Sunday
30Sep2007
An Aperture User Looks At Adobe Lightroom
Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 07:00PM
Partly just because it was there and partly because I feel like I haven't given it a fair crack of the whip, I spent some time yesterday and today with Adobe Lightroom.
For those who don't care to read the minutiae, I'll get to the point: In my opinion, Aperture vs. Lightroom is the same discussion as Canon vs. Nikon. Each has strengths and weaknesses, but it's not a no-brainer decision either way. You'll produce good results with both applications, and the real decisions come down to personal preference, and specific features that you may need for a very specific reason.
So, let's dig in deeper:
Appearance
It may seem shallow to discuss each app's visual appearance, but it's the first thing that hits you when you launch them and, when you're going to live with one of these apps for some time, you don't want to hate it every day.
Coming from Aperture, where everything is a lightish shade of grey, Lightroom's UI two-tone palette of black and quite dark grey feels really heavy. It reminds me, really, of the Disaster Area stunt ship control panel from Hitchhiker's Guide:
I don't like the look of Lightroom, but I could get past it if I had to.
Interface
Although better than some other applications that Adobe have produced over the years, Lightroom just doesn't feel totally like a Mac application to me. In particular, the fact that the Library navigator panel has a scroll bar on the left-hand side of its view really makes my skin crawl. A small detail, granted, but I do notice these things.
Another thing I don't like about Lightroom is the use of plain text labels as buttons in the "Fit, Fill, 1:1, 1:2" options in the Navigator panel, as well as the large "Library | Develop | Slideshow" etc. at the top-right.
My last general gripe about the Lightroom UI is the light watermark it puts on the grid view with a large number behind each thumbnail. Again, it's a sufficiently close shade of grey to the thumbnail background that it's hard to read, unless you look intently at it. When the thumbnails are small, it just looks like visual noise. Not only that but, if you flag an image, the flag icon is drawn over the top of the number - more noise. Perhaps I haven't appreciated the point of them being there at all.
One very nice feature in Lightroom, though, is the small HUD window that pops up with the name of the command you just invoked with a keyboard shortcut. Really helps learnability and increased my confidence a lot.
Library Management
Lightroom has some serious strengths here. I absolutely love the Metadata Browser - when you want to search by some photographic attribute, this beats the pants off setting up a Smart Album or configuring the query HUD in Aperture for speed of setting up the query and for speed of getting the result. It's like lightning.
However, I much prefer the uncluttered arrangement of Aperture's projects panel - it's just all my 'photo containers' and isn't mixed up with search and metadata.
I don't use Aperture's referenced masters feature - I like to keep all my masters in the Aperture library. I feel the UI to this functionality is much better in Aperture than in Lightroom. When I look at Lightroom's import panel, I feel a bit intimidated and don't quite feel confident that it's doing what I want it to.
Ratings
Applying ratings is one of the most important parts of a post-shoot workflow. Lightroom differs from Aperture in the ways that you can rate images: in Aperture you have a simple range from -1 (called "reject", but it's treated as an ordinal value one increment below zero) through to 5. In Lightroom, you have zero through five stars, plus three flag states: Pick, Flagged, Reject. This means, oddly, that an image can be a five-star reject or a zero-star pick.
I do like the provision of an out-of-band 'flag' in Lightroom. The ability to mark an image as needing attention without having to override the semantics of a particular star value is useful. I often rate a shoot and want to mark the ones that I think don't work in colour, but might in black and white. The Lightroom flag would be great for this.
In Aperture, you have keyboard shortcuts to filter any thumbnail view by star rating: ctrl-` for Unrated and Better; ctrl-1 through ctrl-5 for "X stars or better", ctrl-6 for all images; ctrl-7 for unrated images and ctrl-8 for rejects. I find it strange that Lightroom doesn't provide keyboard shortcuts for this, as I use these keystrokes as one of the main ways to filter through a large project or album of rated images.
Adjustments
I adore the interactive histogram in Lightroom. It's a fantastic bit of UI. The Tone Curve is far more intelligible than Aperture's Levels adjustment.
However, I found Lightroom's little on/off light switches to be unintuitive as a way to enable or disable the adjustment. What would have been so wrong with a checkbox? Also, it was not at all obvious that double-clicking on a slider would reset it to zero, although this does provide the ability to reset a single slider within a control. In Aperture, you can only reset the entire adjustment.
I really, really, really like Lightroom's Split Toning control. Really really really like it. I haven't played with the Lens Corrections adjustment yet.
Are Lightroom's adjustments better than Aperture's? I haven't put enough images through it yet, but my feeling is that Lightroom has some tools which Aperture doesn't have (Split Toning, Presence, Lens Corrections) but I'm not seeing a huge difference between the adjustments which they have in common.
I'm also unable to detect a significant improvement in Lightroom's default RAW decode from Aperture's on my Canon 30D RAW files.
Workflow
The major stumbling block for me in thinking about adopting Lightroom is that Aperture has a far stronger export workflow. In particular, ahem, in sending images to Flickr. Given that the vast majority of my images only ever appear on Flickr, being able to get photos simply on to Flickr is critical for me.
Aperture gives Lightroom a good kicking here.
Dual Displays
Aperture has superb support for dual displays. I haven't tried Lightroom on a dual display setup, but I typically use Aperture in second-display 'alternate' mode which shows the currently selected thumbnail in full-screen on the system's alternate display. Perhaps someone can enlighten me in the comments on what Lightroom offers in this area.
Performance
Performance is a feature. Lightroom takes Aperture around the back and delivers a trousers-down six-of-the-best spanking in performance. Lightroom screams, but it gives up a smidgen of polish to do so.
In particular, when you're applying adjustments, Lightroom clearly does not apply the adjustment continuously on the full-resolution image. Aperture does and, when you're used to seeing it in full-res, the Lightroom experience is less than pleasant: you have to adjust the slider roughly, drop the mouse, inspect the result, adjust more finely, repeat.
However, speed of using an application is about more than just how quickly an image pops up to the screen. I admit I'm still a novice in Lightroom, but I often found that I got confused about which of the five major modes I was in. The distinction between the Library and Develop modules seems an unnecessary speedbump in the UI, and it's not a distinction that is strongly felt in Aperture. In Aperture, you show the adjustments panel and/or the Viewer and you're in "develop" mode. Hide them and you're in "Library" mode. I made a lot of mode errors in Lightroom and the problem was made worse by the 'quick develop' panel in Library, which makes that view look a lot like Develop.
Conclusion
Very much like my earlier article A Subversion User Looks At Git, my conclusion is this: I have a much greater appreciation for Lightroom than I did when I started this review. It has some features that are better than my current tool, but it's also missing things that I critically depend on.
If Lightroom could lose the gothic makeup, get an export workflow and minmise the distinction between Library and Develop, I'd certainly be looking harder at switching. All that said, if Aperture just got faster (and supported lens model metadata!), I'd be equally happy.
Look forward to your comments.
For those who don't care to read the minutiae, I'll get to the point: In my opinion, Aperture vs. Lightroom is the same discussion as Canon vs. Nikon. Each has strengths and weaknesses, but it's not a no-brainer decision either way. You'll produce good results with both applications, and the real decisions come down to personal preference, and specific features that you may need for a very specific reason.
So, let's dig in deeper:
Appearance
It may seem shallow to discuss each app's visual appearance, but it's the first thing that hits you when you launch them and, when you're going to live with one of these apps for some time, you don't want to hate it every day.
Coming from Aperture, where everything is a lightish shade of grey, Lightroom's UI two-tone palette of black and quite dark grey feels really heavy. It reminds me, really, of the Disaster Area stunt ship control panel from Hitchhiker's Guide:
When you press the black button labelled in black on a black background, a black light lights up black to let you know you've done it!
I don't like the look of Lightroom, but I could get past it if I had to.
Interface
Although better than some other applications that Adobe have produced over the years, Lightroom just doesn't feel totally like a Mac application to me. In particular, the fact that the Library navigator panel has a scroll bar on the left-hand side of its view really makes my skin crawl. A small detail, granted, but I do notice these things.
Another thing I don't like about Lightroom is the use of plain text labels as buttons in the "Fit, Fill, 1:1, 1:2" options in the Navigator panel, as well as the large "Library | Develop | Slideshow" etc. at the top-right.
My last general gripe about the Lightroom UI is the light watermark it puts on the grid view with a large number behind each thumbnail. Again, it's a sufficiently close shade of grey to the thumbnail background that it's hard to read, unless you look intently at it. When the thumbnails are small, it just looks like visual noise. Not only that but, if you flag an image, the flag icon is drawn over the top of the number - more noise. Perhaps I haven't appreciated the point of them being there at all.
One very nice feature in Lightroom, though, is the small HUD window that pops up with the name of the command you just invoked with a keyboard shortcut. Really helps learnability and increased my confidence a lot.
Library Management
Lightroom has some serious strengths here. I absolutely love the Metadata Browser - when you want to search by some photographic attribute, this beats the pants off setting up a Smart Album or configuring the query HUD in Aperture for speed of setting up the query and for speed of getting the result. It's like lightning.
However, I much prefer the uncluttered arrangement of Aperture's projects panel - it's just all my 'photo containers' and isn't mixed up with search and metadata.
I don't use Aperture's referenced masters feature - I like to keep all my masters in the Aperture library. I feel the UI to this functionality is much better in Aperture than in Lightroom. When I look at Lightroom's import panel, I feel a bit intimidated and don't quite feel confident that it's doing what I want it to.
Ratings
Applying ratings is one of the most important parts of a post-shoot workflow. Lightroom differs from Aperture in the ways that you can rate images: in Aperture you have a simple range from -1 (called "reject", but it's treated as an ordinal value one increment below zero) through to 5. In Lightroom, you have zero through five stars, plus three flag states: Pick, Flagged, Reject. This means, oddly, that an image can be a five-star reject or a zero-star pick.
I do like the provision of an out-of-band 'flag' in Lightroom. The ability to mark an image as needing attention without having to override the semantics of a particular star value is useful. I often rate a shoot and want to mark the ones that I think don't work in colour, but might in black and white. The Lightroom flag would be great for this.
In Aperture, you have keyboard shortcuts to filter any thumbnail view by star rating: ctrl-` for Unrated and Better; ctrl-1 through ctrl-5 for "X stars or better", ctrl-6 for all images; ctrl-7 for unrated images and ctrl-8 for rejects. I find it strange that Lightroom doesn't provide keyboard shortcuts for this, as I use these keystrokes as one of the main ways to filter through a large project or album of rated images.
Adjustments
I adore the interactive histogram in Lightroom. It's a fantastic bit of UI. The Tone Curve is far more intelligible than Aperture's Levels adjustment.
However, I found Lightroom's little on/off light switches to be unintuitive as a way to enable or disable the adjustment. What would have been so wrong with a checkbox? Also, it was not at all obvious that double-clicking on a slider would reset it to zero, although this does provide the ability to reset a single slider within a control. In Aperture, you can only reset the entire adjustment.
I really, really, really like Lightroom's Split Toning control. Really really really like it. I haven't played with the Lens Corrections adjustment yet.
Are Lightroom's adjustments better than Aperture's? I haven't put enough images through it yet, but my feeling is that Lightroom has some tools which Aperture doesn't have (Split Toning, Presence, Lens Corrections) but I'm not seeing a huge difference between the adjustments which they have in common.
I'm also unable to detect a significant improvement in Lightroom's default RAW decode from Aperture's on my Canon 30D RAW files.
Workflow
The major stumbling block for me in thinking about adopting Lightroom is that Aperture has a far stronger export workflow. In particular, ahem, in sending images to Flickr. Given that the vast majority of my images only ever appear on Flickr, being able to get photos simply on to Flickr is critical for me.
Aperture gives Lightroom a good kicking here.
Dual Displays
Aperture has superb support for dual displays. I haven't tried Lightroom on a dual display setup, but I typically use Aperture in second-display 'alternate' mode which shows the currently selected thumbnail in full-screen on the system's alternate display. Perhaps someone can enlighten me in the comments on what Lightroom offers in this area.
Performance
Performance is a feature. Lightroom takes Aperture around the back and delivers a trousers-down six-of-the-best spanking in performance. Lightroom screams, but it gives up a smidgen of polish to do so.
In particular, when you're applying adjustments, Lightroom clearly does not apply the adjustment continuously on the full-resolution image. Aperture does and, when you're used to seeing it in full-res, the Lightroom experience is less than pleasant: you have to adjust the slider roughly, drop the mouse, inspect the result, adjust more finely, repeat.
However, speed of using an application is about more than just how quickly an image pops up to the screen. I admit I'm still a novice in Lightroom, but I often found that I got confused about which of the five major modes I was in. The distinction between the Library and Develop modules seems an unnecessary speedbump in the UI, and it's not a distinction that is strongly felt in Aperture. In Aperture, you show the adjustments panel and/or the Viewer and you're in "develop" mode. Hide them and you're in "Library" mode. I made a lot of mode errors in Lightroom and the problem was made worse by the 'quick develop' panel in Library, which makes that view look a lot like Develop.
Conclusion
Very much like my earlier article A Subversion User Looks At Git, my conclusion is this: I have a much greater appreciation for Lightroom than I did when I started this review. It has some features that are better than my current tool, but it's also missing things that I critically depend on.
If Lightroom could lose the gothic makeup, get an export workflow and minmise the distinction between Library and Develop, I'd certainly be looking harder at switching. All that said, if Aperture just got faster (and supported lens model metadata!), I'd be equally happy.
Look forward to your comments.
Reader Comments (10)
I use Aperture and I basically only have two complaints. 1) It gets pretty slow at times on my Core 2 Duo. I end up waiting straight twiddling my thumbs sometimes. 2) The keyboard shortcuts don't understand that I don't use a qwerty layout. Aperture hard maps the keyboard keys. Most keyboard commands are useless and it's terribly annoying.
In my opinion, Aperture vs. Lightroom is the same discussion as Canon vs. Nikon. Each has strengths and weaknesses, but it’s not a no-brainer decision either way.
That's a pretty poor analogy. Nikon vs. Canon is a no-brainer is you have a significant investment in Nikon lenses, or are interested in using older Nikkor lenses on your modern body.
It's only really a tough decision if you are new to photography and buying all new gear. There's tons of history there, and historically, Nikon dominated the Pro field. Wheras Lightroom and Aperture are both new - so there's no issue of this investment in lenses and compatibility, etc.
Plus, with the new Nikon D-300 and D3, what are Nikon's weaknesses as opposed to Canon? Seems Nikon beats or is on par with Canon in every way now.
Not only does the Aperture UI look better than Lightroom, but it also works better in my use. Like you, I didn't like the Navigator Panel as I have no use for a few of the items in there (print / web). There is visually less clutter in Aperture and by default it only presents you with tools that you are likely to use often. Keyboard shortcuts for everything imaginable is lovely as well.
For my D70s there was hardly any difference between RAW conversions in Lightroom and Aperture for me. I would expect Lightroom to be superior because of ACR but it wasn't discernible for me.
I also wish there were a few more adjustment tools in Aperture and hope a newer version is around the corner.
http://flickr.com/photos/infrequent
Imagine you are out on location or shooting in a studio with some clients. You take a few dozen pictures and fire up Aperture to download them to your mac. You wait and wait and wait and mean while you can't do anything else with the incoming pictures. Time is money on location or in the studio and unless you have a G5 ramped up with 8 GIG's of RAM the performance out of Aperture is going to leave you sitting in front of your mac while your clients look for another Photographer who won't waist their time. Fire up Lightroom and you're loading photo's and at the same time able to perform any type of work you need to while Lightroom works at importing. No waisted time. I chuckle anytime I read about how pro's love Aperture. They don't, I promise you that.
As far as look and feel go human beings will adjust to almost everything, speed is the deciding factor here, nothing else is of consequence, not in the real world anyway.
Two other things Aperture offers - complete integration with iLife and it's not an Adobe product. Bottom line, I don't trust Adobe. Lightroom never would have even been released if it hadn't been for Aperture (it was languishing in the labs, with Adobe afraid of hurting photoshop sales).
@Harvard Irving: I don't agree that the analogy is poor. The inertia in one's investment in components of an SLR kit is not massively different to the intertia generated by one's investment of time in learning one of these two applications.
If you're an Aperture user, there would need to be significant value in switching to Lightroom, and similarly the other way.
Lightroom and Aperture are both fast for me but Lightroom just has a responsive snap that Aperture doesn't. Even though lots of art directors love Aperture in the end I went with Lightroom because the processed file quality is just much better.
"Nikon D-300 and D3, what are Nikon’s weaknesses as opposed to Canon? Seems Nikon beats or is on par with Canon in every way now."
Nikon's digital offerings will be on par or beating Canon when they release a high end camera (D3x?). The D300 and D3 compete with the low and middle end of the pro market with the 1D Mk3, 5D and 40D. My personal gripe with Nikon is that their very high end and exotic lenses are so difficult to find.
“Nikon D-300 and D3, what are Nikon’s weaknesses as opposed to Canon? Seems Nikon beats or is on par with Canon in every way now.”
except now they have crazy prices compared to Canon. Finally a full frame SLR for FIVE GRAND! A little bit better in image quality (maybe) than the several year old EOS 5D which sells for half the price of the not-yet-available D3. I mean, really!
Lightroom for me - the performance is the killer feature. For the books and stuff, I output to a folder and open in iPhoto.
As for lacking things like plug ins for Flickr and so on - some one already mentioned the Export Actions folder. You can drop an alias to just about anything in there that will be accessed on export - photoshop, iPhoto, iMovie, Mail, Entourage, Outlook, iWeb, whatever. However, it would be much nicer if it would work without having to make a duplicate set of the files that is now outside the Lightroom management. I find that I don't do those "other" things like books and stuff, so the superior adjustment tools, performance and Print module make LR a winner for me. If Apple answers those issues and Adobe does not one-up them, them I will upgrade my Aperture 1.5 to ver 2.0, for certain.
I don't want to weigh in the Nikon or Canon thing, but please allow me to say that the decision over which one to buy, meaning Aperture or Lightroom for Mac users is terribly difficult at this moment because Apple has upgraded most of its software this year except for Aperture, and due to the secrecy policy, keeps users in the dark about whether 2.0 will counter Lightroom ... this month, or Christmas time or in 2008. No doubt the clamour from Aperture loyalists has sparked some "back to the table" efforts on Apple's part, but really ... many of us have tons of photos pilling up, and Apple should realize that they lose potential Mac users to Lightroom with each passing day.
I am using Photoshop, and it's not as though I can process images from my camera (Canon - ooops). On the "integration" side of things, one could argue for Lightroom being that I'm likely to be finding it more attuned to my Photoshop adjustment tools.
On the other hand I don't just do photography, but manage and host web sites, creatae podcasts with video and sound, and play and compose music. I'm a fan of Mac and of Apple computers, and, of course, the direction Apple has taken with integration. The buying decision is no so simple for me.
However, I am very getting very tired of only having the rumor mill to feed off of while waiting to find out what Aperture will be. No doubt I for one would be much more willing to take a wait and see stance, if I either had some idea what that target date of 2.0 might be, or at least some kind of vague idea of what they were improviing. I think the silence thing works against them as much as it works for them.
Yes, it's not the end of the world. I have Photoshop. However, I can ONLY WAIT SO LONG to see if Apple is going to respond, or fold under the pressure. I would guess this delay of the release of Aperture might possibly signal they are working hard to improve it. But without knowing if they plan to release it with Leopard or much later, I'm less likely to sit around and wait.
Finally, I don't understand why there has to COMPLETE silence on the subject of 2.0. Why can't they do what they did with Leopard and simply say some great things are coming for Aperture? If anything it really it doesn't lower expectations to minimize customer disappoint but in fact raises hopes beyond where they should probably be ... making people more critical in the long run of what they release. I don't get it.
What harm would it do Apple say something ... even as vague as yes ... we are working on release 2.0 (to my knowledge they haven't even gone that far). I simply don't understand this business of TOTAL secrecy. Frankly, it's not only annoying, but seems to do everything but take the Apple user's best interests into consideration.
Many people already expect Aperture 2.0 to be released shortly after or along with Leopard. And, of course this could happen. Why not? It makes sense. They aren't going to wait until the next Photokina.
Leopard could just as easily arrive without Aperture in the wings, let's face it. A statement such as "Well, we were planning to release it with Leopard but decided we wanted to work on some very exciting new things, so ... we're delaying it a bit, " a statement like that would be disappointing but better than NOTHING, and therefore, welcome nonetheless.
I’m way late joining this threat but loved the Nikon/Canon Lightroom/Aperture comparison. I whole heartedly agree with it. I started out w/ Nikon, got woo’d over to Canon on specs but just wasn’t feeling it (this was pre digital). There are a whole lot of simple little things that add up to a complete shooting experience that puts me firmly in the Nikon camp.
I bought both Aperture and Lightroom and am selling my Aperture license. Had Lightroom been release earlier I wouldn’t have Aperture; had they not offered the early adopter price I might have stayed with Aperture. When it comes to moving through a big pile of shots, rating, keywording, selecting etc, I could move much more quickly in Lightroom. This might stem from the fact that I’m a recent switcher and don’t completely GET the Mac way of doing things yet. Early on, when I stepped away from both apps for a few days, Aperture required more re-learning where all the Lightroom maneuvering through the GUI came right back.
The Nikon/Canon drivability comparison fits when working on a single project from input to output; you will know which one works best for you. It is less applicable to Image editing where Lightroom is flat out better or library management where Aperture is way ahead. I have to remove Aperture from my laptop because it is way too fun and winds up distracting me, which sums up my general feeling about both apps. If I wanted to play around with a gorgeous interface and marvel at a museum’s architecture, Aperture is a magnificent piece of software that would provide that experience. If I wanted to cull a mountain of images and present one to a museum, Lightroom is the tool.
Something fun to consider. If I were given an assignment and could use whatever gear I wanted and had to perform at my best with very little margin for error I would go with Nikon/Lightroom. If I were told to use Canon/Aperture, I’d be completely happy.
“Finally, I don’t understand why there has to COMPLETE silence on the subject of 2.0”
This one is easy…. Because idiots like me don’t have the patience to wait for the new version. In my defense, I buy it if it does what I need and deal with upgrades when they are available.