I'm probably about half-way through my comparison test of Adobe's Lightroom 2 (beta), Apple's Aperture and Capture One and there are some early observations that might be of interest. I should reiterate that my testing methodology is far from scientific and largely based on whatever work I happen to be doing on any given day. The purpose of the test is to discover which of the three tools works best for my particular digital workflow and it's quite possible that you will come to different conclusions. People tend to like to draw a line in the sand about their equipment and can become quite defensive about their choices so I just want to say that if what you're doing works for you then go with it.

The first thing to report is that there's been an early casualty in this three-way shoot-off. Whilst the interface for Capture One 4 was funky and I immediately liked it, the package was just so slow to operate that it was quickly clear that it was going to be impractical for me. I'm using a one year-old MacBook Pro 2.33Ghz with plenty of spare memory so I would expect my software to whizz along quite happily. It's a laptop but that's how I work and if the software won't run on my machine then that's pretty much the end of the test as far as I'm concerned. So, whilst Capture One might boast all manner of functions and special effects that would impress me mightily, there was never any chance that I'd get as far as finding them. Importing images was reasonably quick but altering any aspect of a DNG file converted from a 1Ds MKII RAW original took an age. Also, there didn't seem to be a way to see alterations in real-time. I may be wrong about this but I'm used to moving sliders up and down and seeing the changes immediately in my image. In Capture One it seemed that I had to release the slider to see the effect. Subtle changes therefore seemed very difficult to achieve. And as it was taking a while for those changes to become apparent I quickly lost patience and ditched Capture One before the trial expired.

If anyone wants to prove me wrong about Capture One and tell me that there's a special preference setting that overcomes these problems then I'd like to hear it. As I say, the interface looked interesting and I wanted to like it so I'd give it another go if I thought I'd see an improvement.

Aperture is like dancing on ice, as smooth as silk and wrinkle-free.

So now on to the two remaining contenders. Firstly, I should remind you that Aperture 2 is a full release and Lightroom 2 is a public beta so we excuse it some quirky behaviour. What we don't excuse it for however is the clunky interface. Lightroom's modular panels are already feeling old-fashioned and although I'm pretty familiar with it so can move around quickly with keyboard shortcuts, it's just ponderous. In contrast, Aperture is like dancing on ice, as smooth as silk and wrinkle-free. It boasts that particular "Apple design" feeling that immediately beckons you in. Open Lightroom and you feel like you have to work, open Aperture and you feel like it's time to play. If they were people, Lightroom would be a dour, stodgy Yorkshire lass sitting in the corner of a smoke-filled, dingy pub drinking Stout and Babycham whilst fingering her moustache and mumbling at her whippet, whilst Aperture would be a leggy blonde model perched elegantly on a stool in the corner of a Soho wine bar, sexily sipping a cocktail before beckoning you over to her table with a smouldering pout and and a suggestively raised eyebrow.

I fear that I may be stepping up to the point at which I over-egg this analogy. What's that? I've passed the point already? Fair enough. Let's forget the aesthetics and talk about delivery. I'll pick out two things that I've discovered in my recent trial, either one of which could be a deal-breaker for me but which, when combined, probably sound the death-knell for one of these applications as far as I'm concerned.

Firstly, Chromatic Aberration. Yep, I've said it and now it's out there we'll just have to deal with it. I use the best Canon lenses available but occasionally I'll get a case of CA and boy does it itch. Clearly, it's something that's best cleared up as soon as possible. This image was shot at the wide end of a 16-35mm f/2.8 L lens (1/4 sec, f/22, ISO50 for those who like to know) and shows CA, or purple fringing, around the areas of high-contrast.


If you look at the lamp post you'll see a green stripe on the left and a purple stripe on the right where light of different wavelengths is being resolved at different points on the sensor. Probably. We don't really care why but we do want to rectify it. In Lightroom there's a cunningly named "Chromatic Aberration" tool and I bet you've already guessed what it does.
Yep, move the sliders from side to side and be ready to catch your jaw as it drops open with amazement as the fringing disappears. There's also a "Defringe" setting that will pick out the highlight edges in the image. That's all well and good. Hover your mouse over the image above to see it with the fringing removed.


So now to Aperture where a search for the Chromatic Aberration removal tool reveals... nothing. There isn't one. Has it been renamed in a cunning ploy to prevent Windows-users from taking over the Apple software? Well, possibly. Searching the Aperture help files reveals no mention of Chromatic Aberration. It does, if I remember rightly, mention "Fringing" briefly and the way to deal with it is apparently by manipulating the "Moire" and "Radius" tools. All I can tell you is that I fiddled and fiddled and the "before" and "after" image shows the results. I think I actually ended up making it worse. If you hover your mouse over the Aperture image you might not even notice any difference.

Further research on the web revealed that there are other ways of removing CA in Aperture that involve colour replacement or something but by that stage I'd lost interest. It seemed that the blonde in the Soho wine bar might not be all she was making out to be and the dour Yorkshire girl was beginning to look more appealing.

If somebody can explain to me how to remove Chromatic Aberration in Aperture as easily as it can be removed in Lightroom then I'll be keen to learn but as far as I can see, it's just not possible without a lot of fiddling and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

I'd say that the Aperture brushes are more intuitive at first glance

So, on to my second finding. Both Lightroom and Aperture have new "Dodge and Burn" tools that supposedly provide functionality previously only found in Photoshop or similar photo manipulation packages - although nobody here is using anything other than Photoshop, right? OK then. Here's the thing, they both work equally well and although there's some differences in the way the tools operate it's nothing that you wouldn't overcome if you were using one or the other package regularly. I'd say that the Aperture brushes are more intuitive at first glance but they both do pretty much the same thing. Aperture's brushes are pressure sensitive whereas Lightroom's are not so if you're using a pen and tablet that might be a consideration. However, this might be dealt with by the time the full release of version 2 hits the shops.

But here's the killer. When you dodge and burn in Aperture a new TIF file is created. In Lightroom, you make non-destructive adjustments to the original RAW or DNG file. So if I make a small dodge and burn adjustment to 100 RAW files in Aperture I end up with an additional 100 TIF files, all taking up space on my hard-drives and creating a new asset management dilemma and requiring additional back-up space. Essentially, my files are duplicated and now I've got a pre-production file and a slightly different post-production file. What would be the point? OK, in Lightroom 1 I would have had to create a TIF file and then had to import it to Photoshop to make any dodging and burning adjustments but that's not the point, in Lightroom 2 I don't need to do that.

There are some things in Aperture that still tempt me: the inclusion of Noise Ninja and Photoshelter upload plug-ins for example. Yes, there are things that would make my digital workflow life simpler and it does feel like you're doing something creative when Aperture's open but with no decent Chromatic Aberration tool and the thousands of additional TIF files that I'd end up with it's just not enough.

I'll keep Aperture on my Mac until the trial expires and I'll keep an eye out for developments that overcome these issues but, for now at least, it looks like I'm turning my back on the gorgeous blonde in the Soho wine bar and heading home, hand-in-hand with the dour Yorkshire lass. She may not look much, but she can deliver - and that, my friends, is what counts.

Tags: aperture, lightroom, capture one

Prompted by a conversation with some of my friends from Winchester Photographic Society, I've given myself a couple of hours today to perform some software testing. Our conversation began as a general question about the way digital camera sensors record information but the answer made me want to re-examine the process to see if I'm getting the very best out of my digital files.

Let me start by saying that my testing is in no way scientific and there may be some of you who spot obvious errors in my reasoning or the process that I've followed. You'll be correct. I'm not a technical guru, I'm a photographer. One of my favourite analogies is to draw comparisons between photographers and musicians and in the same way that a musician doesn't really need to know the exact process used to make their instrument to be able to play a decent tune, it isn't essential for a photographer to understand digital workflow in order to take a decent picture.

However, an appreciation of the mechanics of the trumpet or the oboe, or an understanding of the dynamics of acoustics will, I'm sure, help the musician to be more "in tune" with their performance and perhaps the same is true for photography. Maybe having a grasp of the mechanics of digital workflow will help a photographer get the very best out of his instrument. I guess, at the very least, it's not going to hurt. Read more...

Tags: lightroom, aperture, capture one, tutorials