A few months ago, I posted an article comparing Lightroom 1.3 and Aperture 2.0. I ended up switching to Aperture as my main photo management app (for most of the reasons discussed) and then before I wrote anything about it, Adobe released their own version 2.0…and I switched back.

Interesting enough, one of the driving reasons for switching to Aperture, better image management tools, ended up being why I went back to Lightroom. While Aperture 2.0 had much better organizational capability and options (projects, folders, smart albums, regular albums and everything else together on the left side), the whole “projects” concept didn’t fit with how I want to organize my pictures. I am not a pro photographer, I just take random family pictures: going to the zoo, park, whatever. I liked how I could tell LR to import by date and how they appeared in the Library (Year/Month/Day) is how they appear on my hard drive. When I import photos from the camera in Aperture, I have to do this manually. Aperture also seemed to exhibit somewhat arbitrary rules about albums (smart or otherwise) depending on what project they lived in. I was able to look past most of this solely for the existence of Aperture’s Smart albums. I was a serious drag that I had to manually update my various “Picks” collections in Lightroom.

And then Lightroom 2.0 brought us Smart Collections, essentially the same as Smart Albums, but quicker, easier and more intuitive. I appreciate now that Lightroom’s Folder section of the Library acts just like a finder window and I can use/abuse Smart Collections to refine my library. Spending time with Lightroom 2 reminded me of what I liked in the first place and some of the newer capabilities are nice as well:

1. I missed LR’s color labels in Aperture. I use these to identify images that require different types of post-processing.
2. The Library filter in LR is much easier to use than Aperture’s equivalent.
3. Keywording is easier. Aperture’s Lift/Stamp is kind of clunky
4. Ditto for syncing Adjustments
5. Jeffrey Friedl’s export plugin for Flickr is better than what I was using for Aperture. I really like that Jeffrey’s adds metadata to images that have been uploaded to Flickr. Now I have a Smart Collection that tells me all the images I have uploaded.
6. With LR 2.0, I can selectively edit the RAW image itself. With AP 2.0, I have to export a TIFF or JPEG to a separate, but internal engine. I might as well just export to Photoshop.
7. Piling on a lot of Aperture adjustments (Highlights and Shadows specifically) can bring the previews and the Loupe to a near halt.
8. LR’s interactive histogram rules
9. Develop Presets in Lightroom.
10. And a full-up history of all Develop changes works better than turning adjustment bricks on/off. And snapshots too.

There are still a few things I like in Aperture: seamless integration to put photos on my iPod and Apple TV, customized metadata view (Jeffrey Friedel has a tool to do this in LR 1.3, not sure if it works for 2.0), photo-books, better stacks and the Loupe. While I’m pretty much set on using Lightroom 2 as my primary photo management tool, I won’t be dumping Aperture just yet. I will use LR for all of my organization and the majority of my editing. I can then export select groups of keepers to Aperture to leverage it’s capabilities: the aforementioned photo-books and there are some impressive third party editing plug-ins for Aperture. Sending certain groups of images to Aperture may lend itself to the “project” concept better then trying to manage my entire library that way.

At least until Aperture 3.0 comes out and I go through this all again.

I am an Olympics junkie. I still remember watching the ‘84 Summer Games when I was ten like it was yesterday. After watching the cycling road race, I wanted to ditch my lame banana-seat kids bike for a full-up ten speed soooooo bad. (I also seem to remember the track cycling pursuit races back then being somewhat different: two riders stalking each other at about one mile per hour for a few laps and then a furious sprint to the finish.) I staged my own Olympics for the neighborhood kids, with medals I made from foreign coins my dad gave me. I didn’t win any of them.

This year is no different. As a former swimmer and water polo player in high school, I was all over the Phelps drama, even going out of my way to ignore the Internet on the day of the last race. I anxiously await the US playing for gold in water polo, a first since 1988. If it was on, I watched it (with a few exceptions - see below): rowing, equestrian, basketball - a sport I normally go out of my way to ignore. I even watched both marathons.

Some observations:

1. Synchronized swimming is lame. As a swimmer, I have always felt this. Some would argue that as a swimmer, I should understand how difficult this is, the skills involved, blady blah blah. Whatever. Quantum physics, freeway construction and being a lumberjack are all difficult, but you don’t see handing Olympic medals handed out for them. Exhibit A: if this slideshow doesn’t freak you out, than please stay away from me.
2. As of this writing, China has 15 more gold medals than the US. Some have said that this is a disappointment for the American team. Not so fast. China has 12 gold medals in table tennis and badminton. They don’t count. Completely lame.
3. More China bashing: I think it’s accepted that at least three girls on the Chinese gymnastics team were underage. The Chinese officials and their lapdogs at the IOC say their passports prove the are old enough. Passports? Does anyone really think the Chinese government couldn’t spit out a forged passport in about 8 minutes? Why is there any doubt about this whatsoever?
4. BMX is now an Olympic sport? The X-Games isn’t enough?
5. The US just won gold in men’s volleyball. Awesome. A fitting end for what must be a bittersweet time for their coach, Hugh McCutcheon.
6. Prediction: Michael Phelps will win at least 5 gold medals in 2012.

See you in London in four years. Baseball and softball are out, and unfortunately, “roller sports” didn’t make the cut to be added to the program.

This morning I’m listening to AM Sports radio on the drive to work. During the commercial break, one of those completely lame “let me tell you how to increase your personal wealth” ads come on. Normally I block that crap out, until the annoying pitchman with a British accent says “call now and I’ll send you my free tape…“

Tape? Are you kidding me? Did I wake up in 1986? And then I thought…does he mean audio or VHS? A nanosecond later, the other half of my brain chimed in with does it f@%#&ing matter? Does anyone even still own a tape player? Or a VCR?

Unless this tape was actually made in 1986 and this putz has been sitting on about a million of them stuffed in an environmentally-sealed warehouse for twenty years, I do not understand how this is even possible. I haven’t seen an audio tape player for sale in years. What, making a CD was too technologically challenging? How about a DVD? Or a podcast…or a smoke signal.

I’m sure there are some high-speed mouthbreathers out there who would jump all over an offer like this (or we wouldn’t hear them anymore and Tony Robins would be selling insurance in Topeka), but I gotta think that most of them have moved onto iPods and TiVo’s by now.