Image quality of slide shows using Aperture 3 seems inferior to iPhoto '08

Question

I haven't previously used Aperture. I've been using a copy of iPhoto '08 for several years. I've shot everything in RAW for the last several years and process it in
DXO on my Mac Pro (3 1/2 years old with 7 gigs of RAM). I then load the jpegs into iPhoto '08.
I downloaded Aperture 3 yesterday, and it certainly is impressive in what it can do for improving existing jpegs. I think I could do most touch-ups with Aperture
instead of Photoshop 3. Because of some glitch, I couldn't load or link to my 37,000 images from iPhoto but I did export about 4000 images as full jpegs into
a separate file and then imported these images into Aperture. Touch-ups are an order of magnitude better that trying to use iPhoto to do the same.
I'm an amateur and aside from a fair amount of print making and a few thousand images uploaded to a new Picasa account
http://picasaweb.google.com/jamesn88888
I enjoy a lot of my images via slide shows on my 23" Apple monitor, usually sequenced at 3 seconds per slide.
Comparing slide shows of identical jpegs run with iPhoto '08 and then with the files uploaded to Aperture 3 there is a very subtle loss of definition with Aperture. It's not so
obvious when viewing relatively large detail but is is very noticeable when running slides containing small detail. When both of these programs are just used to display static images full screen I note no difference in readability. Someone suggested that I check the preferences for preview displays. Sure enough, it was set for relatively low quality. I decided to re-do all 4000 images maximum preview display quality.
Using the import settings that came already selected on the trial software, the total size of my
Aperture 3 trial library was a little over 25 GB. The quality of the slide shows did not approximate
the quality of the slide shows of the identical jpegs included in my iPhoto '08 library.
I therefore re-processed all of the previews to the "don't limit" in the photo preferences. The total size of my Aperture 3 trial library grew from 25GB to 41.37GB, an increase of 17 GB. With 3926 jpegs in the library that means the average additional size added to each preview image was 4.33 Megabytes. Inasmuch as the original jpeg images that I imported into Aperture 3 were more in the neighborhood of 1.7 to 3.5 Megabytes each (I have DXO output most jpegs @ 90% quality- fine for my purposes), this is an extreme measure to take in order to be able to use Aperture 3 the same way that I used iPhoto '08. In comparing slide shows between the two applications I still get the feeling that there is a very slight loss in acutance when viewing the slide shows. iPhoto still wins out.
I think that I'm better off staying with iPhoto and continuing to do the RAW processing with DXO and slight file modifications with iPhoto. More elaborate changes can continue to be done using Photoshop 3 and Viveza. It's a shame, because I really like the image processing abilities that are contained in the new Aperture.
Have any of you compared slide show views on your computer between Aperture and iPhoto?
Is there any workaround for best slide show viewing- importing or referencing my existing iPhoto library of 37,000 images does not work for me. My copy of iPhoto 7.1.5 get the message that Aperture cannot import or link to iPhoto earlier than 7.1.5 (?)

Answer 1

I think I've solved my problem with a Google Search. I came across a free slide show generator
(contributions requested) that shows much higher quality slide shows than either iPhoto or Aperture 3.
You click on a folder of jpegs and it almost immediately generates thumbnails and within a few seconds
I can be viewing a full screen, tack sharp, slideshow of all of the files in the folder. Much sharper than
I'm used to seeing.
I think I'll keep the Aperture 3 and use if for the purpose it's intended for in the future. I'll also redo the
image preview files to the small size it started with and then I'll copy all of the files I'm interested in from
iPhoto into a separate folder on another disk. I'll use Aperture to catalog and to perform image manipulations
on but I won't try to use it as an iPhoto replacement. I don't think I'll be using iPhoto much as an image
viewer in the future either after I finish moving my favorite pictures to the Phoenix Slides folder.
The name of the free program is Phoenix Slides. It's free to download and try, free to keep (though I
think you'd want to pay the small amount requested) and fast. My pictures have never looked so good
before.
http://blyt.net/phxslides/
Message was edited by: Jimbo2001