Disclaimer
To start off, I haven't really 'blogged' in a long while so bear with me. Back from 2004-2008 I had the site constantskeptic.com that I used as a traditional blog, but since Russian hackers shut down the site circa 2008 and the host I was using easycgi did not back up my database and I had no backup of my own, I lost interest and had less and less time to write as my photography took off. Now my blogs have morphed into pure photo blogs, like http://thisplacerunson.com. So, that is my little disclaimer. Ok, back to the matter at hand.
Why I chose Aperture 3 introduction
As any photographer knows (professional or otherwise) you need a plan to get you photos off of your camera to your computer, organized and archived, processed on your computer, and then published to your portfolio, client, flickr, print, etc. as quickly and intuitively as possible. Aperture accomplishes these tasks for me better than Lightroom.
What Aperture 3 is not
Aperture 3 is not Photoshop. Aperture 3 is not the answer to life's great questions. Aperture 3 will not love you back.
I categorize photos in my head:
If you are like me, you see photos that you take with your DSLR as being in 4 categories:
1. ready for show right off the camera - you did everything right so no post processing needed
2. slight touch-ups required and then ready for show - you need to tweak the exposure/colors/etc.
3. major photoshop work needed -something is really bad about the photo that need fixing
4. total garbage - throw these away immediately and don't waste your time on them
If you can get to the point where all you shoot fall in to category 1 then lucky you, but I find that I get most of mine into 2 and 4.
Yes I will admit, I shoot a lot of garbage. Digital allows you to do that. You can take way more than necessary and tweak the aperture, speed, and ISO endlessly without running out of film because the only limit is the number of memory cards you have.
So,
Reason 1 why I chose Aperture 3
I can do my slight touch-ups (category 2 photos) and then publish faster and in a more intuitive way than Lightroom.
Killer features: the loupe (spot zoom) and brush-in adjustments (photoshop-esque layers of edits and actions). Preset customizable actions were easier to navigate and setup than Lightroom.
Reason 2 why I chose Aperture 3
No Adobe Bridge to mess with or other bloated addons and syncing.
Why do I need to have another layer of photos on top of my photos on my hard drive? Why can't I just import, edit, organize, publish and forget about it? With Bridge popping up every five minutes for some sort of update or sync it gets annoying really fast.
Of course this is just my experience and there may be setting to turn it off, but that is not the point. Aperture worked out of the box the way that made sense the most to me. I also had Adobe crash a few times on me, but this may be due to it being in beta so I did not use that as criteria to judge.
Reason 3 why I chose Aperture 3
Overall user experience and placement of metadata elements for photos.
I love the interface. Everything is where I need it. From the map in the bottom left corner to the tabbed left sidebar that lets me quickly edit tags, titles, as well as review the EXIF data from when I took the photo. In contrast, Adobe seemed too dark and hidden in menus to access anything. The right side bar was a nice change, but it seemed confusing to me to try to decide whether I was editing or organizing or what. With Aperture, you know what view you are looking at and why you are on that window. Organizing everything into projects really helped Aperture win out over Adobe in this category. Again, I am sure you can emulate the same features in Lightroom, but it did not work that way out of the box.
Ok, so there you have it. I hope this helps you make your decision. If you have any other questions, complaints, or rants please feel free to follow me and send me a DM or reply on twitter (@jamescampbell) or comment below, but you are probably too scared too, it's ok I used to be an infosnacker myself. Enjoy your lunch.
Flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/constantskeptic
