Friday, February 13, 2009

Migrating to Lightroom

For the past few months, I've been using Apple's Aperture to catalog and adjust my photos.  I've recently been giving Adobe's Lightroom a try and I have to say, I like it a lot better...for a couple reasons.  First, I find the file system much more convenient.  Aperture's standard library comes in a "package" file that stores everything.  Adjustments, metadata, versions, the actual images...EVERYTHING.  So when you go look in your file directory, you dont see your photos, you see the single library file.  Now I don't know about you, but the idea of storing all of my precious masterpieces in one single file scares me a little.  If something were to happen to that file, I'd be F'd in the A so to speak.  Lightroom stores all this information in a catalog file as well, but it keeps all the images separate in their own directories.  This puts my mind at ease and also makes the switch from my laptop to my desktop much easier.

The next thing I've found better in Lightroom are the adjustments, especially the new adjustment brush in version 2.  There's just so much more control now than what Aperture has to offer.  I also like the adjustment interface better in Lightroom.  Granted, there are no modules in Aperture and you can adjust pretty much anywhere at anytime, but I haven't really found the module separation in Lightroom that much of an inconvenience.

Finally, the training and documentation available for Lightroom beats Aperture 10 fold.  The Kelby Training website has a three part in depth series on Lightroom which I just finished and was absolutely amazing.  I highly recommend signing up for their online training programs if you're interested in learning more about Photoshop and Lightroom.  

Well that's all for me today.  Gotta finish laundry and get started on migrating my library over.

Cheers

No comments:

Post a Comment