When they were both first introduced, I actually really preferred Aperture, but LR2 fixed a lot (though not all) of my gripes with one. Comparing the most recent releases, Aperture just isn't quite there for me... I actually prefer Aperture's workflow freedom (In Lightroom you have to work in modules, technically I think I get why they did it but I really prefer Aperture's ability to do whatever you want to a photo without dinkering (that would be my new word for that day ) around in between modules. Once you know all the shortcut keys it's not as bad (some of them will kick you around to the different modules rather than clicking the dumb buttons at the top) but it still feels a little counter-intuitive. On the plus side, although I don't us the slideshow or print modules a whole lot in LR, the Web module can be useful and the export options are great. At the end of the day, the integration with PS, Photomatrix, etc, that LR has is a really nice feature.... I don't remember if you can do this with Aperture (I just did a trial of it, never bought the package) but with LR you can send an edit right to PS from inside of LR, make changes, and come back and they update in real time, which is great, and I did find that LR had a few more features in some important areas. I personally think that Aperture has less of a learning curve (with the interface primarily) but I think at the end of the day LR lets me work faster now that I know it well.


If you're gonna get LR I'd actually suggest The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers by Martin Evening over SK's book... I have nothing against Scott (I have read his Digital Photography books, read his blog daily, am a NAPP member, did his photowalk, going to PS world in Sept, etc etc) but I flipped through his LR book (and his PS CS4 book for that matter) and liked this choice a bit better... Scott definitely has a LOT of knowledge, I just find that this book's more of what I personally was looking for... take a look on Amazon and compare reviews (for whatever that's worth, I usually look at all of the worst ratings and go from those :P) if you're curious.


That was a lot longer than I'd planned :P