Aperture/Lightroom

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Name
Geoff
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I'm currently using Aperture on a Duel PowerPC 2GHz G5 with 5 GB of RAM.

Its starting to get a bit slow when you do large amounts of PP work. (When you've been dragging sliders back and forth for a while, it get rather buggy)

I'm considering Lightroom as an alternative. I know Aperture's pretty memory hungry but I don't know how Lightroom stacks up against it in this regard.

Also, how good is the library system in Lightroom? (It's a doddle in Aperture) And, how hard would it be to swap over my images from Aperture to Lightroom if I go down that raod?
 
I'm having the exact same problem with mine now too and am thinking about moving to LR.

Adjustments sliders are slow to respond, previews seem to take an age and the loupe tool is practically unusable due the lack of response. All my files are CR2 RAWs from my 500d but there are only about 150ish in the entire library.

I imported a few JPEG files from my old camera and it runs a lot quicker with these files - specifically the loupe tool.

Not entirely convinced its got anything to do with the hardware, as its painful on my Mac Pro (2x 3.2GHz Quad-Xeons and 10Gb RAM running Snow Leopard).
 
martyp said:
I'm having the exact same problem with mine now too and am thinking about moving to LR.

Adjustments sliders are slow to respond, previews seem to take an age and the loupe tool is practically unusable due the lack of response. All my files are CR2 RAWs from my 500d but there are only about 150ish in the entire library.

I imported a few JPEG files from my old camera and it runs a lot quicker with these files - specifically the loupe tool.

Not entirely convinced its got anything to do with the hardware, as its painful on my Mac Pro (2x 3.2GHz Quad-Xeons and 10Gb RAM running Snow Leopard).
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Thanks for that. I'll call in at the Apple store on Monday and see what they have to say about it. I don't really want to buy another Mac right now if its a software issue but I'm sure they'll tell me that my PowerPC is a non Pentium and its due to be changed etc.

There are new versions of both Aperture and Lightroom due after Christmas so perhaps this might help.

I really like Aperture but I can't be doing with buggy, slow software. I'll report back.
 
zoom said:
I'm sure they'll tell me that my PowerPC is a non Pentium and its due to be changed etc.
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Don't let them fob you off with that excuse, the PPC G5s are still fast computers especially for something as simple as image processing!

As it runs the same on my Intel Mac I think its just poor programming, as you say hopefully the new version will speed it up but at the same time wonder if it will be Intel-only?

Look forward to hearing how you get on! :thumbs:
 
You can download a 30 day trial for Lightroom to test it (and the beta for Lightroom 3, as I wouldn't really suggest buying Lightroom 2, when there is a new version about to come out).

Before I upgraded to Lightroom 2 I tried Aperture and found that it was a different way of working which I didn't get on with.

It's a very personal thing, so no replacement for actually using the software to see if you get on with it.
 
Yep, download the LR 3 beta, this will let you use it until the official release comes out.

LR works fine on my Macbook Pro with 4GB RAM, but ONLY if I don't have Safari running for some strange reason. Both together are a complete no go.
 
Careful with committing to LR3. It's a public Beta and is not the fully featured version, and not all options are activated. Having said that it does have an improved processing engine and does work much faster than LR2. It is for evaluation only. However it will give you a benchmark as to the speed you can get.

LR doesn't need much memory, From memory Adobe only ask for about 1 Gb

Also no problem in speed with Safari open with Lightroom. Runs OK even with Photoshop open with 4 Gb RAM
 
LR gets very memory hungry when your heavily using the localised editing tools such as brush etc. There are some collections (only 50 pics) that when opened grab 4gb immediately, although this is on a Vista PC.
 
LR can be a real memeory hog, and i don't think LR2 is any better than apeture in this regard, but havn't really compared them directly with a big catalog. LR3 is supposed to address this issue with faster browsing.
 
kalibre said:
LR gets very memory hungry when your heavily using the localised editing tools such as brush etc. There are some collections (only 50 pics) that when opened grab 4gb immediately, although this is on a Vista PC.
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This could actually be the problem with me, maybe a coincidence about the Safari thing. I had to edit a shoot today and it took an age, and I was using the brush on quite a few images.
 
Dman said:
This could actually be the problem with me, maybe a coincidence about the Safari thing. I had to edit a shoot today and it took an age, and I was using the brush on quite a few images.
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I'm really hoping that LR3 sorts out this issue. There is some form of precaching happening when you open collections I'm sure. For instance I can edit a single image contained within a collection of 300 other 'locally edited' images and the machine will just grind to a halt. If I edit that same image but within a collection of only 20 locally edited pictures it runs ok (note just ok not great).

So when I have a big shoot of 600 shot sor something I'm literally breaking them into smaller collections each time, which is a pain in the a$se!
 
martyp said:
Don't let them fob you off with that excuse, the PPC G5s are still fast computers especially for something as simple as image processing!

As it runs the same on my Intel Mac I think its just poor programming, as you say hopefully the new version will speed it up but at the same time wonder if it will be Intel-only?

Look forward to hearing how you get on! :thumbs:
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I went to the Apple outlet and had a length chat about this to them.

First off, they didn't try very hard to sell me a new Mac so I admired them for that. They recommended that I download the 30 day trial of Lightroom, which I've done. (It seems pretty good but no better in terms of what I can do with it than Aperture. No buggy behaviour so far but not done any mass editing with it yet)

They think that Aperture 3 will possibly be Pentium chip only so Apple are forcing my arm a bit here.

They recommended that I wipe my system and reinstall Leopard. Not done this yet as its a a pain to re-apply all my apps etc so I need to build myself up to doing it.

If this fails to help, they say that my PowerPC should fetch good money 2nd hand and I could upgrade to the nice 27" iMac that I liked the look of. These days, the new iMacs are man enought to use for photo editing work whereas when my wife bought one of the early ones they weren't really up to it.

So, that's where I stand, folks.
 
I found that LR was a lot better than Aperture but can slow up with the brush tool
 
I find lightroom tends to have a mind of its own, sometimes it will work for me without a problem nice and swift all the way through, other times it must have a time of the month as its slower than anything
 
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