lightroom 4 question.

[shaylou]

Beginner here using iphoto on my macbook. I like the way iphoto converts raw pics automatically when you share or edit, there is nothing i have to do. I was considering going with apiture because it does this as well. My question is does Lr4 automatically convert raw images for you or is there something I have to do (resave/convert) each time I make adjustments or share. Thanks for your help.

 

[Furtim]

You can think of it as exactly the same as iPhoto in basic terms, but it gives you a lot more options should you wish to make any changes.

If you choose to do the absolute minimum, you can just attach the camera (or insert the card), it will automatically import the RAW files into your library and do what it feels is necessary to get the images into a reasonable state (as per iPhoto).

What you do with them then is entirely up to you.

Like Aperture, it's just iPhoto on steroids! Un-like aperture though, it won't tie in automatically to many of the other Mac apps (Pages, Keynote etc), so you don't have direct access to your photo library from within those apps. If you want to insert an image from your LR catalogue, you do have to go though the additional step of exporting your photo from LR and then importing into Pages for example. If this integration is a big thing for you, consider Aperture instead of LR4.

Just to put this into context though - I personally prefer the mechanics of Lightroom over Aperture, and the additional features Lightroom brings to the party over and above Aperture more than outweigh the convenience factor of sharing with other Apple apps. LR4 has exactly the same sharing features as iPhoto and Aperture in regard to e-mail, Flickr and so on, but a lot more processing power - but of course that's only useful if you intend to use it!

Final and obvious point - there is a free trial available for Lightroom; I'd strongly suggest you download it and give it a bash.

 

[shaylou]

Thank you Furtim for your help. I suppose the exporting thing is not a big deal, I thought that I heard something about importing and exporting and that you had to convert the raw file into an exceptionable format such as JPEG each time.

If I may ask you another question. It's about hdr, do both of these editing software's make you buy an add on app to perform hdr? Also how would you compare the two as far as hdr goes.

I should mention that I'm new to photography and haven't learned much at all about editing. That is why I need help with this. I dont know what is important when choosing. my goal is to pick the one that I will use till the end of time. Lol

 

[Furtim]

I've not got all that much experience with HDR, so hopefully someone else will jump in and give a better answer, but...

Neither Aperture or Lightroom have any native HDR capability, but you can use on of many 3rd party tools (Photomatix for example), and there are plugins for both tools that make this integration cleaner - but obviously at a cost.

If it's the HDR style you like rather than the actual need for the full HDR tonal range, you can achieve a very similar and clean result in Lightroom 4 alone by adjusting the 'Clarity' of the image (its just one slider to change along with brightness etc).

As for the choice - both Lightroom and Aperture are more than capable packages, and I believe you can get trial versions of both, so grab them and play with them and see which interface you prefer.

I said earlier that I preferred Lightroom, but I've fired up Aperture in an attempt to check a couple of things I was going to mention; I have to say that Aperture has come one quite some way since I stopped using it - it's got some really nice editing facilities that while they intimately can be achieved in both LR4 and Aperture, they way of getting you there is a little more direct in Aperture.

For example; if selective colour is your thing, you can achieve it in both packages - LR4 you mask an area and adjust the saturation; in Aperture, you can do the same, or you can go to a Black and White tool, and select a brush to paint in the effect directly - same result, but a little easier to find of you're just starting out.

For really complex stuff, you will probably want to switch to a dedicated editor such as Photoshop / Elements etc, but for the basic stuff (and basic actually is not all that basic anymore!), you can do it in both.