Keyword management in Aperture

Moving from one RAW workflow tool to another is always going to be painful, a fact that few reviewers ever touch upon. This is the downside to non-destructive editing. Until now, nobody has come up with a way to translate RAW settings from one converter to another, and even if they ever do, it is likely to be an imprecise art. For example, while both Lightroom and Aperture have local contrast enhancement tools (Clarity & Definition, respectively), they behave and respond differently, and it is unlikely that these differences can be easily characterised. So, moving from Lightroom to Aperture, or the other way, is going to be complicated and potentially involves a lot of work. A RAW converter is not just for Christmas. Things are a bit better on the cataloging front. IPTC and keyword metadata written into DNG files in Lightroom should import into Aperture, although some workarounds are required, in particular where ratings are concerned. One thing I dislike about Lightroom is way that keywords are edited and managed, and especially how this is all mixed up with search. I especially dislike the way that I have to switch to the Library module to work with keywords. Well, with Aperture, you don't need to switch to anything, but I have to admit it took me a while to work out how I could make bulk edits to keywords. When importing keywords with certain characters, for example "á", Aperture mangles the keyword. So "Jökulsárlón" became "árlón". To fix this I tried to do it the "Lightroom way", which obviously didn't work. You can't edit keywords in a multiple selection using the metadata panel, at least as far as I can see. But you can use the Keyword HUD: This can be quickly used not only to edit, add or remove keywords, but also quickly apply them to images, whatever you're doing to them, be it editing, retouching, arranging for print, for web, anywhere. And for my scattered mind, this is way, way better than Lightroom's rigid approach.