Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hi all,

I've been reading up on Aperture 3 and I'm intrigued by a number of new features in this latest version of Aperture.

I watched a few videos on Apple's website which shows how some photographers are using the new features. One photographer in particular made a lot of use of Aperture's quick brush features such as burn, dodge, and the new levels & curves feature.

I was wondering if someone can shed some light on how they use Photoshop with Aperture 3. Do you just use Aperture for the the workflow and image management and do levels, curves etc in Photoshop? I would imagine that would take more time and you will have to reimport the edited image back into Aperture.

Or do you just use the new features in Aperture and then call it a day?

Right now I use Aperture 2 to mainly sort through images and if there is one I really like I'll use a plugin such as Silver Efex or I do all of my editing in Photoshop.

Cheers,

Zeekid

Having been working with Lightroom, which is in essence the same thing, I'd say forget about Photoshop if you don't need some advanced external processing done. I am sure Aperture as well as Lightroom can do all the needed adjustments inside. Ease of use of the brushes is another issue though. I find Lightroom not that suitable for serious retouching, I assume it could be the same with Aperture, unless they specifically added a well-designed module for retouching. Hope it helps

I guess I must be living in the dark ages, because Photoshop is still my go-to program for working on my images. I like spending time working on each image, giving it my personal touch. Its just the way I am.

I've been trying out A3, and I don't think that the product is the most robust product that Apple has shipped.

I'm experiencing frequent slowdowns, occasional hangups, and spinning beachballs are far too common.

I'd recommend thoroughly trying out the A3 demo before committing to a purchase.

You'll do the same with any other processor, the difference is the ease of use for photographic workflow, not design

but, that is really a matter of personal preference. What's to say, I don't find using photoshop easy vs. using lightroom.

The reason why I'm asking is because I'm currently using Aperture 2 and I've just ordered CS4.

I'm trying to decide if the new features in Aperture 3 warrants an upgrade. If I can save time by using Aperture 3 to do more editing instead of switching over to CS4 then it might be worth the cost of the upgrade.

Decisions, decisions

If you read a lot of Aperture forums, there's a lot of whining from the early adopters. Be glad you're not that early at this point, although my upgrade went fine.

Also, heed all advice about shutting down most features while you upgrade your libraries. It takes a few days, but it's worth making sure your images don't get corrupted.

Anyway, regarding whether you should upgrade: I would say go through the list of all 200+ new features and see how many push your buttons since we don't really know what sort of retouching you are doing.

It has been pretty rare for me to go to an external editor from Aperture -- it doesn't seem to be my thing. And I don't use PS, so my heavy lifting is done with the Gimp.

Never settle for good enough .

If your shooting for the joy of shooting or have thousands of vacation images then use Aperture. Its handy for batching a large amount of images.

If your looking for portfolio pieces or working on a job then there is no other option than photoshop. Photoshop is so much more capable and the only way to get every image "just right".

Sadly there is no ideal tool for every scenario.