The reason for using Adobe Lightroom is mainly because of the tight integration with other Adobe products, and a little legacy from my Microsoft days. So I had no real reason to look at the competition (Apple Aperture).... Until now (I guess).
The biggest drawback is that you can't open multiple catalogs at the same time. Something like having multiple personal folders within Microsoft Outlook. You can open them, access the content and if you want you can detach it again to save resources.
So opening a catalog means that you can't access photo's in other catalogs.... Therefor I use one (large) catalog. Mainly because I can't be bothered with the whole exporting and importing scenario to move (or copy) images between catalogs.
By the way, I suggested such functionality to Adobe (along with some other improvements regarding the syncing of catalogs). Now let's hope that they will implement this in version 3.0
This feature is something Apple Aperture since version 1.0 (if I recall correctly), and I get the feeling that I'm near the how far I can push Adobe Lightroom.
For the last couple of days I get the strangest behaviour from Lightroom. Importing photo's normally means you can add tags, and select a way of storing them on the hard disk. Lately it seems that Lightroom is having a mind of its own. Photo's end up all over the place. Tags are getting lost.
These problems are most likely cause by two factors in my opinion;
- A relatively large catalog which I browse a lot
- A lot of processing power going to other applications while browsing/editing photo's
I can accept that Lightroom is getting slower with thousands of photo's, but it shouldn't get a mind of its own when my iMac is busy doing all sorts of things.