Woo hoo!
A Litle History
I worked with iView Media Pro (I know it's now Microsoft Expression Media...) for years before I switched to Aperture. I even tried using iVMP alongside Aperture to manage my digital photographs. I've also done an in-depth analysis of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom- in short, I've been there and I've done that. Now I'm going to share my high-level thoughts with you.
What iView MediaPro Does
iView MediaPro is hands-down the most powerful media management tool available today. Period.
Next.
But seriously, iVMP gives you amazing and direct interaction with your media. It also has spectacular AppleScript support. That is part of what makes iVMP such a great tool- even though it may not have a particular function built-in you can script it in. Brilliant.
iVMP is also fast, simple to use and complete. It can be you end-to-end media management tool. I love it. But it doesn't do media editing (OK it does, but not particularly well). With iVMP you need an editor such as Photoshop, LightZone, or something similar.
Enter Aperture
Aperture may not be the most powerful and flexible media manager (what is up with the date editor?), but it offers some very compelling tools:
- Non-destructive editing
- Powerful editing controls
- Smart Albums (iVMP has needed this for some time)
- Disk-space-efficient versioning model (seriously cool)
- Complete media management via Library & Referenced Masters
What iView MediaPro Does