your into video too Lightroom 4 has basic video editing capabilities.
Everybody has their own personal preferences, so please understand this is just mine. I have used Aperture since day 1, yes it's glitchy, but RAM upgrades do help and don't run it with photoshop open, photoshop eats your memory. After saying that, I would not swap Aperture for lightroom. Aperture is by far the best RAW converter out there, is colour balance is second to none. I only do a few things in Aperture, I reference my files, remove the clipping, colour balance and straighten, and rate them. I then export the images into photoshop using a droplet on my desktop. I then do everything else in photoshop. If you have a lot of images, just leave it running, the droplet does it all for you. The droplet contains all my actions sets for contrast, highlights, shadows etc, then when it's finished I just tweak a few here and there.
I would also suggest that you turn off generate previews in aperture when you import your images, it works faster, just remember to update them before you export. I've also heard that there are some serious flaws in lightroom 4, I know someone who's an absolute processing guru and he said he'll tell all next week. I think you can already download a demo.
I've been using this system for a couple of years now, I shoot weddings, often having 1500 images to process, it really is the biz,
@berni Thanks so much for your comments! This brings up a few questions for me:
1) When you rate them in Aperture, do the ratings follow into Photoshop? (same question for flags)
2) This might be a dumb question because I haven't used Photoshop seriously in many years...once you're working with the images in PS, are they JPEGs or are you still working in RAW?
3) Do you move all of your images into PS?
4) Where do your PS-edited images "live?" If they're in your Aperture library, then moved out to PS, are there 2 copies on your computer?
Boy do I wish we lived in the same city so we could sit down together! I totally appreciate any more details you can give me. You're the first person to say that going between Aperture and Photoshop can be easy enough. I'm not 100% married to the idea of switching to Lightroom if I can come up with a better workflow. Also, I am taking 95% of my images off my computer, so that plus the new RAM should help with the glitches in Aperture.
My two cents worth: Aperture seems to be the biz for people who do most of their processing in another program. If you want to do the maximum editing within one program, though, I really think you can't beat Lightroom. And, for flexibility and customisation of the interface/workflow/, I know you can't. Personally, I had to rule Aperture out because the RAW conversions for my Nikon D700 were not colour accurate, particularly where blues are concerned. Lightroom has calibrations for Nikon and Canon that replicate, to an extent, the in-camera processing, and this saves a lot of time. And, if you do most of your editing in Photoshop ... surely the integration with Lightroom is enough of a selling point on its own. One other point - it's hard to see the future where technology is concerned. Though I'm an Apple man at the moment, I take comfort from using a system whose fate isn't tied to that of one company's products.
To address your initial question though, you will lose your Aperture RAW edits but it may be possible to save the metadata - i.e. colour labels, keywords, titles, captions, star ratings etc. There are two ways to do this, and I'm unsure whether Aperture offers either: One is to save .xmp sidecar files for all your images - Lightroom will recognise and read from these on import. The other is to convert/export your raw files to .DNG (digital negative) format, in which case the metadata above will be contained inside the file itself. Again, Lightroom will read this on import. Aperture reads DNG but I don't know if it writes it.
Sorry for the late reply, but I've spent the past 24 hours wrestling with my router to get my internet working again, finally I've won but it nearly beat me.
I really feel unable to comment too much about lightroom, because I haven't used it in anger.
I'll answer as best I can.
1. ratings do not move into ps, but they might move in lightroom.
2. Can depend on how you set your aperture preferences up.
3. Only the ones I want to keep.
4. All my images live in dedicated folders in "pictures" and then I reference them to Aperture. I do not keep my originals in aperture, only the adjusted data. For each project I start, I create a new aperture library. If your library gets too big in Aperture it takes forever to load and manage, this is another reason why some people don't like aperture, but good housekeeping helps. I will have different versions of my files, but not duplicates, for example I'll have the original raw file (referenced to aperture) and then the psd file created from my droplet, once I've finished i'll create a JPG version (also by droplet). I might have several versions of JPG, different sizes etc depending on what I want to do with the image. I use the droplets because I'm handling large volumes. If I was just processing just one image from aperture, I'd right click in aperture and open it in photoshop, then do whatever I want in photoshop, save it as a psd, then as a jpg. Eventually I might delete the PSD, depends if I think I might ever want to change it again. I'd then delete the duplicate version created in aperture, (the one with the little circle in the bottom right). I wouldn't dream of doing any cloning, repairing etc in aperture, it's just not built for that, although version 3 is better than version 2.
This is such a huge subject, yes, as you say it's a shame we're not closer to discuss and I could show you my work flow, it's much easier to see it.
@beetle365@berni I've been traveling the last few days so internet has been on-and-off, so forgive my delayed THANK YOU for taking the time to share so much information. I'm still on the fence. I think I'm going to start photography school in March and I think I'll be able to get some hands-on workflow guidance, so I'll probably just gimp along as-is until then. Thanks again...much appreciated!
@berni@beetle365 I'm quite late to this discussion -- I've been browsing discussions about editing programs so as not to ask what has already been addressed. Your comments were really helpful and I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to ask for specific advice. I've been on 365 since January 1, and like many, didn't do much editing prior to joining. I've used Aperture for the past year and still feel I don't know how to use it to its full capacity, but looking at what others do with photos, it seems that it doesn't do the kind of layers and 'play' with color, etc. that LR and PS can do. I have been going to One-to-One tutorials at Apple, and one of the tutors suggested Nik suite for use with Aperture. Given that you both use Aperture, would you agree that by adding Nik suite, I'd have the capacity to do the broad range of edits as well as processing for effects? Or would you recommend going directly to LR or PS? What I'm getting confused about in reading all the discussions is whether Aperture-LR-PS are all the same kind of program, or if Aperture is somehow different from LR and PS and not capable of what they are. And what Nik is -- where it fits in with these other choices. I think some is personal preference, but it seems that some are actually functionally different. Thank you in advance.
@taffy Aperture and Lightroom are very similar in how they manipulate images. I don't have LR and use aperture rarely, pretty much only if I'm making batch changes (like to white balance). I do all of my editing in Photoshop now. Sorry I don't know anything about Nik. But you can now get LR/PS as a monthly subscription for really cheap and could try them for a month wit little cost to help you decide. You might also look into lynda.com for tutorials.
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Mainly, I finally got to see with my own eyes Lightroom's seemless integration with the rest of the Adobe CS suite, which I will be getting soon. There are also so many more tutorials and classes on Lightroom to get the most out of it compared with not too much I've found for Aperture. Aperture was great for me for awhile, but I think in the long run, Lightroom is more versatile.
I would also suggest that you turn off generate previews in aperture when you import your images, it works faster, just remember to update them before you export. I've also heard that there are some serious flaws in lightroom 4, I know someone who's an absolute processing guru and he said he'll tell all next week. I think you can already download a demo.
I've been using this system for a couple of years now, I shoot weddings, often having 1500 images to process, it really is the biz,
1) When you rate them in Aperture, do the ratings follow into Photoshop? (same question for flags)
2) This might be a dumb question because I haven't used Photoshop seriously in many years...once you're working with the images in PS, are they JPEGs or are you still working in RAW?
3) Do you move all of your images into PS?
4) Where do your PS-edited images "live?" If they're in your Aperture library, then moved out to PS, are there 2 copies on your computer?
Boy do I wish we lived in the same city so we could sit down together! I totally appreciate any more details you can give me. You're the first person to say that going between Aperture and Photoshop can be easy enough. I'm not 100% married to the idea of switching to Lightroom if I can come up with a better workflow. Also, I am taking 95% of my images off my computer, so that plus the new RAM should help with the glitches in Aperture.
To address your initial question though, you will lose your Aperture RAW edits but it may be possible to save the metadata - i.e. colour labels, keywords, titles, captions, star ratings etc. There are two ways to do this, and I'm unsure whether Aperture offers either: One is to save .xmp sidecar files for all your images - Lightroom will recognise and read from these on import. The other is to convert/export your raw files to .DNG (digital negative) format, in which case the metadata above will be contained inside the file itself. Again, Lightroom will read this on import. Aperture reads DNG but I don't know if it writes it.
Best of luck with it!
I really feel unable to comment too much about lightroom, because I haven't used it in anger.
I'll answer as best I can.
1. ratings do not move into ps, but they might move in lightroom.
2. Can depend on how you set your aperture preferences up.
3. Only the ones I want to keep.
4. All my images live in dedicated folders in "pictures" and then I reference them to Aperture. I do not keep my originals in aperture, only the adjusted data. For each project I start, I create a new aperture library. If your library gets too big in Aperture it takes forever to load and manage, this is another reason why some people don't like aperture, but good housekeeping helps. I will have different versions of my files, but not duplicates, for example I'll have the original raw file (referenced to aperture) and then the psd file created from my droplet, once I've finished i'll create a JPG version (also by droplet). I might have several versions of JPG, different sizes etc depending on what I want to do with the image. I use the droplets because I'm handling large volumes. If I was just processing just one image from aperture, I'd right click in aperture and open it in photoshop, then do whatever I want in photoshop, save it as a psd, then as a jpg. Eventually I might delete the PSD, depends if I think I might ever want to change it again. I'd then delete the duplicate version created in aperture, (the one with the little circle in the bottom right). I wouldn't dream of doing any cloning, repairing etc in aperture, it's just not built for that, although version 3 is better than version 2.
This is such a huge subject, yes, as you say it's a shame we're not closer to discuss and I could show you my work flow, it's much easier to see it.