Worth getting Elements if you have Aperture 3?

#2

January 7, 2012 - 3:23am

Hi Peter,

The answer to your question depends on what you intend to do with your images. If you mainly wish to do some basic adjustments on the images (like e.g. exposure corrections, highlights and shadows, color balance, vibrance, straightening, cropping etc. etc.) and if you look for a powerful digital asset management at the same time, Aperture may be the way to go. If you shoot your landscapes in RAW, Aperture helps you turn them into optimized jgs for presentations of various kinds (incl. slideshows and prints). It’s a multi-talent!

If you think about retouching of photos or creative work (e.g. manipulations, combinations of various objects, artwork including text etc.) Photoshop is one of the most powerful tools to accomplish that. Since also Photoshop Elements includes the most important tools to work with layers and masks you can work on details of your images very effectively. Aperture, on the other hand, also offers some opportunities of selective adjustments, but they are not designed to “replace” a tool like Photoshop.

Of course the decision can’t be broken down to that simple comparison, but I think, these examples might give you an idea of the two different approaches.

Cheers, Michael

#3

by Bob Miller

January 7, 2012 - 4:44am

Another option, to stay with one piece of software, would be to use some of the plug-ins available to work with-in Aperture. I only use Aperture, with Nik plug-ins.

Bob

#4

by PhotoJoseph

January 7, 2012 - 5:08am

Peter,

To add on to what’s already been said, about the only time I go into Photoshop (I am using an older CS4) is for the healing/repair tools, which are in many cases still superior to Aperture’s. If I have a major retouching job to do (i.e. removing entire elements from the scene, or major blemish repair on a face), I’ll usually go to Photoshop. I think Elements 10 has the same features, but I can’t be sure. I suppose I could download the free trial and find out…

Also I’ll go to Photoshop if I’ve shot something against a white background and I need to ensure that it’s 100% pure white. I actually have done this before using Nik’s Color Efex Pro, and it was very effective, and I’ve also done it in Photoshop. To be honest it’s probably easier using Nik… hmm, I’ll have to test that theory out one day.

As far as things like text, there are several plugins that you can use in Aperture, but if your compositing needs are relatively complex, then Photoshop is the way to go. But again, I’m quite sure Elements can handle most compositing needs.

@PhotoJoseph
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#5

by Bill Montgomery

January 7, 2012 - 5:09am

I roundtrip from Aperture 3 to Photoshop Elements all the time. A3 is just too slow for my aging computer (mid-2007 24” iMac with dual core 2.4 MHz processors and 3 GB RAM (yes, I said 3)) and limited for advanced retouching.

I use A3 to import my RAW images, organize and edit through the images, color correct and adjust exposure. If the photo only requires minor retouching, I will go ahead and do that in A3. However, if an image requires more than a couple clone-stamping, dodging, burning, blurring, spot sharpening, etc. retouches, then I jump over to PE. A3 on my computer bottlenecks with a lot of adjustments and becomes unusably slow. Besides being faster, PE has better brush feel and control when using a tablet.

Furthermore, PE has numerous adjustments that you can’t do with A3. A couple I use frequently are transform tool and the liquefy filter. For instance, right now I’m editing through more than 1300 wedding photos I took of a couple self-described as “large people.” I use the transform tool to narrow the width of some photos from 100% to 95% to make them look slimmer without the photo looking obviously doctored and I use the liquefy filter to subtly tame some unflattering bulges. A3 simply does not have these capabilities. And there are many more features like this.

The only adjustment I now do exclusively in A3 is skin smoothing. I recently read ‘Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques’ by Scott Kelby. He painstakingly spends a long chapter detailing at least 5 different ways to smooth skin without making it look like wax or plastic. Each procedure was comparatively complex and time consuming. The whole time I was thinking, “Why doesn’t Kelby just use A3’s Skin Smoothing brush? It evens the skin beautifully while retaining the natural texture.” Of course, the answer is in the book’s subtitle: ‘for Photographers Using Photoshop.’

Elements is powerful enough that I haven’t been able to rationalize shelling out the big dollars for the full Photoshop package. When I need to do some really heavy lifting, I’ll occasionally (rarely) use GIMP. Aperture is great and its tools are strong enough that I don’t have to use PE as often, but A3 is not a substitute for a dedicated photo editing tool, even an entry level one like PE.

#6

by PhotoJoseph

January 7, 2012 - 5:12am

Bill, yours is the second post to be duplicated here in one day… was it user error or did something happen when you posted that caused it to post twice?

-Joseph

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#7

by PhotoJoseph

January 7, 2012 - 5:18am

Bill,

I agree with what you’re saying about 95%, and sadly you’re absolutely right that on older machines, Photoshop is simply faster. It’s because the edits performed are mainly destructive edits, meaning Photoshop doesn’t have to keep recalculating every adjustment from the RAW fie to what’s on screen with every brush stroke (I’m oversimplifying, but that’s kinda what Aperture does).

Anyway the only thing I disagree with is the statement “A3 is not a substitute for a dedicated photo editing tool, even an entry level one like PE.” For most photographers, especially non-professionals but even many professionals that don’t do the advanced manipulation that your clients require, I’m of the firm belief that Aperture is more than adequate.

But of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion ;-)

cheers,

@PhotoJoseph
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#8

by Bill Montgomery

January 10, 2012 - 12:34am

RE: Duplicate Post

When I submitted my previous post, I got some kind of a server error message. I hit refresh hoping this would reconnect with your site. Finally, I navigated through my browser history to the User Questions page and back into this post, where I saw my post in duplicate.

I was using Firefox 8.0.1 on an IBM ThinkPad running Windows XP (version 2002, service pack 3).

#9

by Bill Montgomery

January 10, 2012 - 12:36am

It happened again (this time I didn’t try to reload the page). Here is the error message:

Network Error (tcp_error)

A communication error occurred: “”
The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.

For assistance, contact your proxy support team @ *GT Proxy Level-1 Support.

Error generated by webproxy 199.67.140.46

#10

by PhotoJoseph

January 10, 2012 - 6:41am

Curious Bill, thanks for the info. I’ll pass this along to Squarespace.

cheers
-Joseph

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#11

by PhotoJoseph

January 10, 2012 - 9:31am

Bill,

Squarespace suggested clearing your cache. I know that may seem trivial, but if you get a chance, it can’t hurt to try, and see if that clears up your double-post problems.

In case you’re not familiar with the process, they shared this link.

cheers,
-Joseph

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#12

by PhotoJoseph

January 11, 2012 - 2:43am

Bill,

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