Like a lot of photographers, i find myself using both the pro-level Aperture and the consumer-level iPhoto. I find that there are things I can do best for my pictures in each. Both are truly useful to me in my work as a professional photographer. Personally, I think it makes sense to use both--all the time.

In the course of my work, most of my shots get stored in Aperture. But along the way, there are shots that I take that I want to store in iPhoto. This setup creates a situation where I might someday want to transfer the photos from Aperture to iPhoto, or, from iPhoto to Aperture. It's a good thing that I can easily do that. Apple engineers have designed Aperture 2 and iPhoto '08 to work together.

When I need to import images from iPhoto into Aperture, i choose Show iPhoto Browser from the file menu, which then allows me to import by dragging individual photo, albums or entire events from the iPhoto library into Aperture's project panel. The process is simple and painless. It is also happens very quickly.

If, on the other hand, I want to do it the other way, meaning, put the photos into iPhoto from my Aperture library, I just click on File > Show Aperture Library. With the Aperture library open, I can now select any image I want to transfer and then drag the thumbnails into iPhoto. This creates a new album, or, I can specifically drag the images into a particular album. Similar to importing using the Import command, a new event is automatically created in iPhoto with all the images that has been dragged/imported.

I discovered soon enough that the images imported into iPhoto through this method are the JPEGs automatically created in Aperture at the moment of import. If you need a big size and high image quality to use in iPhoto, you can set it in the Preview settings of Aperture's preferences pane. Now, if you want to work with the original RAW file, your option, of course, is to first export the Masters and then import them into iPhoto. But from experience, I find that the JPEG files from Aperture are of good quality and usable for many, many of the things I want to do with my pictures in iPhoto.

I love the integration between Aperture and iPhoto. Of course, a similar integration is available to other iLife and iWorks applications. This makes Aperture some sort of a gateway to all my projects which allows me to easily create various output right within Aperture, and just as easily, across many other different applications.