Aperture 3 is out...

[LauraBean]

I know most folks here use or wish they used Lightroom, but on the off chance that someone else is an oddball like me: Apple's Aperture 3 is out, and it looks terrific. Nondestructive brushes, face recognition, curves (!), selective editing, presets, slide shows...

There is a free 30-day trial. Before I bought Aperture (incidentally, Mac only), I tried both Aperture and Lightroom, and I found Aperture more intuitive. I was beginning to wonder if its best days were behind it and if it was time to switch to LR, but this update will likely keep me an Aperture gal.

[katrinak]

tempted tempted tempted

[HeatherPrins]

Yes we are Lightroom users but the Aperature.3 is looking fabulous! Doing the trial!

[DonnaNJ]

Laura Do you use Aperture for organizing your photos and doing minor adjustments? I'm trying to figure out the difference between IPhoto and Aperture. I noticed that Aperture imbeds the keywords in the image which is really cool. thks DonnaNJ

[readstoomuch]

Question . . . can you import Aperture photos into Photoshop or PSE without copying them to a folder on the desktop? This is the main reason that I'm not crazy about iPhoto. I guess that I should just use the 30 day trial and see whether I like it or not.

Any of you Aperture vs Lightroom users have pros and/or cons that you might share with us who are new to the Mac world?

[Britgirl]

I played in store with the expert on ap, and omg its awesome. But like my mac need something else to fill it up.. the only reason I havent? my LR presets. I cant imagine life without some of them.....

[LauraBean]

I use Aperture to organize all my photos and really don't use iPhoto anymore, though I have older photos stored there. Aperture does everything iPhoto does but more and better. I find it much better for handling RAW images--this was my initial impetus for going with Aperture (or LR) over iPhoto. But the editing and the organization is way better than iPhoto. The image editing you can do with Aperture is fabulous; I rarely need to bring a photo into Photoshop for editing anymore, and with Aperture 3 this will be even more true. All your edits are nondestructive and easily removed; you can make new versions of your photos--say, a new version to make it black and white--and it takes up very little space. No changes are permanent.

To use a photo from Aperture in PSE, I simply drag the preview to the PSE icon in my dock--I don't export the image. The only time I need to export an image...I'm thinking...it's really very rare. I use a Flickr uploader, a Facebook uploader all from Aperture (and Aperture 3 includes both, though I've not yet tried them).

I have now installed the trial--I really, really like it, but it is slower than Aperture 2. And I crashed it once. I will almost certainly upgrade, but I'm still just making sure I want to.

[DonnaNJ]

Laura Thanks so much for that info.. I'm going to give the trial a try