The new version adds basic video editing and playing, integrated maps that support GPS data, new content-aware auto-fix, more localized adjustment brushes, and integrate book creation tools. Upgraders from any previous version will only pay $79.
The full retail price is now $149.
I switched to Lightroom 3 about 4 months ago, after using Aperture for some time. I mainly did so because Lightroom allows users to keep their photos in simple folders in Finder, while Aperture (and iPhoto) put everything in to a database, making data portability (and possible corruption) a real issue.
Even on my Core i7 MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM, Aperture 3 was a dog. With a 100 GB database, it was almost unusable at points. Lightroom, however, never feels slow, with the same number of photos.
The first complaint people cite when talking about Lightroom is the lack of an easy way to export photos for iOS. However, since iTunes can sync photos from a folder (or set of folders, to be more accurate), syncing photos isn’t as hard as some people might claim.
In ~/Pictures, I keep a “For iOS” folder, with sub-folders for all by albums. You can unpack this .zip file to see screenshots of my export settings.
Lastly, Adobe offers fantastic RAW support. They’ve has led the way on this, in my opinion, for some time. While I don’t always shoot in RAW (especially as my iPhone 4S is my main camera these days), I know that when I do, I have full control of my files with Lightroom.
Update: Holy cow. It totally seems that Aperture doesn’t require users to store items in the database anymore. Thanks everyone who emailed me — I appreciate the information, but I still don’t think I’ll be switching back.