Best Business Practices for Photographers [207]
First, the downside… Expression Media lets you organize and edit metadata, but if you want to do image editing, color correction, or other visual adjustments, you are out of luck and will need to use an image editing application, such as Photoshop. Because of this (and it was never intended to do this), and further, because Lightroom handles cataloging very well, Expression Media misses the mark for me. In addition, there are a number of issues when you are dealing with a camera's raw files, because, although it is possible to write XMP sidecar files in Expression Media, they will overwrite your previous XMP sidecar files (if you had them), and any color settings or instructions will vanish.
That said, Expression Media has a sync feature that will write directly to the raw file. However, it is limited in that it only writes legacy IPTC information, unless you write to DNG, which you should be doing anyway. In addition, Expression Media supports IPTC core metadata as well as the star ratings; however, the color labels are not directly interoperable with Lightroom.
On the plus side, Expression Media handles the broadest number of file types, including many videos, PDFs, fonts, GIFs, audio files, and so on, in addition to camera raw files, JPEGs, DNGs, and so on. For audio files and the growing number of video files I have, I can effectively use Expression Media to handle just my audio/video, knowing I am going to go into Garage Band or Final Cut Pro to edit that content. Expression Media is both a PC and a Mac application.
Aperture
Aperture is a very intuitive application, as you would expect anything from Apple to be. However, its lack of support for today's metadata standards, as well as DNG, means it's just not a robust enough application to be suitable for what I need it to do.
On the downside, Aperture can read a DNG file into its cataloging system, but it can't export it. Further, if an application, such as Lightroom or the Adobe Camera Raw portion of Photoshop, stores color correction or other editing instructions in the DNG file, Aperture can't understand those. Aperture also does not support XMP metadata standards, so, for example, if you have added your contact information in the IPTC metadata fields in another application, Aperture won't handle or read that information. Aperture only supports legacy IPTC metadata. In addition, IPTC fields such as Rights Usage Terms are not a part of what Aperture will store or handle or allow you to edit—at least not in the current version.
As of this writing, I have high hopes that full IPTC metadata compliance will arrive in future versions, since Apple is a part of the formal Metadata Working Group. However, until a new version comes out that supports XMP, as well as reading and writing DNG files in an interchangeable format, Aperture just isn't the application that I would recommend. Lastly, Aperture is only a Mac/OS X application, so if you have a PC, you're out of luck. If Final Cut Pro's Mac-only approach is any indication, don't expect Aperture on a PC anytime soon.
On the upside, Aperture is a very intuitive application, probably more so than Lightroom. It is faster, in my experience, than Lightroom in many of its tasks. As with Lightroom, it does not support as many file types as Expression Media, but it does support a broad enough spectrum of file types for most every photographer, so this isn't an issue.
All three of the aforementioned applications are compatible with a wide variety of plug-ins, as well as working with the highly recommended Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Catalog keywording software and solution that will help you license more of your images as prospective clients search for just the right image online or in a stock photo agency database. For more information on Controlled Vocabulary, check out www.ControlledVocabulary.com.
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