New imac comming my way and a couple of Qs

[Clark]

So my old windows laptop died the other day, not sure if anyone read my post on it or not. Doesn't really matter anyway.

I have a new IMac heading to me in about a week, this will be my first Mac computer but not first apple product (iphone 5, ipad 2) I have used them before so that's not an issue.
My issue is that I only had maybe 2 weeks playing with Lightroom 4 on my windows computer and I was wondering what people's thoughts are on aperture for Mac or should I stick to Lightroom?

the main advantage of aperture is it seems to be a little bit cheaper but other than that I'm not too aware of the differences.

Cheers for any help you can provide.

[davsv1]

For what it is worth I use Aperture, I have never used Lightroom but I think it really comes down to personal preference, Aperture is good for organising and doing basic editing I have no idea of how similar Lightroom is or is not.

[WhoDo]

My issue is that I only had maybe 2 weeks playing with Lightroom 4 on my windows computer and I was wondering what people's thoughts are on aperture for Mac or should I stick to Lightroom?

Stick with Lightroom. Buy LR4 and you'll likely get a free upgrade to LR5 which is now in Beta. Better RAW support and with LR5 you'll get content-aware fill for cloning objects out of images (helps with spoilers like signs, bits of rubbish, stay feet and hands, etc.) LR is also faster on the 64-bit iMac than on windows. Just my $0.02c, Clark.

[chris_m]

Both are excellent products, its really personal choice.

I have used Aperture for 4 years now and every now and then I will download the latest LR and give it a try to see if its better than Aperture.
I am still with Aperture. I think it does the file handling, tagging and keywords better and I reckon it has a better work flow.
Cheers
Chris

[Clark]

Thanks guys. Looks like ill just grab lr4. I already know bits and pieces of it so that will be the one. Any one running macs that can offer me any tips that I may be able to use once I get it?
it will be a fresh system as I will only be putting the bare minimum from my old pc on to it in old file terms.

[Old Skool]

I went from a PC to an Imac a while ago. I bought some extra Ram and installed that myself so it now has 12GB which helps LR. I'm so used to Windows Explorer that I find Mac's Finder to be pretty basic after it. I downloaded Total Finder which gives me more options, right click, copy paste etc. Ended up getting MS Office for Mac as so many docs I deal with are Office based. I use Firefox same as I did with my PC so browsing the net is what I'm used to.
I find the Mail app that comes loaded to be fine for my needs, easy to set up Hotmail & GMail on it and it automatically sets it on my Ipads - same as Calendars & Contacts. I did use Outlook on my PC. but don't miss it at all.
Time Machine is great. just set it up and forget - worth while as I recovered some photos I had accidentally deleted a while ago but not discovered till much later - just went back in time machine thru the backups and found them to restore.
The only program I can't use & miss is MS ICE for panoramas, but I tend to use PS now for stitching.
Still love the display, photos are just glorious on an Imac.

[WhoDo]

If you're setting up LR4 from scratch again, make sure you start with a catalogue structure that you can live with for a long time AND start adding tags (in batch mode if you like) to your images. LR has the ability to let you find images with similar tags and group them into smart collections. It's a bit of a nuisance working it all out beforehand, but absolutely worth it in the long run. You can batch tag locations in your import process for example.

I store all of my RAW files in a single folder by date. Then, when I export the JPG's, I send them to an export folder by date as well. That allows me to pick up and distribute to other folders if I wish, or simply create and/or add them to smart collections, add extra tags, etc. When your images get to number in the thousands you'll thank me, and LR of course.