Survey: Pros warm to Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Systems' Photoshop Lightroom is catching on as a preferred tool professional photographers use to edit raw images taken with higher-end cameras, gaining at the expense of Apple's Aperture and Adobe's plug-in used in ordinary Photoshop.

John Nack, Adobe's principal product manager for Photoshop, gleefully publicized the research data from analyst firm InfoTrends on his blog Monday, pointing out the wider usage compared to Aperture and saying the displacement of the Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop is expected. For other tasks besides raw image editing, Photoshop is used by about 90 percent, Nack said.

On Mac OS X machines, Lightroom wins out in popularity compared to Aperture among photo professionals.

(Credit: InfoTrends)

In 2009, the Camera Raw plug-in won over 58 percent of the 1,045 North American photo pros surveyed, down from 62.2 percent in 2008. Lightroom rose from 36 percent to 37 percent, and Aperture dropped from 8 percent to 6 percent, according to the statistics.

On just Mac OS X, the only operating system for which Aperture is available, Lightroom increased from 40 percent to 44 percent from 2008 to 2009, and Aperture dropped from 15 percent to 13 percent. Lightroom runs on Windows.

What I find interesting about these statistics is not so much that Apple apparently isn't as popular; given Adobe's long history and brand clout with Photoshop, it's got the usual advantages held by incumbent powers. Instead, I'm intrigued by the idea of Lightroom becoming part of established photo-handling processes.

Right now Lightroom is something of an odd duck in Adobe's product lineup, though, and it's more suited for the single user than for larger companies. For example, with the present Lightroom 2.5, you can forget the idea of a studio using a shared catalog to collaboratively work on a photo shoot over a network.

Perhaps at some point Adobe will choose to add such features--and perhaps bundle it within its Creative Suite packages, too.

Raw images, which all SLRs and some high-end compact cameras can produce, offer higher image quality and more editing flexibility than formats such as JPEG. But for photos to be shared with others or used in many other ways, they must be converted from each camera's proprietary raw format into JPEG or another industry-standard format.

That manual conversion can be laborious and computing-intensive, but newer software tools make it less onerous--or even enjoyable for the types of photographers who once enjoyed fooling with prints in the darkroom.

[kelmon]

Hmm, I didn't realise that I was so much in the minority. To be honest, I use Aperture mostly because I bought a license for it before Lightroom appeared on the market and because Lightroom certainly isn't cheap. If Adobe introduces a competitive upgrade option then I'd be tempted to try the application out but since I already have Aperture then I'd rather spend my available money (which isn't much) on other photographic equipment.

Still, I am very interested to see what Apple does with its next update to Aperture, assuming that one will be delivered in the relative near future.

[kool_skatkat]

Aperture gave Adobe a wake up call. Looks like they are now awake.

[nicmart]

Apple's best shot is a major price reduction.

[djames42]

I use Aperture for the same reason as kelmon: it was released first, while Adobe was still releasing feature-very-incomplete betas. I've heard that Aperture has a speed advantage as well.

Doesn't Lightroom have a workflow advantage though, as it can be more easily used in conjunction with Photoshop? Honestly, I do all my work in Aperture and haven't yet found a need for Photoshop... Cropping, light and colour balance, and cataloging - that's all I need.

[kelmon]

I think one of the reasons why I still stick with Aperture is that its workflow isn't as structured as Lightroom in that you can make adjustments to an image at any time whereas Lightroom needs you to be working in the Develop module to do that. However, I cannot say how well Lightroom integrates with Photoshop but I do expect it to be better than Aperture, whose integration is pretty poor. What I don't like about Aperture's integration with Photoshop is that once you have closed the image in Photoshop, if you need to edit it further, then Aperture seems to make a new copy of the PSD file rather than allowing you to continue editing the previous one. Given that PSD files can be pretty enormous, that's not good.

[Brian D. Cox]

This is a shot in the dark but from the experience that I and other photographers in my area experienced was that the first version of aperture was very power hungry to run. At the time I had a black macbook with max memory and as soon as you started the program my fan would kick on and stay in high gear before i even started anything. Lightroom didn't do this and seemed easier on my hardware. Also , there are some people and places that still used pc's and lightroom was able to be used on both platforms. Photographers don't always have time to learn new things or want to switch horses mid stream as it were if it's not needed. To mess with your work flow is time consuming and the sooner you get images to the client the better. This is coming from someone who tried both, chose lightroom and now has upgraded lightroom and purchased aperture with a new macbook pro. One feature that I need is the ability to shoot tethered.