Mac?? Aperture??

[Jediboy]

Hi, does anyone here use Aperature on a Mac.
We need to upgrade our PC and I'm looking at treating myself to a Mac. I've heard lots of good things about them.
Has anyone here used apples Aperature? If so,  what's it like?
At the moment I use PSE9, but will need to upgrade and was wonderful what's best??   

Cheers

Chris

[donoreo]

First thing, if you have the boxed PSE9, it was Mac and Windows in the box.  I use Lightroom myself on my Mac with PSE for the few things I cannot do in LR.  I tried out Aperture a long time ago, it did not feel smooth to me.  If you use PSE now, seems like a good excuse to upgrade to PSE12. 

[Jediboy]

Cheers Don. That's what I was thinking. You can't put discs into the new macs, but may but the device that connects to do this. (Another £60!)
If I do then I could use my PSE9, but I do fancy an upgrade. 
Cheers.

[donoreo]

Keep your old computer running, share the CD/DVD drive, find it on the Mac over the network.  No extra cost. 

[Jediboy]

Good idea Don. Could do that, and maybe try Lightroom as well?

[Andrew]

I got Aperture whwn Appe gave it away free one day.

It is not being supported and there is a lot of unease amongst the Aperture community over its future.

I never got on with Aperture, but have been using Lightroom since v2 - which you can purchase via download 

As for the lack of disk drive - i got one off Amazon for about £23 which works just fine for installing from, or burning to.

That said, i got a copy of PS12 for £43 off Amazon through the download option - so take the £23 off that and you'd have to pay £20 in effect. If you go down the upgrade route - it might be even cheaper?

All i use PSE for is landscape pics created via stitching images together - the rest i can pretty much do via LR 

[donoreo]

You can download Lightroom and try it out for 30 days.  I use PSE for stitching together as well.  One thing I wish LR had: content aware clone/healing bush.  However with LR 5 the clone/heal tool is much better. 

[Hinfrance]

With regard to Elements, I've just had a look at the UI for 12, and it is essentially the same as 11.

FWIW I wouldn't bother upgrading to 12 because of the UI, unless you really need some of the more esoteric new features. And it still doesn't have a curves adjustment layer for crying out . .  Stick with 9, it's the version I almost always use even though I have 11 too. The UI is bl**dy awful after version 10. Looks like it was done for children with touch screens. The worst thing is that the context tool bar has been buried at the bottom of the screen and is 200px high (V9 35px, top of screen with all the other menus) - takes up way too much screen space. If you hide it it doesn't pop back up when you select a tool, you have to click on 'tool options' every time to get it back. I can't get any of the panels to dock. Frankly it's completely cr*p now. One of the reasons I went for PS CC, although I might bin that at renewal and just stick with Serif's Photoplus for complex 16 bit edits, even if it is less capable and won't talk to Nik.

See : Chester October 4, 2013 at 10:03 am on this page

[Jediboy]

Cheers guys.
I think I may go with 9 initially. I know how it works, to a degree, and it does what I want ND loads more.