I recently switched from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 to Apple Aperture 3 for my main photo cataloging and editing program. If you have been using Lightroom for a while chances are that you have a lot of pictures and they are located in some form of folder structure on your hard drive(s). There two settings to change, one in Lightroom and the other in Aperture 3, to make the transition as smooth as possible when importing photos that were managed via Lightroom before.
Aperture 3 can read the metadata in xmp sidecar files that Lightroom can generate. This is off by default but you can turn this on in the catalog settings.
If you enable "Automatically write changes to XMP" Aperture 3 will be able to read the metadata so you do not have to redo all your key-wording.
While Lightroom requires you to store all picture files somewhere in a folder structure Aperture 3 can manage the files for you in a library or can use the referenced model that is similar to Lightroom. If you want to be able to continue to use Lightroom 2 for photos as well as Aperture 3 you need to use the unmanaged option and just reference the master files in their current location. In Aperture 3 select "In their current location" when importing.
I use both the referenced unmanaged model and the managed library. You can use both within the same library in Aperture 3. It is very flexible. I let Aperture manage all my daily snaps and blog pictures but reference files that I previously managed with Lightroom and all new major events like weddings. A big advantage of Aperture over Lightroom is that if you move picture folders on your drive Aperture knows where the new locations are while Lightroom does not. You can easily see which pictures are referenced and which ones are stored in the Aperture library.
There is a little arrow on the picture if the photograph is referenced and not in the Aperture library.
Aperture 3 can read the metadata in xmp sidecar files that Lightroom can generate. This is off by default but you can turn this on in the catalog settings.
If you enable "Automatically write changes to XMP" Aperture 3 will be able to read the metadata so you do not have to redo all your key-wording.
While Lightroom requires you to store all picture files somewhere in a folder structure Aperture 3 can manage the files for you in a library or can use the referenced model that is similar to Lightroom. If you want to be able to continue to use Lightroom 2 for photos as well as Aperture 3 you need to use the unmanaged option and just reference the master files in their current location. In Aperture 3 select "In their current location" when importing.
I use both the referenced unmanaged model and the managed library. You can use both within the same library in Aperture 3. It is very flexible. I let Aperture manage all my daily snaps and blog pictures but reference files that I previously managed with Lightroom and all new major events like weddings. A big advantage of Aperture over Lightroom is that if you move picture folders on your drive Aperture knows where the new locations are while Lightroom does not. You can easily see which pictures are referenced and which ones are stored in the Aperture library.
There is a little arrow on the picture if the photograph is referenced and not in the Aperture library.
3 comments:
Not so fast...
Lr 3 beta 2 has a new RAW engine that's a lightyear better than the one in Lr 2.6. Coupled with their new NR features, I think Lr just dethroned A3 for image quality.
Do you have to do anything else to LR after you check the "write to sidecar" option? Do you have reprocess all the images? -Matt
You have to change that setting for each catalog but there is nothing else to click or do. LR will then write everything to sidecar files. Aperture will be able to read the applied metadata but I do not think it reads any image processing settings.
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