Migrating from iPhoto to Lightroom...

Question

Hello,
I've now reach 5-years/15,000 images of wildlife/nature photography. iPhoto just no longer cuts it at this size. I'm on the fence between Lightroom and Aperture but right now the selling point for Aperture over Lightroom is that fact that I can migrate my rankings and tags from iPhoto into Aperture, while I don't think this is possible (ie. migrating them into Lightroom). Does anyone have any advice (other than starting from scratch and re-ranking/re-tagging the last 5-years worth of shoots)?
Thanks,
Kristin.

Answer 1

Rather than importing all your iPhoto files to Aperture, I'd caution you to simply reference the odd folder or two for each demo program, and then perhaps experiment with importing iPhoto masters (rather than the reference approach) for Aperture. It's not clear whether Lightroom can read Aperture files, or vice versa. So before doing an entire conversion to either one, why not play with both demos with a (very limited) subset of your photos? This way you can examine exactly what happens without being locked into a particular solution.
(BTW there is an excellent video about Aperture and iPhoto somewhere in the Apple site -- they suggest managing iPhoto images by reference rather than by importing the masters. See it and you'll understand the issues.)
FWIW I did try both and ended up with Lightroom. Aperture has a beautiful, clean design and more intuitive file management. Lightroom has a cluttered, modular design with less fully featured file management but exceptionally intuitive image editing capabilities. Also Lightroom runs like greased lightening by comparison to Aperture, which starts to beachball and stutter once you're on your third slider adjustment. Also, Aperture quits frequently -- in fact, I installed it on two machines, and in both cases it crashed immediately after opening it!
Lightroom is much more stable and has never crashed for me, and I'm banging around on it quite compulsively these days!
That said, while I have a 10,000 iPhoto image file I never bother tagging and rating and so on -- I just did the file folder thing. So choosing one app over another, for me, was not a function of my prior investment in the database. That said, if I HAD taken the time to tag and rank within iPhoto, I'd be absolutely committed to Aperture rather than Lightroom! That is a LOT of time invested, and Aperture is a great program.
One thing is certain: Aperture likes a speedy system. I tried it on my MacBook Pro and it was MUCH faster than on my 1.87 core duo Mini. But it was still not the most stable application on the block -- not by a long shot. Also while I loved the Zen-like simplicity of the interface, I found it Zen-like in other ways too -- as in "inscrutable." Besides being very complex (NOT a program to just start fooling around with, imho, unless you don't mind things like loupe tools that simply will NOT go away!) it also features extremely tiny and incomprehensible icons. You can click on them a dozen times and still not remember what they are just by looking at them. Kind of like "is that a spider? Or maybe a centipede?"
I really wanted to love Aperture, I did. Because I use Lightroom I still have to import albums into iPhoto to view them on Apple TV, for example, whereas Aperture albums can simply be browsed right within iPhoto and also selected for play on Apple TV. Plus I am an unapologetic Apple fangirl and want to paper my walls with Apple -- and only Apple -- software! But I could not get over the instability of Aperture.
As for Lightroom, well in many ways you already know how to use it. It is an exercise in simplicity and intuitiveness.You can start fooling around with it right away without your head starting to hurt!
Tough decision. Bottom line: try out Aperture (on your quad core 3 gig MacPro with a honkin graphics card!) and see what you think. Then try Lightroom. Feed each program just a small set of photos, just to keep things simple and not lock yourself into either until you decide.
Let us know what you decide to do!