Aperture and Lightroom Libraries?

[Trowski]

I do have a fear of Library corruption, and it makes me feel more secure seeing the actual image files separate from the Library, because you can't actually see what's going on in the Library.

With Lightroom, you can see the image files separate from the library (catalog). The Lightroom catalog is just a database of file locations and modifications to those files. When I import (copy) files from my memory card to the Lightroom catalog, those files are also easily accessible from the Finder. I'm guessing Aperture makes a package much like iPhoto, and you can't see the files in that library. (Actually you can see the contents of these packages, right click on the file and select 'Show Package Contents.' Apps are packages too, try this with some random .app file. Just don't modify things in there if you don't know what your'e doing.)Perhaps someone with some Aperture experience can speak up to how Aperture handles photos actually stored in its library.

Has anyone ever had Library Corruption?

I've never experienced library corruption, but with Time Machine, I don't really worry about such things. I'm assuming you're using Time Machine just as I am, and you can always restore from a back up where the library was not corrupted. Again, with Lightroom this would also be limited to just the catalog. Losing the catalog would be bad, but at least you'd still have the photos. But with Time Machine backing up the catalog, I doubt you'd ever actually lose it.