DISQUS

Get this app. If for no other reason than it is such a class act. One of those brilliant pieces of work that one needs to experience once in awhile to make sure we know where the pinnacle stands in our time. Then it also works and is immensely useful. As they say, ‘run, don’t walk ...’

I've been using Aperture on a quad G5 with a 30 in monitor and a speedy 2.5 terabyte raid array. 4 GB ram and the best graphics card I can afford. Even with all that, it seems pokey to me. Making adjustments should seem effortless. But they seem labored. Lightroom, of course, appears to be doing things instantly. I like the file management part of Aperture's workflow, and I guess that's why I've stayed with it. And the flexibility of working on an image at any point in my workflow. Lightroom imposes some other constraints on that. And I like the LR adjustment controls better than Aperture, I'm sure Apple will keep Aperture relevant. Like the other pro apps, it takes generations, but they keep getting more deeply competent once Apple commits to owning the market. That said, I think Adobe did a much better job with an open beta to bring a world of people into Lightroom. And, like Photoshop, since LR works across platforms there will be far more development activity around it both within and without Adobe. I use LR now on my G4 powerbook when I need to work with raw photos. Will be interesting to see what the new family of Macbook Pros can do with Aperture. But the long term force of Adobe in the photo/graphics market may well win out for me, especially if we don't see an Aperture 2.0 and some exceptional performance on laptops in the next couple of months.