Section A.4. Adobe Lightroom

A.4. Adobe Lightroom

On the other hand, if you're a Mac user, before you decide on Aperture, download and test Adobe's Lightroom Beta. If you go to http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/lightroom, you'll find a whole new "Overview" chapter on the Beta 3 version of Lightroom and exactly what it can do. In fact, you'll find a whole web site dedicated to this new product that will keep you up-to-date with what is surely a future workflow linchpin. It isn't as pretty to look at as Aperture (although it is quite lovely all the same), or as feature rich (yet...Lightroom is far from finished). On the other hand, Aperture costs more and takes significantly more computer overhead. All I'm doing here is telling you what's really worth your consideration. The thing about workflow products is that the complexity of workflow takes time and energy to set up and organize. So whatever you settle on is going to be very hard to let go of.

NOTE

If you're a Windows user (and now the majority of Photoshop users are), Aperture isn't a choice, but Lightroom is now available in a rough beta.

The thing that really makes choosing Lightroom a no-brainer is that the routines for adjusting the image include everything we are already familiar with in Camera Raw. So there's very little to have to re-learn and a whole lot to gain in terms of speed and efficiency.