I have so far procrastinated to switch away from Aperture, but given that Catalina has been released today, this becomes, well, an urgent issue. If I wanted to use Photos in the future, can I update to Catalina first and then import my libraries? Or should I do that before updating? And does anyone have worthwhile experiences to share about the conversion process? E. g. what happens to stacks? And ratings?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Converting Aperture libraries and Catalina: possible?
- Thread starter OreoCookie
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You should be able to do it. Unless Photos in Catalina has changed anything, stacks are "unstacked," and if I remember reading it right, ratings are converted into keywords. (Either that, or it was a recommendation that I had read to manually indicate ratings with keywords in order to maintain some sort of rating system in Photos.)
For what it's worth, if you have Parallels and VMWare Fusion you could install a macOS 10.14 virtual machine and continue to use Aperture from within there... but having personally switched from Aperture to Capture One about a year ago (maybe two, at this point), I'd suggest doing yourself the favor of changing to a more modern program. It's painful to do, but it's worth it.
Also for what it's worth, I changed from Aperture to Photos before going to Capture One. Photos still lacks a lot of critical features, such as comparing two photos large side-by-side, or having a meaningful rating system besides "love." If you used Aperture as a glorified photo organization tool and little else then Photos will probably work fine for you. That's pretty much how I use it. But for photo ingestion and culling, as well as heavier adjustments, it doesn't cut it.
For what it's worth, if you have Parallels and VMWare Fusion you could install a macOS 10.14 virtual machine and continue to use Aperture from within there... but having personally switched from Aperture to Capture One about a year ago (maybe two, at this point), I'd suggest doing yourself the favor of changing to a more modern program. It's painful to do, but it's worth it.
Also for what it's worth, I changed from Aperture to Photos before going to Capture One. Photos still lacks a lot of critical features, such as comparing two photos large side-by-side, or having a meaningful rating system besides "love." If you used Aperture as a glorified photo organization tool and little else then Photos will probably work fine for you. That's pretty much how I use it. But for photo ingestion and culling, as well as heavier adjustments, it doesn't cut it.
Thanks. Yeah, I already know I won't be happy with Photos, but all the alternatives I have tried are also quite meh. It's sad to my old friend Aperture go, though … ?
OP wrote:
"I have so far procrastinated to switch away from Aperture, but given that Catalina has been released today, this becomes, well, an urgent issue."
No, it's NOT "urgent".
There's no compelling reason to "stampede into an upgrade" if you don't need to.
Have you considered buying an external SSD (you can get 500gb 2.5" SATA SSDs now for $40 or so), an external USB3 2.5" enclosure (about $9), and creating an EXTERNAL Catalina boot drive?
Then you can "move things over gradually", experiment, etc.
All "without touching" your current setup on the internal drive.
"I have so far procrastinated to switch away from Aperture, but given that Catalina has been released today, this becomes, well, an urgent issue."
No, it's NOT "urgent".
There's no compelling reason to "stampede into an upgrade" if you don't need to.
Have you considered buying an external SSD (you can get 500gb 2.5" SATA SSDs now for $40 or so), an external USB3 2.5" enclosure (about $9), and creating an EXTERNAL Catalina boot drive?
Then you can "move things over gradually", experiment, etc.
All "without touching" your current setup on the internal drive.