Posted June 15th, 2008
by admin
The two biggest players in the photo management game for OSX are Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom products. Both take RAW files in and make it easy to do basic editing and processing to greatly reduce the time required to process your images. Today, we will be testing the speed of imports, as well as their respective processing outputs, with sample images and 100% crops.
We used the latest versions of Aperture 2 and Lightroom 2 private beta (available to owners of Lightroom and by invitation). To test import speed, a Sandisk Ultra 2 card was filled with 21 RAW images, taking up 144.6MB space. It was placed in a Digital Concepts USB 2.0 CompactFlash Card Reader and connected via USB to an Apple Macbook Pro laptop with a 5400RPM hard drive. We used a clean install of Mac OSX 10.5.3 Leopard and new installations of Aperture and Lightroom. The camera used for testing was a Canon 30D.
First up - the import speed test. This was fairly self explanatory: both immediately recognized the CF card when it was inserted and were ready to roll.
Aperture was by far the big winner here, clocking in at 20.5 seconds to import our 21 RAW files.
Lightroom had a much poorer showing, though it is currently a beta version. It took 35.5 seconds to import our test files.
But what do measly seconds mean when the greater issue is image quality? We did a comparison test using the automatic tools built into Aperture and Lightroom to compare the final image quality. Thought you will always get the best results out of an individually processed file in Photoshop, Canon DPP or Nikon Capture NX, a photographer trying to process thousands of RAW files on a deadline doesn’t have time to edit each file. These presets and automatic adjustments are huge timesavers if the end result is acceptable. We used factory default settings and clicked Auto Adjust for both programs.
Lightroom
Full size (resized for web)
100% Crop (resized for web)
Aperture
Full size (resized for web)
100% Crop (resized for web)
In my opinion, Lightroom is the winner in terms of image quality using the automatic settings. Quality is completely subjective and I encourage readers to voice their opinions using the comment form as to which they feel is the better result, but the Lightroom sample is more pleasing to my eye then the Aperture sample. It may be due to more aggressive sharpening or higher contrast, but the Aperture version looks softer. Again, no sliders or settings were manually adjusted; only auto tools were used. It does appear that the Lightroom crop has more digital noise then the Aperture crop, perhaps a byproduct of the sharpening (or a lack of noise reduction, which can make an image less sharp).
Like any test, please take this with a grain of salt. Hopefully this has helped shed a bit of light on the best options for photo cataloguing and processing.
Tags: adobe, aperture, aperture 2, apple, beta, editing, lightroom, lightroom 2, photo, Photography, raw, Software, test Posted in Photography, Software, Testing
Posted June 14th, 2008
by admin
Mac Web Browser Showdown
There are a number of free alternatives to Apple’s bundled Safari web browser, and to get a better idea of which of these are worth your time, we have put together a brief comparison.
We took 5 popular browsers and tested them for loading speeds, memory usage and interface. Without further ado, the contenders are:
Mozilla Firefox 3 (RC3)
Camino 1.6
Opera 9.5
Safari 3
Shiira 2
We tested using a clean install of OSX 10.5.3 Leopard with all updates installed on an Intel Macbook Pro 2.4ghz with 4gb RAM and a 200gb 5400rpm hard drive (current base-end model with an additional 2 gigabytes of RAM).
If you would prefer to cut to the chase, we have cliffs notes: Shiira was the fastest browser we tested, but also the quirkiest. It would not be recommended to someone who was only familiar with Internet Explorer or Safari. We also determined that the Apple-supplied Safari browser held its own against the third parties and is not a bad choice if you are already comfortable with it.
We downloaded the latest available version of the browsers from their respective websites and placed each application on the desktop. Each was run to set homepages, disable prompts for “Default Browser” and finished the initial configuration/setup stages for each. Then, the test computer was restarted and had its permissions/pram cleared for the cleanest testing with the least variables.
Our first test was raw speed, from click to page loaded. We set each browser to load Google.com as their homepage (though one was unable to do so), cleared all preferences.
One problem we encountered right off the bat was the Shiira, no mater how hard we tried, would not allow a home page. Even when it was entered in the home page field, when the browser was re-opened, it defaults to a blank page. This may be part of the reason that Shiira’s speed was faster then others, so please take that result with a grain of salt.
Initial Boot Speed
In this test, lower is better. As we mentioned, Shiira (the current fastest) did not account for page load times. Google was cached by each browser so the impact is not tremendous but it is a factor.
The Winner: Shiira (with an asterisk by its record)
Javascript Test Speed
In this test, lower is better. Safari came out the champion of the Javascript test, blowing away the competition. Camino was far behind the rest, with Shiira placing a respectable second.
The Winner: Safari
Idle Memory Usage
In this test, lower is better. We conducted the memory usage test by opening each browser to Google.com and leaving it alone. Safari was by far the worst offender here, with Camino taking the prize for lowest idle memory usage.
The Winner: Camino
Load Memory Usage
In this test, lower is better. We conducted the load memory usage test by opening each browser to a Youtube video and played halfway through before testing. Safari made up for its poor idle memory with a very low load usage and won by a large margin.
The Winner: Safari
Shiira was the fastest browser we tested, but also the quirkiest. It would not be recommended to someone who was only familiar with Internet Explorer or Safari. We also determined that the Apple-supplied Safari browser held its own against the third parties and is not a bad choice if you are already comfortable with it. Often touted alt-browser Opera failed to impress in any categories, and fan-favorite Firefox was not exceptional, but its immense community support and extensive plugin library make it a very viable option.
I personally use Firefox, but after this testing, I’ve begun to use Shiira for daily browsing and found it to be a very comfortable interface. Any of these browsers are an excellent choice, hopefully we’ve helped provide some options!
Tags: best, browser, camino, fastest, firefox, mac, memory, opera, shiira, speed, test Posted in Software, Testing
