Moving Aperture to Photos

[gryphon69]

Hi

As a Mac user all my life and a Pentax amateur photographer, I am looking for some help in importing my many old Aperture libraries into my Apple Photos app.

As my old iMac (2008) died a year ago I only now have my MacBook Pro (2007) where my Aperture program still works, although very slowly, my plan is to buy a new 27+inch iMac or the next 16inch MacBook Pro at end of year or early next.



Should I merge all my libraries and move them into Photos now, or wait until I get my new equipment ?



What is the best way to move everything to the Photos app ?



I, as many, was really sad when Apple discontinued the Aperture program, for me it was the best program Apple ever did, with great editing software and the best dam module I have seen.



I will probably use Photos first, but in future with better hardware I will look into getting a more professional program for my photos, but no Adobe or monthly plan.



Looking forward for some input.

 

[mmkerc]

the only thing I remember from when I did the conversion is it took a damn long time (~89k photos) to the point I stopped it and just imported in the original native files. I then identified files I edited, exported them to a folder, then imported into Photos. This was a brute force approach and required considerable time on my end to sort through all the files. Good thing is I now sort, and categorize, and trash unwanted photos as I take them.

I agree entirely with your comments about Aperture, it was a great program. Now I use a mix of Photos, Luminar, Focus 2, Tonality, Noiseless and Intensify. I have not used Darkroom yet.

 

[Slartibart]

What is the best way to move everything to the Photos app ?

I suggest looking at this and follow the advice given and then migrate your photos.

I, as many, was really sad when Apple discontinued the Aperture program, for me it was the best program Apple ever did, with great editing software and the best dam module I have seen.

The former Aperture-team leader is the developer of RAWPower which might help ease the pain 🤓. Highly recommended!

I will probably use Photos first, but in future with better hardware I will look into getting a more professional program for my photos, but no Adobe or monthly plan.

RAWPower and as a PS substitute Affinity Photo and/or Pixelmator Pro.

 

[gryphon69]

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

 

[Fishrrman]

There is also a "pay for" utility out there called "Aperture Exporter".
I really don't have any experience with it, other than trying it "in demo mode".
But might be worth looking into.

 

[jz0309]

I had to move from Aperture 2 or 3 years ago because it crashed on me and despite having backups I could not restore it. I had stored my photos (I think it was ~ 65k at the time) in a managed library, had keywords, face recognition and what not. It was a major p.i.t.a. to get the photos out of the library but I think io got them all and decided to put it into a simple file folder structure (year/month for the most part). I decided that I will never ever let a tool manage my originals anymore and to the beat of my knowledge, Photos does that.
There are multiple tools out there, some mentioned already. Me personally, I decided on Lightroom as I found it the best alternative to Aperture, and photography is one of my hobbies so paying $10/month seems reasonable to me but obviously others feel different.
My recommendation is to get your photos out of the Aperture library(ies) into the filesystem, really look at your needs and decide which SW to use moving forward, and then, when you have new HW, move your photos to your new SW. Migrating from Aperture to Photos and then migrate to something else does not feel like a good investment of time, for me at least, YMMV

 

[gryphon69]

I follow you thinking, I was contemplating just moving everything to Photos, the make a new beginning with other software, Dam + Editing tool, editing, I like Afinity, I also have Luminar, but they change there software all the time and it has to many gimmicks for me, like changing the sky, which gives a bad taste in my mouth, for me that is not editing;-)
The Dam part looks more difficult, one that look very comprehensive is PhotoMechanic, but probably total overkill!

 

[jz0309]

I follow you thinking, I was contemplating just moving everything to Photos, the make a new beginning with other software, Dam + Editing tool, editing, I like Afinity, I also have Luminar, but they change there software all the time and it has to many gimmicks for me, like changing the sky, which gives a bad taste in my mouth, for me that is not editing;-)
The Dam part looks more difficult, one that look very comprehensive is PhotoMechanic, but probably total overkill!

Think about what YOU want/need, how many photos do you actually have?
The way I have LR setup is that all my originals (RAWs, jpeg, TIFF, mov ...) reside on an external SSD, the LR index is on the internal SSD and I have single collection or whatever it is called - that gives me the ability to browse through thousands of photos within seconds, no need to switch libraries etc. My originals take up ~ 650GB and the LR index ~ 165GB currently. I am happy with what I have and I am not trying to steer you in any direction, simply sharing my experience.

 

[gryphon69]

Thanks for all the replies, now excuse my ignorance, but I can let Photos open a Aperture library, it then uses a long time to prepare the library before opening, I tried than with one small Aperture Library I have and it looks beautiful in photos with all the folder structure intact!!!
Is possible to do this, then merge it into the original Photos library I use normally?

Looks too easy to be true !

looking forward to your thoughts

 

[Hunter5117]

When I was using Aperture (I still miss it) I was keeping all my photos in external folders aka referenced files not a managed library. When the time came to go over to Photos I just imported those external folders into Photos in the relatively normal way. Took a good long time and then even longer when I copied them all to iCloud.

Now Photos manages everything in the managed libraries and I can not say I am as happy about that as I was when using Aperture. Even though I can drill down into the Photos library and see the actual files it does not make me feel as good about my files as when I was actively managing them all myself.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I can let Photos open a Aperture library, it then uses a long time to prepare the library before opening, I tried than with one small Aperture Library I have and it looks beautiful in photos with all the folder structure intact!!!"

Sometimes "doing it a little bit at a time" works, when trying to do it all at once (or in chunks that are too large) does not.

That may become your pathway towards success insofar as migration goes...