Aperture is going away, and we’re all eventually going to have to switch to something else. After years of working with Aperture, and months of exploring both Lightroom and Capture One, I’d like to share a collection of comparisons between the three apps. In today’s section, I’ll look at the interface and workflow features. In the next segment, I’ll dive into specific image editing comparisons and capabilities.

Many Aperture users are moving to Lightroom. I’m one of them. I use several custom Metadata Views in Aperture’s inspector pane. But custom views are missing from Lightroom… or are they?

Many Aperture users are moving to Lightroom. I’m one of them. How does Lightroom’s photo import features measure up to what we’re accustomed to in Aperture?

With Aperture no longer being developed and OS X Photos not making muster for professionals and advanced users, many of us are looking at Lightroom. How does Lightroom’s keyword tagging capability stack up to Aperture?

Today's article is a guest post by Mel Ashar, a landscape and architectural photographer in San Francisco. He writes on why he personally uses Aperture instead of Lightroom, many of which reasons focus on the Apple ecosystem. It's a great piece for those comparing the two apps, or simply wondering what advantages Aperture offers of Lightroom.

Thomas and I discussed this post at length, before he even ran the tests. Should we do it, or shouldn’t we? This site is not in the business of proving Aperture is better or worse than anything else; it’s here to teach Aperture users how to get the most from Aperture, and that’s it. However given what a critical piece of the workflow this is for professional photographers (fast imports), and that this is a significant feature improvement in Aperture 3.3 (even if Apple isn’t marketing it as such), we decided to do it. And once you’re comparing Aperture 3.2 to 3.3, you have to compare to Photo Mechanic as well, which has long been regarded as the gold standard for speedy imports and selects. And once you add Photo Mechanic, you can’t ignore the 300 pound gorilla in the room, Lightroom. So, we decided to compare them all. And as you’ll see, we even gave Lightroom a more than fair shake, trying to improve its result based off feedback from former Lightroom users.