XtremeCamera

I Switched To Adobe Lightroom

September 1, 2008

Our Miss Julia recently wrote over 4000 words on Adobe Aperture. It was submitted at more than 6000 words and I asked her to wittle it down to a more manageable 2000 words. We settled on 4000, and as it turns out I’m glad I did.

It is very rare for me not to love everything Apple does; I am a huge Apple Aperture fan. Aperture has been a part of my workflow since its inception a couple years back. I was one of those early adopters that paid $299 for version 1, and was also one of those early adopters that received a $100 gift card from Apple because its version 1 was so profoundly bad. Further versions, including the current v2.1.1 improved the application quite a lot, and with each new update I was more than satisfied with the application.
After reading Julia’s review I went ahead and downloaded the 30-day trial from Adobe’s site. I installed it and decided to see if there was anything majorly different between Aperture and Lightroom.

My workstation consists of two 30” Apple Cinema Displays so I put Aperture on one display and Lightroom on the other. (Both applications support dual displays, but I didn’t use them here.) I then put both applications through the paces.

I found much to like with both applications, and to my surprise I found Adobe Lightroom to be much better than I anticipated. Not that I dislike Adobe, quite the opposite actually. I couldn’t do what I do without Creative Suite, and Creative Suite 3 is the best yet. I just thought that Apple finally got it right with Aperture 2 and Adobe couldn’t do as much, for the Mac market anyway. And, there are some things Aperture can do that Lightroom cannot. For instance, with Aperture I can export a catalog of photos through the Internet and within 5 days I receive a beautiful, high-quality, hardback book with exquisite glossy pages displaying my photos the way I designed the pages. While Apple iPhoto can also do this, Aperture gives you many more choices in layout and the physical product.

I doubt that Apple will ever port Aperture to the Windows market simply because so many digital photographers use Macs that there is little point in porting it out to Windows. However, Adobe does offer a Mac and Windows version, and did an excellent job with it. For the foreseeable future Windows users have but one choice for a digital photography workflow, Adobe Lightroom.

It was because of Aperture not being a Window users option that I asked Julia to forego any comparison between the two in her review. Mac users would enjoy a comparison, but why rub it in to Windows users that they cannot use Aperture?

I believe in Apple, and I have always used Macs. I truly believe that for personal use (and most business uses) if you are using Windows you aren’t enjoying yourself as much as you could be by using a Mac. Because digital photographers feel passionate about digital photography I feel sort of sorry for those passionate one that are using a Windows machine. It takes a lot of the pleasure out of the equation.

A Bit About Windows

I should note here that I run Parallels and Window’s Vista and XP on both my Macs. Oh, and Parallels runs Windows and XP at 100% the speed of a dedicated Windows machine, so what I experience in Windows is the exact same as that of actual PC hardware. So when I speak of ease-of-use and other issues of Windows over Mac OS I have experienced plenty of both.
Several months ago, after bumping up the RAM on my MacPro desktop machine to 16GB, I decided to max out the options in Parallels so that I could use Vista more powerfully than most PC users.

I ran Windows for a week straight, leaving the Mac OS out of my work completely. While its easy to get around Vista or XP, and I didn’t get a single crash or other problem many Mac users like to write about, I still found the experience lacking. On day 7 it was every bit a clumsy as day 1, it constantly bugged me about things I didn’t care about, and there are so many wizards it drove me nuts. Worst, even with Vista you still feel as though you are using an operating system to peer inside the hard drive, never actually seeing or manipulating the things inside the hard drive. With a Mac you never feel you’re using an operating system, and you always feel as though you are dealing directly with the hard drive and contents therein.

Oh, and while Windows has 90% of the marketplace its hold on the digital photography community is much less tight. I don’t have the official numbers but it is somewhere upwards of 35% to 45% of all digital photographers use Macs. It’s long been known that most professional photographer use Macs, for very good reasons.

The End Of A Bit About Windows

Julia made an excellent point about digital photography workflow. If you are at all serious about photography, consider it something you want to be good at and not just something you do when there’s a party or some other event you want to make a record of, then a good workflow is truly vital. For one thing you don’t want important photographs scattered throughout your hard drive, for another you want your work to be consistent, but mostly you need an application that can not only organize your photos, but also edit them and export them all within the same application. Without Aperture or Lightroom you’re fighting your workflow, not improving it. Which is fine for the casual shooter, not fine for the photographer.

There is much to like about Aperture, and much to like about Lightroom as well. A Mac user can have both installed, use both for certain things, but ultimately one application needs to be chosen as the ‘main’ workflow app or you might as well just use a bunch of shareware apps and work much less efficiently. I wanted to see which one makes the better workflow application, despite Aperture being a Mac-only application.

I expected Adobe Lightroom 2 to be a formidable opponent, but not so good that I would actually switch to it as being my main workflow app. But that’s just what happened. I was shocked, shocked, to see just how easy it was to use, how logical it was to use, and how much faster it was even with huge RAW files, and how it made my workflow better.

Sure, it’s only been 48 hours, but I’ve been using it not just with my camera hooked up to the computer, but also photos on my hard drive. Bringing some photos that I thought were beyond repair back to life, over and over again, was just incredible.

Seriously guys, I am still seeing most of the photos that are being uploaded to the Critique Gallery as being worked on with some other software. I can’t believe I’m not seeing Lightroom as your workflow app what with Adobe’s 30-day free trial. You need to take the jump; there is no risk to try it out. I believe totally that once you try it you’re going to want to use it all the time.

So, what are you waiting for?

John Manzione