The last part of the workflow before uploading photos to a Web site is resizing and watermarking with the copyright. So I already established that it's easy to manipulate the exposure and levels of camera raw files in Aperture, and then copy adjustments, set them as presets, etc. It's too sweet for words. Then I realized that the export function has presets.
So I created a preset that resized the image to be not taller or wider than 850 pixels, JPEG 5 quality, and here's the kicker, put a Photoshop file as a watermark, alpha preserved, in the lower right. Behold, a folder full of images to upload. Perfect.
But it gets better. It'll export the EXIF and TIFF metadata as well in the new JPEG. That means I can even slug it in Aperture, and the data is preserved. And even more exciting (for a dork anyway)... there are plenty of free .NET class libraries out there that can suck the metadata out of the file, which means after uploading I could extract that data and associate it in the database with the image. I could actually, with no extra work, show that it was shot on a 5D at 50mm, f/1.4 and at ISO 400. Yes, I realize that this is all stuff that Flickr can do, but the idea that I could do it excites me. I'm a dork like that.
Aperture wins.
Hmm, gonna have to try out the new 30 day demo, I like Lightroom, but I don't love it.