Aperture dwindling in popularity?
updated 11:10 am EDT, Tue September 22, 2009
Fraction of Lightroom's audience, says Adobe
Apple's Aperture workflow software is losing significant traction with professional photographers, claims Adobe. Citing data gathered by the research firm InfoTrends, Adobe notes that in a 2009 survey, only 12.5 percent of photographers with Macs reported using Aperture for RAW files; by contrast, Adobe's Lightroom software was nearly four times as popular, at 44.4 percent. The figures represent a widening gap, as in 2007, only 26.6 percent chose Lightroom and 14.3 percent chose Aperture.
Amongst all photographers the 2009 numbers change to 37 percent for Lightroom and 6.3 percent for Aperture, a disparity explainable by the lack of a PC port of Aperture. The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in is a more popular option than either, at 57.9 percent; Adobe observes that in all cases, roughly 90 percent of photographers use Photoshop for image editing. Camera Raw's popularity has gradually slid from a 66.5 percent mark in 2007, a fact likely attributable to an increase in the use of workflow software in general.
Junior Member
Joined: Feb 1999
Several misleading points in here...
First, Aperture is *not* an image editing program and I don't think that Apple ever claimed it was such. So I have Aperture and the CameraRaw plug-in installed because they do completely different things -- one enables me to manage my RAW files as a *library* (same is Lightroom) and make simple, non-destructive, basic adjustments, the other enables me to open files in Photoshop and make complex, sometimes-destructive, sophisticated adjustments.
Second, Apple *has* really screwed up the game with Aperture. Aperture 2.0 was released in early 2008 and hasn't received a major refresh since then, so it is looking decidedly aged by software terms. When your consumer application (i.e. iPhoto) has features (e.g. facial recognition, geo-tagging) that aren't available for your pro application then it's really time to get on the ball and release an update. They haven't even offered a glimpse of an Aperture 3.0!