Photography is a hobby for some and a passion for so many. Seeing how media dominates most spheres of our lives, photography has taken center stage like never before. The success of Instagram is an indication of how much in love we are with our images and the image capturing process. There are applications and software, free tools and dedicated websites to help us make better pictures. If you so choose, you can add effects, texts and other features using the large amount of help you will find online.

Today we take a look at two such options- Adobe’s Photoshop and Apple’s Aperture. At a basic level both are image editing software that let you edit your pictures to make them better. This is a huge similarity but where they differ is how seriously they take their photography.

Photoshop offers almost unlimited options to change pictures to make them look better. A simple visit to the website will tell you of the many different options the site offers. For instance when you combine Photoshop with Adobe Lightroom, you can do so much more than edit and convert. You can store and organize pictures and ensure everything is easy to find. Lightroom can be used to make adjustments and conversions all over the picture. In Photoshop, you can use tools to make specific changes and to polish and sharpen images.

If you need something simple, then Elements on Photoshop is easy and effective, allowing you to quick fix and manage images. It is a great convertor and is worth the price you pay for it. You can choose Photoshop Touch to create lighting effects that do not impair the picture quality and use layers to add features to your pictures. You can add depth to your pictures and use Photomerge to create great pictures. This is definitely a site meant for the professional photographer and requires you to understand the nuances of what goes into making a picture.

Aperture too is professional software and is meant for people who work with Raw files and require conversion and organization of those. This program can perform global edits and go ahead and print files without seeking permission. It scores majorly in this category over Photoshop. Apple calls Aperture a system that can integrate beautifully with Photoshop. That seems to suggest that Photoshop has the upper hand in managing the content of the picture while Aperture handles simple things like color and balance.

In fact Lightroom has a lot in common with Aperture seeing how both of them are workflow centric. But Lightroom can concert RAW from certain devices like Panasonic, but Aperture cannot. One of the biggest issues with Aperture is how, like most software from the company, it runs only on Apple products. But like the technology from the company it is easy to use and navigate through. Whether it is managing pictures or using sophisticated picture formats to work with, Aperture seems to make things easy. Apple’s iCloud makes it simple to organize huge numbers of pictures with speed and ease.

When it comes down to it, both programs have their own advantages and set of challenges. What They do offer is great options to make better pictures. Try both and then decide.

This is a guest post by Samantha Kirk of mytechhelp.com, a site that offers savings and current information on Toshiba Support.