Aperture to Lightroom - Workflow?

[Chazman88]

Hi All,

I have been into photography for a little while and up until this point I have always used Aperture. As Apple have now discontinued Aperture and there appears to be some doubts about what the capabilities of the replacement software will be I have taken the plunge and have now started to use/look into Lightroom 5.

I understand that Aperture and Lightroom are different bits of software but there were some features in Aperture that i found really useful and made my workflow a lot easier, a couple of these i am having some issues replicating or finding and alternative in Lightroom.

Versions / Virtual Copies
When I edited my photos with Aperture i had it set to automatically create a new Version whenever i made an edit to an original. This i found really useful as it meant that i always had the unedited original ready and waiting if i wanted to go a different route with it.
In Lightroom is there any way to enable this "Automatic" creation of a Virtual Copy, as currently I keep forgetting to create a copy before starting work. This means I then have to copy all of my adjustments from the photo, reset it back, create a Virtual Copy and then paste the edits onto the copy. Also in Aperture when a new version was created from the original, the new version would automatically go to the top of the stack. In Lightroom the Virtual Copy seems to always go after the image it was created from. This always annoys me as having to go to the Virtual copy and set to the top of the stack is a couple of extra clicks i feel i shouldn't need.

Library Organisation / Collections
Im also a bit confused about the organisation of my Library. In Aperture I was using a "Managed Library", but understand that Lighroom does not do this and it works like the "Referenced Library" in aperture. So I have started to import my photos that I have exported from Aperture and have got them into separate folders in my library for different Events/Projects. I can't quite understand where the collections come into play and what I might use them for? Does anybody have any suggestions or examples that may get me started? Do I even need to use Collections at all?

Im sure that there will be many more questions to come, but thought i would make this short and sweet as my first post the the forum.

Thanks

 

[DBT85]

Regarding your copies, I do not believe there is any way for it to create them automatically or to change the stacking order. However I THINK you might be able to make a copy of an edited photo, then in the copy just press the reset button and it'll go back to the original file. So no copying your settings and reapplying them as you have been doing. I could well be wrong however.

As for the collections, you don't have to use them at all. But I suppose it all really depends on your file/folder organisation in the first place too.

For example, I put all photos from a day into a year/yyyymmdd - {rough subject} folder. So I don't have a folder with just animals in or just flowers in, I have all my 2014 photos in day/place/event folders within one 2014 folder. I use my keywords and the various ways of rating a photo in Lightroom and then I can use smart collections or manual collections to just group together any particular pics that I like, without them being in the same place on the drive.

So I might have a collection that has all pictures in that have my cats in for example, I might have one that have my GF in, I might have another that have BOTH me and my GF in. A photo can be in many collections at once and there are a myriad of reasons why you might want to use them.

Or a collection that has insects but that I've rated 5 star, so my real favourites.

 

[Chappers]

Because Lightroom does not apply the corrections you have made, it doesn't really need to to have versions as in Aperture. It's a different way of working really. You could make a virtual copy with the corrections, then reset the original. Alternatively you can edit the History to make changes, or use snapshots.

One thing I did not like about Aperture is that it insisted in putting the images where it wanted, not where I wanted. Now I know a lot of people especially those with iPhoto libraries liked this but I didn't. I preferred a hierarchical structure a bit like Darren. It means I can also find the images I want without using Lightroom if I wanted ( and knew where they were ). A bit of a hangover in the pre DAM days

Collections can be useful. I use them when I need to supply images to a client of a specific subject, sometimes from different locations, i.e Beach Scenes. This enables me to readily find the images in case of queries ( can you remove X out of imageXXXXX ). They can be useful.

I found this document from Adobe about making the move from Aperture to Lightroom

http://landing.adobe.com/dam/downloads/whitepapers/54511.en.switch-from-aperture-to-lightroom.pdf

By the way Aperture will still work even though it's not supported provided the OS is compatible. So there is no need to rush to lightroom

 

[jakeblu]

Because Lightroom does not apply the corrections you have made, it doesn't really need to to have versions as in Aperture. It's a different way of working really. You could make a virtual copy with the corrections, then reset the original. Alternatively you can edit the History to make changes, or use snapshots.

One thing I did not like about Aperture is that it insisted in putting the images where it wanted, not where I wanted. Now I know a lot of people especially those with iPhoto libraries liked this but I didn't. I preferred a hierarchical structure a bit like Darren. It means I can also find the images I want without using Lightroom if I wanted ( and knew where they were ). A bit of a hangover in the pre DAM days

Collections can be useful. I use them when I need to supply images to a client of a specific subject, sometimes from different locations, i.e Beach Scenes. This enables me to readily find the images in case of queries ( can you remove X out of imageXXXXX ). They can be useful.

I found this document from Adobe about making the move from Aperture to Lightroom

http://landing.adobe.com/dam/downloads/whitepapers/54511.en.switch-from-aperture-to-lightroom.pdf

By the way Aperture will still work even though it's not supported provided the OS is compatible. So there is no need to rush to lightroom

Aperture offers to manage your library for you, my preferred choice but you can manage It yourself if you wish.

Aperture doesn't change original file either all changes can br reversed by reverting to the original or just removing the individual specific change

 

[SFTPhotography]

Aperture offers to manage your library for you, my preferred choice but you can manage It yourself if you wish.

Aperture doesn't change original file either all changes can br reversed by reverting to the original or just removing the individual specific change

I just create a porject for each shoot. I have a fair few. I name them like year_month_location. I have many. In that has RAW, JPEG and Tiff if worked on by a Nik Pluggin. I dread the day I move that lot onto another suite.