[Photocro]

Besides Aperture, what software would be a consideration for professional workflow with the Mac Pro. I am just starting with the Mac after years of PC. Therefore, I am not up to speed with Mac products or 3rd party software that would be beneficial to my work flow.

I do the typical NEF's and RAW. I also do TIFF. I have Nikon Capture and PS CS3. Are there any enhancers that work simultaneously with these (either or) on the Mac that can speed up what I am obligated for, time wise? Just wondering.

[peeb]

What kind of photography do you do?

[Photocro]

Landscape and winery machinery. One might say the second is niche photography. It is a lot of use of light and shadow. I use available and hot lights for the machinery, strobes are to ticklish in the situations I am shooting. What say you?

[chris v]

CS3, Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Bridge are a pretty strong combo, as far as I'm concerned. Aperture is a nice program, but if you know Photoshop well, you'll find it a bit frustrating when you're trying to do serious adjustments. Despite its nice organizational features, it just doesn't have the power under the hood to process like Photoshop. (Layers, blending modes, filters, etc.)

Set your NEF files to open in Camera Raw, move to Photoshop if the raw adjustments aren't enough, save them as Tiffs, and organize/rate/preview them in Bridge. A nice feature of Bridge is being able to select a whole swath of RAW files and batch-apply the most recent Camera Raw adjustment.

[OreoCookie]

I better move this to applications.
Aperture is -- like Adobe Lightroom -- not an image editing tool like Photoshop, its strengths lie in organizing many pictures, making sure they have all been backed up properly and making simple adjustments on the pictures (e. g. fixing the white balance, cropping, straightening). Ditto for Lightroom.

For more serious image manipulations, Aperture and Lightroom feature `roundtripping', i. e. you tell the app you want to edit your image with Photoshop and it'll be managed and updated properly after you finish editing it.

[PaperNotes]

Phase One's Capture One PRO is the industry standard for photographers and digital assistants on shoots. It doesn't consume all those resources that Lightroom and Aperture do.

[red rocket]

Before buying Photoshop, I'd take a look at Photo Retouch Pro as a possible alternative.

It doesn't try to compete with Photoshop in the bells‑and‑whistles arena, but if your main interest is high quality retouching/optimisation and batch processing rather than layers and effects, it's superior in that respect.

Arguably expensive and no Intel version as of yet, mind, but I'd definitely try the demo.

[chris v]

Well, he mentioned he already had Photoshop CS3, so I was suggesting ways to incorporate Adobe Raw Converter and Bridge into his workflow, since those ship with CS3. It can be a complete solution.

[OreoCookie]

I forgot to mention: you can download free 30-day trials of both, Aperture and Lightroom. Which app is `better' is usually a matter of taste and depends (among other things) on how you work: if you prefer a more structured work flow, perhaps Lightroom is better. If you are the creative, non-linear type (as I am), then you may prefer Aperture.

So even if you decide to stick with PS CS3 and its add-ons, you at least have tried the other apps.

[red rocket]

Originally Posted by chris v

Well, he mentioned he already had Photoshop CS3, so I was suggesting ways to incorporate Adobe Raw Converter and Bridge into his workflow, since those ship with CS3. It can be a complete solution.

I must be going blind, totally missed that part. Too many acronyms on that one line, I guess I stopped paying attention after the third one. ****.

You're right, of course, that does make more sense.

[MacosNerd]

I found that Aperture is a great app, its strength lies in DAM, its weakest link is editing, though you can edit images in cs3. I found adobe's RAW converter to be superior in controls and performance then aperture's.
So If you're already using bridge and PS for your workflow, I don't think Aperture would be a good fit. LightRoom is adobe's answer to aperture but it does overlap in capabilities with bridge and ps.

Personally, I found that aperture free's me up from the manual organization of my images. LR was probably just as good in that department but since I moved all of my images over to aperture, I wasn't about to do it a second time. It was not better just different.

[Veltliner]

The Lightroom - Photoshop combination works best. Lightroom for best workflow and basic RAW image processing, then export to Photoshop, and back. Lightroom cannot store cMYK images in its database, if that's important to you.