Alternatives to Aperture (What are your plans?)

[maflynn]

It has been obvious for two years that apple was winding down aperture,

It has, but yet I think many of us who like aperture were hoping...

Just look at iWork and how it languished untouched for years. Yet at looking at this situation through the lens of hindsight, it was clear I should have moved off Aperture a long time ago.

 

[initialsBB]

Someone on Twitter compared this to The West Wing's "take out the trash day" (imdb plot summary).
This is the Apple way I guess. They've got big plans for Photos.app but they're absolutely not going to tell us what those plans are until release date.

I use Aperture mostly for it's library management and I imagine that Aperture will keep running for the near future much like Final Cut Pro 7 still works on Mavericks for example. I don't like Lightroom's library management so that's not an alternative for now. I'll wait until the release of Photos and see what Apple has in mind and decide from there.

The main question I have for whatever migration out of Aperture is how to get metadata out. Photos is one thing, but how do Lightroom and consorts get access to keywords and GPS coordinates for example ?

 

[maflynn]

The main question I have for whatever migration out of Aperture is how to get metadata out. Photos is one thing, but how do Lightroom and consorts get access to keywords and GPS coordinates for example ?

Ii believe exporting the originals with the XMP sidecar will take care of some of the meta data, but not all. You also lose your edits as well.

 

[MCAsan]

This may be what Adobe will release....tools to read Apple libraries, move images files and side cars into LR catalog. You need to watch what Adobe does in the next few months.

 

[deirdre]

It has been obvious for two years that apple was winding down aperture, I switched a year ago and couldn't be happier.

As an ex-Apple employee, it was less obvious to me that this was so. And that's about all I can say on that point.

 

[HantaYo]

Switched months ago to CC Lightroom and Photoshop as well as OnOne perfect photo.. i tried out CaptureOne and DXo as well but they just did not measure up to Lightroom.

 

[irishv]

I imagine Photos as a hub, just a good Aperture-like DAM (keywords, stars, rejects, smart folders...) with the common adjustments (similar to what we see in Camera Raw) and some popular filters. From there, Nik, OnOne, DXO and others can develop apps to expand and enhance the core basic features

I'm really hoping this is the case. These are the features that brought me to Aperture (and have kept me using it). The demos and past ios experience doesn't look to good on this front though. The "advanced" searching capabilities mentioned in the demo were just date and location. No mention of keywords or other ITPC fields. Add that to the fact that the ios apps have never had the ability to rate isn't a great sign.

 

[akm3]

As an ex-Apple employee, it was less obvious to me that this was so. And that's about all I can say on that point.

I wish I knew how to interpret that.

It could mean you worked on the aperture team on aperture x and things were going great and you got axed

It could mean you worked on the "photos" team and we all have nothing to worry about it.

It could mean you see now that apple doesn't care about photos at all and to go ahead and jump ship asap.

It's impossible to know

 

[InfiniteLoopy]

The main question I have for whatever migration out of Aperture is how to get metadata out. Photos is one thing, but how do Lightroom and consorts get access to keywords and GPS coordinates for example ?

You can also write metadata to originals (though this modifies the original files and comes with the usual warnings).

As an ex-Apple employee, it was less obvious to me that this was so. And that's about all I can say on that point.

Care to elaborate on when you can say something at some point?

I'm really hoping this is the case. These are the features that brought me to Aperture (and have kept me using it). The demos and past ios experience doesn't look to good on this front though. The "advanced" searching capabilities mentioned in the demo were just date and location. No mention of keywords or other ITPC fields. Add that to the fact that the ios apps have never had the ability to rate isn't a great sign.

The demo was brief (I don't even remember Craig demoing a search). I wish Apple would have an "open beta" for power users of Photos.

I wish I knew how to interpret that.

It could mean you worked on the aperture team on aperture x and things were going great and you got axed

It could mean you worked on the "photos" team and we all have nothing to worry about it.

It could mean you see now that apple doesn't care about photos at all and to go ahead and jump ship asap.

It's impossible to know

Seconded.

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As an aside, anyone interested in collaborating on a "DAM for the rest of us"? I'm not a developer but could "we" build something?

 

[maflynn]

This may be what Adobe will release....tools to read Apple libraries, move images files and side cars into LR catalog. You need to watch what Adobe does in the next few months.

do you think that's feasible. Tbh, Aperture users are quite a minority at this stage, and now that the writing is on the wall, they will be migrating to an Aperture alternative, i.e., Lightroom. That being the case, there's really little motivation for adobe to release something that will help a small subset, since they'll be moving over to LR anyways.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for this to occur, but I wonder if it will happen.

 

[Ish]

Not happy about this at all. I'm disappointed that Apple is abandoning the apps that were pretty good (Pages, Aperture) and turning to mass market equivalents. I tried LR a while back and bought it when it was on offer but couldn't get into the workflow so it's been sitting there unused. I'm now using old software in the hope that the new ones will catch up enough to be useable, but how long I can do this I don't know.

Just as an aside, LR isn't a subscription app, you can buy it outright, same for Photoshop Elements.

 

[maflynn]

Just as an aside, LR isn't a subscription app, you can buy it outright, same for Photoshop Elements.

Agreed, but the link is buried in adobe's site - you'll need google it to find the link or grab it from amazon. Here's that url if anyone needs it
http://www.adobe.com/products/catal...er_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_mostpopular.html

I wonder how long it will be allowed to live as a stand alone product.

 

[initialsBB]

ApertureExpert.com has some interesting thoughts on this:

Aperture is Dead. Long Live Photos!

Comment Follow-up on the Demise of Aperture

 

[Frisco]

Is this going to make anyone switch to Windows?

What's best for Photographers and photography enthusiasts--Mac or PC?

 

[MCAsan]

Is this going to make anyone switch to Windows?

What's best for Photographers and photography enthusiasts--Mac or PC?

Windows? Not only no but hell no. LR and most plugins are available for both Mac and Windows. Changing DAMs from IPhoto/Aperture to LR has nothing to do with the underlying OS or lowest layer, the hardware.

As I remember, at least 50 % of the Nikon Mentors and Canon Explorers of Light I have been around in the past 4 years have had MBP in the field.

 

[Frisco]

Windows? Not only no but hell no. LR and most plugins are available for both Mac and Windows. Changing DAMs from IPhoto/Aperture to LR has nothing to do with the underlying OS or lowest layer, the hardware.

As I remember, at least 50 % of the Nikon Mentors and Canon Explorers of Light I have been around in the past 4 years have had MBP in the field.

Good to hear! Thanks.

 

[JDDavis]

ApertureExpert.com has some interesting thoughts on this:

Aperture is Dead. Long Live Photos!

Comment Follow-up on the Demise of Aperture

I like the glass half full thinking and some of the thoughts behind were Apple may be going with Photos. I'm not anti-Photo because it was the killer of my beloved Aperture. I hope it blows Ap away so I can stay in the "ecosystem". I hope a lot of these ideas come to fruition with Photos.

My two concerns remain editing and photo management.

As long as the iCloud is not the only option for storing and managing photos then that will be a plus. It shouldn't be. Obviously iTunes does not work that way and the cloud and your local storage work pretty well together. Just as I don't want every family members iPhone sharing every song I don't want to share all my photos automatically (that why we turned it off in iOS).

My biggest concern is the editing part. Photos might be a very powerful editor with some great and easy one button editing but I simply don't want my photos to look like every other person's photos who used Photos to edit them. I'm not a Photoshop power user but I also don't want to hit the "vintage" button and upload to Facebook. The current version of Ap with NIK plugins was right in my sweet spot of the level of effort I applied to post. Hopefully as Photos progresses there will be a lot of support for 3rd party plugins.

Lots more to come for sure. I'll be sticking with Ap for as long as I can or till the way forward with Photos becomes clear.

 

[JDDavis]

My glass half full comment reminded me of this

 

[Internaut]

My approach:

• Continue using Aperture, for the time being
• Evaluate Photo for OSX, when it appears
• If Photo supports what I need to do (especially organisation and local adjustments) then it may be good enough
• Otherwise, I hope makers of competing products produce migration tools.

Alternative approach I've considered: Screw you Apple! I'm buying a Surface Pro 3, and I'm moving over to Windows/Adobe.

 

[Killerbob]

I have used Aperture for years, have all my projects organised, and the recent ones synced to my iPads, on which I show my work. I have never used iPhoto, and though I do my serious editing in Lightroom and Photoshop, the entire workflow is in Aperture.

Now that Aperture is ending, I need to find a replacement. I have no faith in "Photos" as a viable alternative (and it's just vaporware right now), so what to do?

I can't use Lightroom, as the mobile version only syncs via their Cloud solution (I live in Greenland, and we actually pay pr. Gigabyte down/uploaded). So it needs to be an application where I can select individual folders and they are synced to the iPad when I sync in iTunes.

Using the iTunes application isn't the solution either. I can select folders to sync, but the folders do not expand like a tree. I have over 1K photo-folders, so keeping them in the root is not possible.

Suggestions

 

[maflynn]

Alternative approach I've considered: Screw you Apple! I'm buying a Surface Pro 3, and I'm moving over to Windows/Adobe.

That was a knee jerk reaction I had when the news hit the street

In all seriousness though, if I have to transition to a new app, I think I'm going to just give up on Apple and convert my images to LR. I need to work out the design and set up my images, i.e., directory structure. If LR doesn't work the way I want it too, then I may circle back on what will have. My long term confidence of apple supporting this app is a little low to be honest, where as LR is is something I can see Adobe not dropping.

 

[Internaut]

That was a knee jerk reaction I had when the news hit the street

In all seriousness though, if I have to transition to a new app, I think I'm going to just give up on Apple and convert my images to LR. I need to work out the design and set up my images, i.e., directory structure. If LR doesn't work the way I want it too, then I may circle back on what will have. My long term confidence of apple supporting this app is a little low to be honest, where as LR is is something I can see Adobe not dropping.

Well that's the real problem. First there was mobile me; I depended on this for a little offline storage (thankfully, a function replaced by DropBox) and also (thanks to iWeb), a simple (but smart) web page. Now Aperture is being dropped. Microsoft have never done anything like this to services I've depended on. Nor have Google (though for some, Google does have a little form, in the "Letting Users Down" department). It's an issue of trust.


That said, I hope the Photo app knocks my socks off (not optimistically hopeful, though).

 

[Meister]

I use Lr and Ps in the creative cloud.

 

[0970373]

Is this going to make anyone switch to Windows?

What's best for Photographers and photography enthusiasts--Mac or PC?

Switch entire eco systems because of 1 app? No way. Macs have always been creative-friendly. Aperture may be going away but Lightroom works on Macs. Most photographers use LR on Mac, actually. I don't know any photographers on PC, TBH. I'm sure they're out there but I personally don't know any. I can't think of any graphic designers on PC either now that I think about it.

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Nor have Google (though for some, Google does have a little form, in the "Letting Users Down" department).

RIP Google Reader

 

[robgendreau]

Lightroom is really the only alternative to Aperture. There's also Capture One though I haven't tried that.

Capture One Express might work; on sale too. And there's PhotoMechanic, although it's definitely a pro tool. As far as processing, there are also things like DxO Optic Pro.