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Citing Lightroom adoption, Adobe pats self on back

An InfoTrends study shows Adobe's Lightroom is more widely used among photo pros than Apple Aperture, even among Mac users.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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Note: I've updated this posting to note that the Adobe didn't sponsor the study.

Apple Aperture beat Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to market as a tool for processing raw images from higher-end cameras, but Lightroom has taken a solid lead in adoption among professional photographers, according to a survey touted by the image-editing powerhouse.

Market researcher InfoTrends surveyed 1,026 pro photographers in North America, and of them, 23.6 percent use Lightroom and 5.5 percent use Aperture, according to the blog of Photoshop senior product manager John Nack Tuesday.

Photoshop's raw-image converter beats both out, though, with 66.5 percent using it, though.

Windows is more widely used than Mac OS X, and Aperture is available only on the latter operating system. But even among Mac users, Aperture is used by 14.3 percent to Lightroom's 26.6 percent.

The survey was part of InfoTrends' continuing studies and wasn't commissioned by Adobe, though Adobe is one of the syndicated clients who received the results, InfoTrends said.

In other Photoshop news, co-architect Scott Byer offers some detailed advice on maximizing Photoshop performance, and Nack said Adobe is preparing fixes to Photoshop CS3 printing problems.