I have shot almost 6700 pictures on my K10D since I bought it almost a year ago.  That’s just with the K10D…  it does not include the photos I’ve taken with my Canon P&S.  Before my Macbook came around, I was really set on Google’s Picasa as “the” photo browser/editing/do-everything-u-can software.  But it was only available for Windows.  I tried playing around with iPhoto ’06 for the Mac but found it too sluggish.  I tried Aperture 1.5 but it was a real resource hog.  It just slowed everything down.  And then I tried Lightroom and it has since become my main app.  I really wanted to love Aperture since it’s a “pro” Apple software and Final Cut Pro is the best thing ever, but it just didn’t work out…  Aperture and I had different aspirations, and so we parted ways.  I’ve been with Lightroom ever since.  It is fast and it gets the job done right!

But now Aperture 2.0 (A2 from here on out) showed up with a free trial. And I have been playing with it for the past week.  I’ve watched all the tutorials available on Apple’s website.  I imported ALL of my photos.  I did some major adjustments and exported some.  This time, A2 was a “little” faster.  But it was still too sluggish.  There are some things that A2 has that Lightroom is completely lacking.  The “loupe tool”, for one, should be implemented in the next version of Lightroom.  Also, I feel, that some adjustments in A2 are far better in Lightrooom.  Albeit, I still love the fact that Lightroom has curves.  What?!!!  A2 with no curves?!!

However, Lightroom is still lightyears ahead of A2 when it comes to speed.  Granted, i’m only working on a MacBook and A2 requires a dedicated graphics card.  Hey, does this mean that Apple wants me to buy the newest Mac Pro?  But with a Mac Pro, Lightroom (i’m pretty sure) will feel like it’s on speed!  Apple just needs to rewrite A2 from the ground up.  Make it more like Lightroom in terms of it using the processors instead of the graphics card.

I really want to like A2 but it is just way toooooooo sloooooooow!  A simple exposure adjustment takes about a couple of seconds to render.  Whereas Lightroom is almost instant!  However, the over-exposure adjustment in A2 is really neat compared to Lightroom’s (see the tutorial on Apple’s site for more).  I’m not sure if Apple is actually listening to what other users are saying.  But Lightroom, by far, is really made for photographers.  It has the speed and it has better web gallery output capabilities.  Although A2 has a photoboook option – but that’s a different story.

So, in all, I think i’m going to keep playing around with A2.  But Lightroom will still remain my baby.