Work flow advice. Camera Raw and Aperture 3

[timh]

I have been using Aperture 3 to organize photos and for basic image enhancement, but the raw processing is fairly basic compared to Camera Raw.
Does anyone have any suggestions re a suitable workflow. Eg processing in Camera Raw and/or photoshop ( I use CS4) before importing into aperture; import originals into Aperture, work on a copy in Camera Raw only for those photos worth the effort, then importing those into Aperture; ?????
Would it be easier to use Lightroom instead of Aperture (I know nothing about Lightroom)

[k4t]

I'm interested in the answer to this question too. Still tossing up between using Lightroom and Aperture since I've got my first serious camera. Overall I think they're very similar programs. Aperture has a more intuitive interface IMO but Lightroom seems to have the edge in terms of processing options/power.

I would suggest downloading the trial version of Lightroom and doing some comparisons of RAW conversions between the two programs. I've heard rumours about the Aperture conversion being less than optimal but I've never seen anyone post objective proof. It may also depend on your camera model/RAW format and Lightroom/Adobe seem to support a much better range.

Edit: On re-reading your post I'm not sure if I've understood your question correctly. Are you talking about the basic processing from RAW to a workable file or post-processing in general?

[ricktas]

I think you are making this all to hard.

Import into Aperture, do your whole of image adjustments there (white balance etc) then move to photoshop to do your editing, cloning and save.

[timh]

Yes Rick, that is the way I have been working, but Camera Raw offers much more than Aperture, eg make a selection of part of an image and apply adjustments to that part only whilst still working on the RAW image. The problem is that you can't go to Camera Raw using "Edit Plug In" from Aperture as the image has already been converted from RAW by Aperture as it opens. As a result it will only be opened in PS directly, not in CR.
Opening and adjusting in CR first results in the addition of an .xmp file attached to the RAW image. This can't be imported into Aperture. The only way I can see to work around it is to open in CR, save from CR as a TIF and then import that into Aperture. I've then gone from a 26MB RAW file to a 26MB RAW file plus a 36MB TIF using one photo as a test.
Both CR and Aperture seem to work in the same way, by attaching an adjustment file to the image file and the adjustment files don't seem to be compatible.
I was hoping for something simpler but may have to stick with what I've been doing which is what you suggest.
As I don't need to use the CR extras that often I can work with them separately and perhaps manage those files separately in Bridge.