integrating photoline with apple aperture ?

[marco.molteni]

I am looking for a robust DAM (Digital Asset Management) system and it seems to me that the choice today (on Mac OS X) is between Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture and what was called iview media pro and now is called Microsoft something. Both Lightroom and the MS offering are at 300 USD, while Aperture is at 200 USD. I tested both LR and Aperture and I am considering Aperture.

Now the question: if I use PL to edit photos, I will have a certain quantity of images in PL format, not JPEG, not RAW, not Photoshop. How do I manage them from Aperture? Any tips? Does it make sense at all?

For comparison, LightZone stores its images in the JPEG format, and exploits the JPEG comment field (or similar) to store all the metadata related to its non-destructive editing (more exactly the special LZ JPEG file contains a pointer to the original JPEG file). This is smart because that LZ file is "just" a plain JPEG file and can be seen by any photo browser or DAM such as LR or Aperture.

thanks
marco

[lutz]

hello Marco,
I do not have a really good answer for your question. But if you are mainly optimizing photos I might be choosing PSD as my default format which should be managed by the programs you are writing about.