I've been using EM since upgrading from iView. I like it fine for managing my files, but I really need something that can handle non-destructive editing, so I downloaded trials of Lightroom and Aperture. Both are good and worked fine, but each had features that have made it difficult to decide between them. Here's some of my considerations:

--Over the years, I have made extensive use of the iView/Expression Media "people" field, and there is no easy way to migrate all that info over to another software package. (I know, I can manually convert them all to keywords, but I've got over 20,000 images and I don't even know how many hundreds of people, so it would be tedious.)
--I REALLY like Apple's photo books, and I'm going to be making a few of them in the coming months. That argues for Aperture.
--I preferred Lightroom's interface, and it seemed a bit zippier on my hardware. I also am more comfortable with the number of pros that use it, and of Adobe's commitment to the photo industry -- I worry that Apple might pull the plug on Aperture someday. This all argues for Lightroom, although it is more expensive.

So what I really want is LR's interface, with Aperture's photo books feature. As I see it, here are my options:

--Get LR, and export processed images to a folder that I can import into iPhoto, and make my Apple photo books from there. The downside is that I don't get A3's photo book refinements, I'm stuck with whatever they have in iPhoto.
--Get A3, and deal with the speed issues and interface that I don't like as much by visiting a therapist.

So my question is how to deal with the DAM issue here. Should I continue to use EM for that part, and just use either A3 or LR for image processing? Or should I go whole hog into either A3 or LR and one of them for both DAM and image processing? If I do that, which is the better choice from a DAM point of view? That could be the issue that decides it for me, as I would like to minimize the number of software programs I have to use.

Put more succinctly, it looks like I have 4 basic options:

EM for DAM, LR for processing, iPhoto for books
EM for DAM, A3 for processing and books
LR for DAM and processing, iPhoto for books
A3 for everything

Thanks,
chris

I second Sigi's recommendation. I don't know if you can get good upgrade pricing, but I was able to upgrade from iView 3 to EM and it works great in SL. Very zippy.

chris

I recently upgraded from iView 3 to EM2 and couldn't be more pleased. It works much faster, and everything is pretty much the same in terms of the interface. I was thinking about moving to Aperture or LR, but now I don't think I need to. I'm on MacBook Pro 2.5gHz and my catalogs feel very zippy compared to how they handled in iView.

chris

Does anyone know the best way to migrate information from iView Media Pro 3 "People" fields into Aperture 3? I've looked around on the web and searched this forum, but I can't seem to find anything. I know that I could manually go through and select each person and add their name as a keyword, but I've got over 500 names and 20,000 images, so I'd really like to avoid that. I suppose I'll need some sort of a script, but the closest thing I could find was for Expression 2. Would there be any way to link the iView People data with the Faces list in Aperture? (I haven't tried the Faces thing, but I assume that faces have names associated with them.) Thoughts, suggestions?

chris

PS: Does anyone know why neither LR or A3 have a similar people field? It seems so obviously useful to me.