Q: Aperture to What?

I too, have a strong adversion to LR and I am dismayed with Apple for not upgrading and making me change!

Apple doesn't want you to convert to Photos. They just stopped making Aperture, I don't think they care what you choose to do.

I do not agree with the opinions here, that LR seems to be the "default" way to go after Aperture.

I spent a month comparing LR and C1 Pro (from Phase One) side by side, to give me a thorough overview of the strengths and weaknesses of both tools. I knew both LR and C1 already, LR from testing out previous versions here and there (never liked it) and C1 for being my default tool back in 2004 when it was in version 3.6 just before Apple released Aperture.

What I always liked about Aperture was its great interface, the very well designed database approach, which allowed for excellent scaleability, the overall ease of use in the quest to "replace the finder" and the great customisation options of the whole interface and workflow. I was a Aperture evangelist basically from day one. So that's what I was looking for in LR and C1 mainly.

After my tests, LR was just as bad to work with as it was with its first version back in 2007. You can not customise sh** for your workflow. You can not even adjust the keyboard shortcuts. You can not put the adjustment panels on the left side if you are left handed. It has never tried to replace the finder with a slick database, you are always forced to look after your files on the finder level on your own. It was always designed for one screen and one screen only, even if it later added multiscreen support. And its image quality, while it was maybe slightly better than Aperture, did not really blew me away.

C1 on the other hand has major shortcomings on the DAM side and is a much less solid database to work with. The interface is a bit weird, but at least it makes good use of screen real estate compared to LR. Image quality is top notch, it is absolutely stunning and second to none. Color editing and grading is pure joy. And what was one the major strong points for me: it has an even MORE customisable interface than Aperture. It actually allows you to create a floating window for every single adjustment panel there is (and there are a lot), put it anywhere you want it and then save the whole setup as a workspace. Adjusting the keyboard shortcuts allowed me to bring back my "muscle memory" from Aperture. And it has the same referenced or managed approach to handling your assets. You can throw all your images into the catalog and have it handle all the files in the background for you. So to my surprise, it was MUCH closer to Aperture after testing it than LR ever was, despite everybody talking about LR as the "obvious" migration path. Just not true.

Did you looking into Media Pro from Phase One. It is their photo management software

Media Pro is professional photo management software that makes it easy to manage your photo and video assets. Built to be fast and intuitive, it is a powerful photography assistant that will supercharge the way you find, organize, and share your images and videos wherever your files are stored.

https://www.phaseone.com/en/Imaging-Software/Media-Pro.aspx?

I used Media Pro together with C1 3.6 back in 2004, so I know it already. From what I've seen in the forums, there's not a lot of development from Phase One on Media Pro and the expectation was, that they are integrating its features into C1 and retire it as a standalone at one day. So that's why I did not put any time into using it.

Thank you for your post.  I have loved Aperture  and am dismayed by it's demise.  I too have tried LR, did not like it before Aperture was released, and am not happy with it now. 

I much appreciate your suggestion to try C1 Pro.

That is not what Phase One has to say about integrating the two applications. Their position is that by keeping them as to separate applications they are better able to serve their customer so they have no plans to do that.

Besides back in 2004 Media Pro was still a Microsoft product. It was not purchased by Phase One until 2010. So that would have had to be a really old version of this product. Media Pro 3.6 was in fact a prior version of the code release by iView prior to it being purchased by Microsoft

Ok, but I did not even give you my main reason for staying away from Media Pro: I hate using more than one application for one task, simple as that. I left this scenario in 2005, when Apple released Aperture 1.0.

Sorry about that. Personally after reading what Phase One has to say on that subject, I concur with them that there are advantages to going with applications that are specific to a purpose.

As soon as I get recovered from some medical problems, I plan to download demos of both Capture One and Media Pro to test them.

Allen - does Media Pro have a way to import from Aperture?  I guess the one thing C1 has is an attempt to simulate (or they say make better) actual Aperture adjustments, which is pretty cool.  The main thing about C1 that bother me, like the inability to select a parent folder and see all images within events contained by a parent folder.  I really dislike LR because it is so ugly and clumsy, but it does have the ability to view all images within a parent folder like Aperture.  C1 on the other hand has a beautifully designed interface. 

Thanks to you Allen, I took a closer look at Media Pro.  Taverner got me to take a closer look at Capture one which I downloaded.  For me Capture One's weakness is that it is not great at cataloging, however, that is what Media Pro is for.  The Phase One work flow is 1) Capture One for ingestion of photos, ratings and adjustments, and then 2) Media Pro for cataloging.  Although you can stay in Capture One for cataloging, Media Pro offers phenomenal cataloging capabilities.  It gives you the ability to view multiple photos from any parent folder in any hierarchy.  It offers a ton of ways to cross index your photos.  You do have to "move" photos from Capture One to Media Pro which adds another step.  Would be cool if both applications were rolled into one application...maybe that will happen one day as Taverner mentioned. 

In my opinion, the tools in Capture One and Media Pro are superior to Aperture and Lightroom.  And the software is absolutely beautiful and intuitive - dare I say more beautiful than Aperture.  The Capture One / Media Pro combination is a serious replacement for Aperture - it has everything and more.

A great explanation of the work flow is found in these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCvpoiXeRxk

That is my hope when I download the demos later this month, I hope.

From what I have seen in the vides, I could see that C1 and Media Pro are miles ahead of LR and just about anything else from Adobe. I did an extensive of both Aperture and LR/PS prior to deciding on Aperture. In addition as a condition of employment I was force to use Adobe software in all of its guises and hated it from the get go. The more I used it the less like it.

My own plan is somewhat similar. There is no practical way for me to migrate from Aperture to anything but Photos.app --- far too much metadata is lost (album/project relationships, etc).

Not to mention complete loss of thousands of image edits! Life is too short.

Indeed, even with migration to Photos.app I'm sure metadata is lost. Heck, when I went from iPhoto to Aperture I lost the notes I'd made on albums (never supported in Aperture).

Sure, Apple could have worked with Adobe to provide a tolerable migration path to LR, but they chose not to do that.

So my plan is:

1. Migrate one machine to El Capitan after next release and test my Aperture there. I assume it will work well enough but I need to do my own testing.

2. Stay on El Capitan for next 2 years.

3. Periodically use Aperture Exporter to create a reference/archival library that will be about as standards based as possible. I strongly recommend buying that application now. It's $20 Canadian direct from developer. This is a pittance. Given the nature of software development today you should assume AE will not be available in 12 months. So get a copy now if you want to be safe.)

4. Begin using Photos.app to "develop" my RAW images into JPEG but continue to use Aperture for image management. (I'm much more concerned about archival status than I am about future image edit excellence). I think over time Photos.app image editing tech will exceed what I can do in Aperture.

5. Somewhere around 2018 flatten all my keywords (I use Aperture's inheritance model queries -- which were too advanced for market really) and migrate to Photos.app 2018. Assuming Photos.app is still around in 2018.

It would be pleasant to switch to something other than Photos.app, but I don't think the prosumer photo market is very healthy. I wonder even about the future of Adobe Lightroom. I doubt we'll ever see anything with the image management power of Aperture in our lifetimes, but image editing/processing will continue to develop.

C1 has a built-in Aperture Importer, which not only transfers your whole library structure from Aperture (Projects, Folders etc.) and all metadata including keywords and ratings, it even tries to "translate" the Aperture adjustments settings into C1's settings, so that you do not have to re-edit every single image.

It's all described in basic here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IylO2Hxegkg

I would however recommend to split up a large Aperture library into smaller chunks, because the Importer seems to have trouble dealing with larger libraries. I was able to transfer my 30.000 image Aperture library over the span of roughly a Sunday morning that way.

That's very helpful. It moves C1 up on my list of alternatives. I won't be moving before 2018, so I'll get to see if it lasts that long. Modern software markets are brutal.