This week's stories: Lightroom 4.3 gets very Apple friendly, Flickr gets it together on the iPhone, and The Return of Drobo, Part 3.
Story Number One: Lightroom 4.3 was a hefty update for Adobe. There are 20 in new cameras supported in the application including the Canon 6D, the Nikon 1 version 2, the Nikon D600, Pentax K5 II, Sony RX1, and on and on. Plus there is a boatload of new lens profiles. Two that caught My eye were for the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5.
And finally for those using the MacBook Pro Retina display, Adobe has added HiDPI support. I tested this on my MacBook Pro, and I've reported on the differences in a blog post.
Story Number Two: Flickr version 2.0 for the iPhone. What a terrific update! Not only is it easy to use my iPhone to take pictures and post them directly to my Flickr photo stream, it's also quite easy to manage all of my social activity with this new application. In fact I think it's easier to manage my Flickr account with this new iPhone app, than it is with the computer through the web browser.
Story Number Three: The Return of Drobo, Part 3. So I moved an Aperture library from another hard drive onto the Drobo. The library and its referenced masters took up 2 TB of space on the other drive. However, on the Drobo, it's only taking up about 1.3 TB. I am now using up 25% of the space that I have on the drive array.
What's interesting, is that I can run my Aperture library off the Drobo instead of having to have it on my MacBook Pro retina display. Performance has been very good. As I mentioned before, I'm connected via Thunderbolt, and I have the Hot Data Cache active on the Drobo unit.
In this particular library, I have 60,000 photos, most of them raw files. I've done image-editing, organization, and I did a big printing job earlier today. Performance again has been very good. I feel very confident running my Aperture library on the Drobo unit.
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Regarding your comments on LR vs. Aperture, unfortunately, Apple has been silent for far too long on addressing some well needed changes to Aperture (better highlight/shadow, lens correction, camera profiles to name a few).
A lot of us prefer Aperture's organization, but it simply pales (I really wanna say sucks) compared to LR4's Develop module.
I agree with Charles. I started with Aperture but have since moved to Light Room. All my work is done on Light Room, but I still keep Aperture around to hold the finished product. It still blows Light Room away for organization. But Light Room just does a much better job at photo editing.
I cover both; I like both; and I use both.
But I must say, that I very much enjoy image editing in Aperture too. For, it's not just an organizational tool.
I switched to Aperture at the start of 2012. One reason as mentioned is the organization just works so well. Another is the integration into the Apple ecosystem, such as Photo Stream. The third, and people will think I'm crazy, but I find that it's almost too easy to edit my photos in Lightroom. They quickly go from my original photos to obvious, "photoshopped", renderings. I find that editing with Aperture is more refined and maintains the original image better. There are some things I want Aperture to catch up on, but in my opinion it's worth waiting. Go ahead, call me crazy:)
A comment about the Flickr app. To me, it almost makes Instagram redundant. The app is robust and deep, does great editing, and allows you to tag properly, add to Groups etc... Along with the changes I'm seeing on the Flickr web site this gives me a pretty good single place to share both my mobile and not so mobile photos. Keeps things simple.
Sean - good comments. This kinda brings up a topic I brought up on ApertureExpert.
For the majority of images, I can achieve the same editing results in both Aperture and LR. However, there are specific types of images (ones that are exposed for the highlights and where the shadows are really dark) that either LR 4's Develop module or PS CS7's ACR can only bring out the shadows without washing them out. There's a plug-in called Catapult that allows for this, or you can export a master, edit in ACR/Photoshop and reimport.
Any thoughts on this?
I think that's basically one of a few things in the edit module that lags behind
Lightroom. Hopefully we see that kind of update for Aperture soon. A lot of times for me, when the dynamic range is greater, I'm taking multiple exposures and using HDR Efex Pro to process them.
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