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Lightroom Vs. Aperture
Nonu writes "Adobe has officially released its Aperture killer, Lightroom, and the reviews are starting to come in. Ars looks at Lightroom and concludes that it's a better choice for those without bleeding-edge hardware. 'Aperture's main drawback is still performance as it was designed for bleeding-edge machines. On a quad Core 2 Duo Xeon, it is very usable but Lightroom just feels faster for everything regardless of hardware. Since Aperture relies on Core Image and a fast video card to do its adjustments (RAW decoding is done by the CPU), it's limited to what the single 3-D card can do. Lightroom does everything with the CPU and so it is likely to gain more speed as multicore systems get faster.'"
This is something useful... Real photographers often don't have the cash to shell out for a top-of-the-line graphics processing server. Something like this should make it easier for smaller photography businesses to get into digital tech. Less actual film, less darkroom time/space/supplies, faster turnaround... all good for the little guy.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
Apple obviously noticed that graphics card performance increases like CPU performance does, or even better. Aperture will have better performance in the long run since it uses both the CPU and video card. In my MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM, Aperture runs well. I've only got 128MB video card RAM too.
Any chance slashdot editors could actually do some editing? So that summaries aren't just the spiel of the poster but also tell us *what* Lightbox and Aperture are? There's no mention. I had to guess it was something to do with graphics and maybe something to do with pictures....
Can we please stop assigning the "killer" label to abso-freaking-lutely EVERYTHING? iPod killer, Flash killer, Aperture killer, ad nauseam. Have any of these so-called "killers" actually killed the product they were supposedly released to kill?
I guess the word "competitor" doesn't make for sensational copy.
You have obviously never bought lenses, my friend.
I've been a camera bug since I was a teenager back in the late 1960s and I still love to work with my film cameras. And yes, it's really great that since so many folks are trading in their film equipment for digital you can get some very fine deals. I bought the Hasselblad I've always wanted a couple years ago...second hand, but in cherry condition. I have almost all the great lenses for my Canon F-1s now that I just couldn't afford back when I was a kid. I love it.
But my darkroom is only for developing film now. I bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED last Christmas, and I'm working on scanning in my entire library of negatives and slides. I'm using Aperture for its cataloging capabilities as much as for its great image adjustment tools. I use Photoshop mostly for dust speck removal (I have other non-photographic uses I put Photoshop to otherwise...I'm a cartoonist too). It's great not to have to deal with paper contact sheets. I can just scan my film in and have metadata linked to each image so I don't have to rummage through hundreds of contacts to find the shots I'm looking for. And now I can protect my images by storing backups offsite. I've always been afraid for my negatives and slides.
I never had the money or the time to invest in a full blown color darkroom, and nowadays I can produce great results, absolutely great results, with the Hasselblad, some rolls of Fuji Velvia, the Coolscan, Aperture and my Epson Stylus Photo R1800. And I can tell you for a fact that touching out dust specks in Photoshop beats doing it with a brush on the final print hands down.
Once you get the image into the computer endless possibilities open up. Yes, I still love film photography. I don't think I'll ever give it up. And, yes, I agree that large format black and white silver prints still beat what you can produce with even the best digital cameras and inkjet printers at the moment. They're absolutely lovely. If I wanted to I could probably still produce really fine black and white silver prints in my own darkroom. On the other hand, Kodak has stopped making black and white photographic paper.