This week, Apple released version 3 of Aperture, their pro-level photo editing package and direct competitor to Adobe’s Lightroom. Packed with over 200 new features, including new retouching brushes, adjustment presets, face detection tools as well as a new slide show editor that offers HD video, audio and title editing tools, could Aperture 3 become the new must have app for photographers?
We’ll be doing an in depth look at Aperture 3, but I wanted to post a quick comparison at how Aperture handles Raw files, as compared with Lightroom 2.6 and the upcoming Lightroom 3. The images below are 100% crops of the area highlighted in the reference image above. The image was shot at ISO 1600 with a Nikon D300, at an exposure of 1/40 at f/2.8. This is a straight import, with the default settings on each of the applications.
It looks to me that Aperture is producing an image that exhibits both lower noise and more detail, than both Lightroom 2.6 and Lightroom 3beta. Though the Lightroom 3beta image looks to have more noise than Lightroom 2.6, the actual size of the noise looks smaller and more detailed. What do you think? Could Aperture 3 give Lightroom 3 a run for it’s money (at least among Mac users?) Sound off in the comments below. Look for a more detailed look some of the more than 200 new features in Aperture 3 here on Faded & Blurred soon.
