Aperture Users - Beware! Corrupted edits!

[AndreUK]

For the few remaining diehards still using Aperture, I just thought I'd make you aware of an issue that I came across very recently.

I am now experiencing this problem (I'm running Aperture 3.6 with OsX El Capitan 10.11.6)...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7549320?start=0&tstart=0

I noticed that several of my newly edited images were displaying correctly in editing mode, but in thumbnails and all image exports the straightening / rotation was well off, as well as some smudging and artefacts becoming visible when using the undo tool in association with straighten and crop. It appears that this occurs with images that you straighten and apply either curves or levels to (bizarrely if you use "auto-enhance" first then tweak the edits, Aperture applies the correct straightening).

Fortunately this only appears to effect new versions and edits, but don't quote me on that. My greatest worry is that corrupted, bugged edits might now start effecting my existing 7000+ images, resulting hours and hours of work just going down the drain. I think I'm just going to have to accept the fact that I can not trust Aperture with any images anymore (a sad day), and export my stuff into something else asap.

I used to shoot RAW exclusively, but now shoot mainly jpg as Fuji's jpg's are so good they only need minor tweaks in post. I think my plan will be to move to Lightroom (no surprise there) but export my favourite jpg's from there into albums on Apples Photos (for synchronisation, AppleTV viewing and iCloud sharing purposes).

 

[ppenn]

I had no idea you could use aperture on el cap...how? When I updated it removed it from my system and can not be installed from the app store.

 

[Clix Pix]

Removing it from your system was an unfortunate move, as now you cannot retrieve it again. I have never removed it from my machines and have simply continued to use it through the various iterations of the OS......

 

[Serge88]

I'm running Aperture 3.6 with El Capitan and I couldn't reproduced your problem. I tried Straighten, Curves and Export version.

 

[Porsupah]

Hm! I'll try to remember to attempt replicating that at home, under Sierra.

There are still devs in the mothership who care about Aperture, though - several months back, I reported a bug that prevented previews being generated, following an OS update, which thankfully turned out to be a one-off glitch. Soon after, I received a request from Apple for more info, if it was still happening.

 

[AndreUK]

I never noticed it before, it may well have just started doing it now on my system (probably after meeting a set of conditions). Initially I thought I was doing something wrong, I was trying to straighten a picture of my daughter sitting on some steps with redbrick either side of her. Thought I was going bonkers, until I came across another thread describing exactly the same issue. Whatever I did, the straighten wouldn't "stick" for export, until I removed the curves / levels adjustments. It was enough to scare me into seriously making the transition to an alternative.

Am trying to get used to Lightroom at the moment and finding it very limiting: no skin tone setting on white balance, no way to switch between RGB and luminance in curves, can't apply more than one curves adjustment to an image, odd implementation of "levels". And the whole interface feels 20 years old, clunky. Oh well.

 

[davybe]

I never noticed it before, it may well have just started doing it now on my system (probably after meeting a set of conditions). Initially I thought I was doing something wrong, I was trying to straighten a picture of my daughter sitting on some steps with redbrick either side of her. Thought I was going bonkers, until I came across another thread describing exactly the same issue. Whatever I did, the straighten wouldn't "stick" for export, until I removed the curves / levels adjustments. It was enough to scare me into seriously making the transition to an alternative.

Am trying to get used to Lightroom at the moment and finding it very limiting: no skin tone setting on white balance, no way to switch between RGB and luminance in curves, can't apply more than one curves adjustment to an image, odd implementation of "levels". And the whole interface feels 20 years old, clunky. Oh well.

I suggest you give thoughts to Capture One. I too love and use Aperture where my legacy still lives, but anything in the last 2 years lives in Capture One and although expensive, I've grown to love it for its tools and image quality. It is undoubtedly very superior to Aperture for editing and has very powerful and subtle things, even if the DAM part is a little less easy to use than Aperture but not much less powerful. It's also cross platform, great at tethering, automation,etc. etc.

 

[AndreUK]

I suggest you give thoughts to Capture One. I too love and use Aperture where my legacy still lives, but anything in the last 2 years lives in Capture One and although expensive, I've grown to love it for its tools and image quality. It is undoubtedly very superior to Aperture for editing and has very powerful and subtle things, even if the DAM part is a little less easy to use than Aperture but not much less powerful. It's also cross platform, great at tethering, automation,etc. etc.

I'm in danger of starting another "Aperture vs Lightroom" debate, which I don't mean to. My photography is very much in the hobbyist / enthusiast category. I had a couple of pictures published quite some time back, but then that was quite some time ago when I was shooting mainly Nikon Raw, but now, time constraints and my dislike of spending hours fidling with sliders have found me shooting far far more with my Fuji X100T, in jpeg!!!. I figured sinking the equivalent of approx £290 ($360) for Capture One Pro was asking quite a lot for a hobbyist and instead I thought I really ought to give the "industry standard" Lightroom a fair try. But I'm not warming Lightroom for all the reasons already discussed, so maybe Capture One Pro, as you say, is the answer (all be it a rather expensive one!!).

...in the end I suppose it's apples vs oranges.

 

[davybe]

I'm in danger of starting another "Aperture vs Lightroom" debate, which I don't mean to. My photography is very much in the hobbyist / enthusiast category. I had a couple of pictures published quite some time back, but then that was quite some time ago when I was shooting mainly Nikon Raw, but now, time constraints and my dislike of spending hours fidling with sliders have found me shooting far far more with my Fuji X100T, in jpeg!!!. I figured sinking the equivalent of approx £290 ($360) for Capture One Pro was asking quite a lot for a hobbyist and instead I thought I really ought to give the "industry standard" Lightroom a fair try. But I'm not warming Lightroom for all the reasons already discussed, so maybe Capture One Pro, as you say, is the answer (all be it a rather expensive one!!).

...in the end I suppose it's apples vs oranges.

AndreUK, interesting how you morphed your shooting but there is nothing wrong with JPEGs, in particular those of Fuji! And it's true: adjusting many pictures is annoying; the whole debate of how far you push your photography when like us we aren't pros. If you're tired of sliders, why not Photos then? ;-) And for more careful shoots, you can still develop the RAWs whereaver you want and use Photos for your 'finished' pictures (plus the casual ones that inevitably arrive via iPhone shooting). More and more I advocate for a 2-prong workflow: RAW with what you want per shoot (one old shoot in Aperture, one careful shoot in Capture One, 1 shoot bypassed cause it's in JPEG...) and then push all results to Photos used as DAM, sharing, Cloud, books etc. Cheers

 

[Serge88]

I used Lightroom 4 for many years but when I got a new Canon camera, it wasn't support so I moved back to Aperture.

 

[MCAsan]

The problem would have been the same with Adobe ACR, it is not just. Anytime you purchase a camera that was just introduced you may have to wait for a couple of months before Adobe, Apple, DxO, and Phoase1 introduce their raw conversion update that supports that camera. Nothing new in that. I am waiting for my camera to be fully supported; it will likely be the end of February before I see full support for both raw file formats. That is the price we pay for being on the bleeding edge.


What are you Aperture uses going to do when it will not work on the next MacOS release? Just hold on to the old release until the machine dies and you have to get a new Mac with new MacOS....and then move to another DAM/editor? Of course, you choice.

 

[AndreUK]

More and more I advocate for a 2-prong workflow: RAW with what you want per shoot (one old shoot in Aperture, one careful shoot in Capture One, 1 shoot bypassed cause it's in JPEG...) and then push all results to Photos used as DAM, sharing, Cloud, books etc. Cheers

Thanks for the response. This is almost what I am doing, or aim to do anyhow... anything from a dedicated camera (i.e. not iPhone snapshots) goes straight into a higher level photo management / editing tool, e.g. Lightroom, Capture One etc, regardless whether it was shot in RAW or jpeg. Images are developed / tweaked as desired and then exported directly into Photos as "Best of" Albums, which works really well for sharing, AppleTV, Cloud, cards and books as you point out.

It's a shame Photos isn't slightly better. It's not all that bad, it's just lacking several essential features to some extent on the DAM side but mainly on the editing side (we all know what they are) and it's for similar reasons I always used Aperture rather than iPhoto. I hope that Apple continue to work heavily on improving Photos core feature set and not just relying on third party extensions to fill the gaps. But, at the moment, using Photos just as basic DAM / sharing / viewing platform is a decent compromise.

Also on your advice, I may take a good look at Capture One Pro. Many many years back, I used Capture One LE for a period of time, so am familiar with the quality of the product. From what I've read Capture One is making strides to become more enthusiast friendly, and not just aimed at top end studio photographers using digital backs and tethered shoots.

 

[MCAsan]

Yesterday Macphun had a new release of Luminar that added new cameras. The same for On1's Photo RAW.

 

[smirking]

I'll add my vote for Capture One Pro. It's one of the programs that has an Aperture-like feel to it and it's able to do a good job importing Aperture libraries. You won't get all of your adjustments and edits, but it'll transfer your album, tags, and metadata faithfully.

Until a couple of months ago, I too was a remaining Aperture 3.6 user and I hadn't had the issues outlined by the AndreUK. I've been following a very long Aperture 3.6 thread in the Apple support forums for people who are hanging onto Aperture and upgrading their OS. It appears that everyone is having a different experience in whether Aperture is usable or not after they upgrade.

I was using it fine on El Capitan. I've played with it a little in Sierra, but I also adopted Capture One Pro with my upgrade to Sierra. As far as I can tell, it's working just fine for me and I haven't noticed any issues with corrupted image files. I'm also impressed that the speed performance is actually quite good in Sierra and my new 15" MBP. It's far snappier than Capture One Pro.

Aperture was a gem. It's too bad that it was dropped, but Capture One Pro is a very good replacement if you're serious about your photography.

I also tried Corel AfterShot Pro 3, Alien Skin Exposure X2, Lightroom, and a whole bunch of other lesser known photo editing suites and Capture One Pro had the best set of features combined with good usability... not quite Aperture level of usability, but better than most.

Corel After Shot Pro 3 would be the one that's the closest to being Aperture without being Aperture, but it has a HORRIBLE image renderer. All your colors come out wrong and it makes all of your images look like crap when you export them.

 

[ZapNZs]

Removing it from your system was an unfortunate move, as now you cannot retrieve it again. I have never removed it from my machines and have simply continued to use it through the various iterations of the OS......

Is this recent? I use it on El Capitan and Sierra (along with iPhoto), and I would frequently download it from the App Store for new VMs I created with the standard fresh installer, and have not had any issues. With that said, I think the last time I did this was maybe 4-5 months ago. Has it changed since?

 

[Clix Pix]

I think I may have misspoken...... As far as I know, yes, if one has already purchased Aperture in the past then one can still download again from the App store; I did that as recently as August or September, the last time I bought a new machine. I've been using Aperture since the very beginning and am really reluctant to let go of it! I suppose if we really won't be able to use it with the next version of the OS I will have to bite the bullet and do something....

 

[swandy]

Aperture stopped being "supported" a few years back, however it will "run" on the newest OS. I am running Sierra and I can still open and work with my Aperture library. Never had the issue of the OP about "corrupted edits", though I will admit I have not done a lot of editing in it since it was "discontinued".
I am one who actually to Photos, and to be honest, between the controls in the program itself and the ability through Extensions to add other programs, I have been very happy with the results. Do I wish it had certain things I missed from Aperture (and then Lightroom), sure, but at least for me I can work around the shortcomings.

 

[nicholasg]

Aperture stopped being "supported" a few years back, however it will "run" on the newest OS. I am running Sierra and I can still open and work with my Aperture library. Never had the issue of the OP about "corrupted edits", though I will admit I have not done a lot of editing in it since it was "discontinued".
I am one who actually to Photos, and to be honest, between the controls in the program itself and the ability through Extensions to add other programs, I have been very happy with the results. Do I wish it had certain things I missed from Aperture (and then Lightroom), sure, but at least for me I can work around the shortcomings.

Do you mind sharing the Extensions you use?

Thanks,
Nicholas

 

[Ted13]

I am one who actually to Photos, and to be honest, between the controls in the program itself and the ability through Extensions to add other programs, I have been very happy with the results. Do I wish it had certain things I missed from Aperture (and then Lightroom), sure, but at least for me I can work around the shortcomings.

Do you mind sharing the Extensions you use?

Indeed: please do let us know about Extensions!