When downloading files into a project say “Birds” and I do my edits and move them to an album labeled say “finches” do i have 2 of the same picture on my hard drive? My friend who has Lightroom says I am and taken up more hard drive space.
When downloading files into a project say “Birds” and I do my edits and move them to an album labeled say “finches” do i have 2 of the same picture on my hard drive? My friend who has Lightroom says I am and taken up more hard drive space.
Sorry, your friend is incorrect. Photos in an album are nothing more than pointers to the corresponding versions in their respective projects.
Jim is correct, images in albums are just soft links to the master image in the project, thus taking no extra space. Moreover, if you edit the image in the album that edit is reflected back into the project, because they are truly the same image.
Bill Jurasz
Austin Texas
Doesn’t Lightroom work the same?
Bill Hinton
Collections, LR’s ’equivalent’ to Aperture albums, works the same way.
Why is Lightroom so popular? And Aperture is not
Bill Hinton
Lightroom has the advantage of being cross platform (Windows and MacOS). And Adobe is more liberal with version number increases. Other than that you can expect to get 100 different reasons from 100 different people.
Thomas
I would also add that Lightroom as a LOT of advocates that praise it’s capabilities. There are no similar advocates praising the virtues of Aperture. This is one area where Apple has fallen down in my opinion. They need to cultivate relationships with some very credible, very public users who could pump up the volume on Aperture like Adobe has done with Lightroom.
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
John Thawley is a big advocate of Aperture, and has been asked to speak at Apple Stores on more than one occassion, about how he uses Aperture on location to import, organize, keyword, edit, and publish photos in a very short period of time. But…. how many people know who John Thawley is?
Bill Jurasz
Austin Texas
Also I heard Tony Sweet uses Aperture. Great Photographer. But your right it seems like nobody knows about it. I think it is a great program. I tried the 30 day trail of Lightroom and i really see no differance in the programs. So i stuck with Aperture. I have had it for 3 years now.
Bill Hinton
I also get Tim Grey news letter and ask him about Aperture. He said it really the same, and he is a big Lightroom user.
Bill Hinton
Overall, Aperture is far better at DAM (Digital Asset Management) than LR. That’s where its strength lies compared to LR. The interactivity between Projects, Folders, Albums, Light Tables, Slideshows etc gives me a powerful way to organise and edit my work. That I can easily distribute my images across my Apple ecosystem is a mahoosive draw for me too. The only DAM feature that LR beats Aperture on is keywording and specifically the creation of non-exporting keywords.
It’s undoubtedly true though that Aperture’s Adjustment tab lacks some important features compared to the LR Develop module. But that’s no biggie because I can round trip to an external editor if there’s something that Aperture or a plugin can’t do.
That’s why Aperture wins out for me - there’s no way LR can improve its DAM system whereas I can easily overcome Aperture’s Adjustments’ limitations.
Why does LR win out in general? It is a brilliant one-stop-shop - no extra software is required for 99.9% of images and you’re getting the full functionality of Adobe Camera Raw built in. And if you do have Photoshop/Elements as well as LR, the integration is as smooth as you like.
The big guns who have (often very publicly) switched from Aperture to LR probably do so because the LR Develop module, and its seamless integration with Photoshop, is more important to them than the DAM. There’s also a perception that Aperture is becoming iPhoto Plus rather than a Pro app in its own right. Apple’s tight-lipped attitude toward Aperture’s roadmap is damaging unfortunately and it does nothing to dispel the idea that Aperture is going to be dumbed down. But as far as Apple’s commercial secrecy is concerned, ‘twas ever thus. See many previous threads where this is discussed.
Musing about DAM/image editing in general, I am carefully watching Camera Bits who say they are going to enhance their super fast browser/metadata handler Photo Mechanic with a DAM catalog. I also wonder what Google are up to after buying Nik and their IP and the recent hiring of Adobe guru John Nack.
Interesting times.
But back to the OP: yes, I’m afraid your LR friend is talking tosh. As has been said above, you can place an image in as many Aperture Albums, Light Tables, Smart Albums, Books, Slideshows etc as you like. No new images are created and there is a minimal disk overhead increase because of the extra data in the Library database. The same applies to duplicating versions in Aperture, by the way.
You can do the same in LR, too. But more kludgily. Feel free to inform your LR friend of all of this. ;)
Russell
nice write up mate, but Ido have one query (sorry for hijacking the thread OP ), but could you expand on the Keyword part of your post ? You say… .The only DAM feature that LR beats Aperture on is keywording and specifically the creation of non-exporting keywords. whats wrong with Apertures Keywording abilities and the creation of Non-Exporting keywords ?? Im confused.
Cheers
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Arguing with a zealot is only slightly easier than tunnelling through a mountain with your forehead.
"Can't innovate any more, my ass" Phil Schiller
Thanks TattoedMac. I hope I can alleviate that confusion. Bear with me, there’s a lot of detail…
Keywording multiple images is just a bit more finessed in LR compared to Aperture. To me at least. In LR, there are some nice touches such as asterisked keywords in a multiple selection. The asterisk means that the keyword is applied to some images in my selection but not all. Want to apply it to all? Just delete the asterisk. I can Lift & Stamp keywords in Aperture, and with a few more clicks, I can append and not replace, but it’s just a little less refined.
The Keyword Group feature is also a little better designed and implemented in LR compared to Aperture but as always, YMMV.
Non-exported keywords are brilliant. LR has them but unfortunately, Aperture does not. A non-exported keyword is visible and associated with the image in LR but it won’t be exported with the metadata when I send an image to a client or submit an image to a stock agency or Flickr et al.
Why do I like this feature so much? It’s a powerful adjunct to Picks, Ratings and Labels when sorting images in Smart Collections. Their lack in Aperture means you can’t do the same trick in Smart Albums and for me, Picks, Labels and Ratings aren’t granular enough to keep tabs on images in my workflow.
For instance, I might want to track which of my images have been donated to charitable organisations but I don’t want anyone else who might *buy* my image to know that. In LR, I can use the non-exported keyword ”_donated” for just that purpose. Incidentally, I used to prepend an underscore to non-exported keywords so I could tell them at a glance and also differentiate them from the same keyword that I might want exported (if you see what I mean).
Conversely though, Smart Albums in general are better in Aperture than LR in terms of what metadata you can use. With non-exported keywords though, it would be better still.
Russell
Russell you’re a champion. Thats taken a lot of guess work out of it.
I can now see the beauty of having non-exporting keywords and why you would use them. I like how you differentiate the difference by using a underscore as well.
Thank you very much for the a both explanation, but like you, its still not enough for me to go across, but still do have it in the Photographers Deal from Adobe that is still going until the end of the month. Have learnt something today, so its a good day :)
Cheers
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Arguing with a zealot is only slightly easier than tunnelling through a mountain with your forehead.
"Can't innovate any more, my ass" Phil Schiller
You’re welcome! Enjoy your weekend.
Russell
Wow you know alot about Aperture! Are you a pro photographer? And what do you shoot? Meaning what type of photography do you like.
Bill Hinton
Thanks Bill. It’s a nice thing for you to say but there are far wiser Aperturistas on Joseph’s site than me, believe me.
I guess I’d say I’m semi-pro planning to be a full-time pro. I’m in transition at the moment; I’ve been forced to retire from my medical career at a relatively young age because of ill-health.
I shoot mainly wildlife and nature but also shoot motorsports and other sports when I get the opportunity. Portrait photography is something I’m planning to build on going forward.
Russell
Can anyone help me with this question. Having a little problem with Aperture. When I go to Aperture menu and hit quite, it will not shut down. The gray bar just sits there. I have to hit force quite to shut it down. It just started doing it for about 6 months now. I am running snow leoperd and Aperture virsion 3.2.4 and Mac virsion OS X 10.6.8
Bill Hinton
How long have to let it “quit”? Maybe leave it for a while and it will finish? Do you have “share previews” enabled in preferences? If so, those get updated when you exit. Turn that off and see if it quits faster.
Photographer | https://www.walterrowe.com | https://instagram.com/walter.rowe.photo
I do have share previews on always. I have had quit on for about 5 minuets or so. What is the down side if I turn share previews off?
Bill Hinton