I am not a big fan of Aperture - I recommend Adobe’s Lightroom instead. The biggest difference between Aperture, Lightroom, and Photoshop is that Aperture and Lightroom adjust the whole image, Photoshop can modify regions. Aperture and Lightroom are designed for the working photographer, usually photojournalist, who wants to process pictures quickly and efficient.

At the most basic level, the main difference between the two programs is that Aperture is designed for organization and a range of adjustments (crop, colour, contrast, etc), while PhotoShop is a full-scale image editing program, allowing you to completely change certain aspects of the image using cut and paste, filters and multiple layers. Aperture is a good choice for someone who just wants to keep their photos organized, do A/B comparisons and do basic adjustments. People who want to turn the images completely inside out should look at PhotoShop instead.