Any particular Photo processing preferences?

[DrKazza]

The wife's getting into photography and i'm also getting a mbp for her.

So I was thinking about either Photoshop Elements or Aperture 2 for the software... are they as good as each other and it's down to personal choice or is there a clear difference between the two?

Thx

Kaz

[larchy]

I'm not sure as I've never used either of them beyond having a quick fiddle (ooer missus)

Do take a look at Adobe lightroom though as it's really excellent and, IIRC, is more of a direct 'alternative' to Aperture than Elements, which is a trimmed down PS (they're more for more 'serious' editing and leave all the cataloguing/conversion stuff to Bridge).

There are plenty of Aperture vs Lightroom articles out there if you Google, and it's a tossup between either one really since they're both superb.

[Monie]

Lightroom is awesome!

It'll do almost everything you want it to and it's pretty much idiot proof. Instead of the learning etc involved in PS all of LR's stuff works with sliders so you can trial and error your way to good stuff.

Its preset effects are also pretty good, B&W, Sepia, Aged photo etc.

[Tonster]

Another vote for Lightroom 2 here, superb bit of software. It's got a short but sharp learning curve, but once over the initial bump it's plain sailing. I think you can get a 30 day trial too.

I think Aperture is the main competition for Lightroom, you should note that these are photography workflow programs and can't do the heavy image editing that photoshop can. You won't find paintbrushes and shape drawing tools in Lightroom, but unless you're looking to do things like replace sky lines or paint your cat pink, then Lightroom/Aperture are for you.

[Monie]

Aye i suppose it depends if you're after tweaking photos or editing them.

Everything on my photostream in Flickr is done with Lightroom, including a lot of the filters etc etc, so that would give you some idea, and you can do all the things like spot removal, fixing bits and bobs.

For the cutting out people, or heavy duty image editing etc then you want PS.

[TK421]

Please to be using Lightroom2.

It's mega small too, only liek... 40mb whereas Aperture is 2gb or something crazy.

[Klors]

I too use Lightroom 2, another advantage is it works on both PC and Mac so I share my photo store between my PC and MacBook just fine