Life after Aperture

... and soon there will be no reason for the Obama-marketing-campaign-MacPro anymore.

MacPro only for a handful Video- and Sound-editing users? I don't think so...

Thanks for the recommendation of Photo Supreme. While I preferred Aperture over Adobe's subscription model, it has become increasingly unworkable and unstable (corruption) for me. I wanted to use it mostly for organizing/tagging/metadata, and those tasks are too cumbersome (and haven't improved in the last updates).

I was just gearing up to buckle down and memorize keyboard commands when the news fell that Apple is killing Aperture and thus no longer interested in supporting prosumer photographers. My first thought was to just give up on software and dump everything into tagged files and nested folder structure. The Finder isn't the best DAM, but at least it's fully compatible, fast, and there are many tools to battle corruption.

But maybe that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so I'll be looking at Photo Supreme and others.

I'm just glad I never got around to importing all my older photos into Aperture! What wasted effort!

I had purchased Lightroom 3 a couple of years ago to give it a try and I liked it but the picture migration issues kept me from using it full time. I just upgraded to Lightroom 5.5 and migrated all my images with sidecar files to preserve most of the metadata. I'm not looking forward to re-editing 20K pictures so I'm just going to play around a bit until we see what migration plan Adobe comes up with. If it is something more comprehensive then I'll re-export my library at that time.

It seems Apple continues its decline in the post-Jobs era. Too bad.

troll

Thanks for the many great ideas! So far.

I suspect that many like myself who are not quite at the pro level, but who do a lot more than iPhoto or whatever the new thing apple comes out with can handle, will soldier along with aperture as it is for a number of years. Just because apple stops developing/supporting it doesn't mean it suddenly stops working. I suspect it will continue to work on future apple devices for many years to come. For instance, I can still use iMovie HD from iLife 06 on my current machine, and it works fine, and still has a better user interface and fuller feature set than its replacement.

Although switching to the non-managed files paradigm, in order to use LR concurrently with aperture is a really good idea, and one that I'll probably implement in the not very distant future.

I do hope that Adobe comes to their senses about this subscription model thing - it's just too expensive for just one app.

I'm not so certain that users will be able to keep Aperture running without direct support from Apple unless they are basically 'freezing' their OS level and camera gear as it is.

There are many 'gotchas' in intimately tying Aperture to the OS and the hardware.

For example, if you want to run Apple Remote Desktop or any other software and stay current, oftentimes the updates will require a fairly recent point release of MacOS, not just within a few versions. If Aperture won't run on a later release for whatever reason, you'd be stuck on an earlier version of MacOS and Apple Remote Desktop. This would not be the best situation for security fixes and vulnerability issues.

Also, Aperture itself required later Mac OS point updates just update itself, and camera RAW updates are intimately tied to Aperture as well. Obviously there is something new coming that is breaking compatibility with Aperture, otherwise they would have let it keep withering on the vine like they have for the last 4 years. I'm guessing it is lens corrections, but what happens if you get a new camera and it isn't supported by your old version of Camera RAW, and the new Camera RAW isn't compatible with your old Aperture?

Also, we all know that many recent point updates to Aperture did *something* to our libraries during the updates. Old versions of Aperture won't open newer (updated) libraries. So what happens when you update Photos.app and it says "updating libraries" and Aperture will no longer open your libraries?

As an aside, there is a lot of confusion going on about what Photos brings, and what Apple is intending for pro photographers. Given that Apple had years to decide what was going on, this type of communication from them is appalling, since they are one of the largest, most profitable and successful companies on the planet.

If you look at apertureexpert.com, he has a post on the discontinuation of Aperture. Interestingly enough, he said an Apple PR Rep phoned him to break the news... If someone at Apple has enough sympathy to phone a third party Aperture site operator, you'd think that they'd be more prepared to discuss the migration and features of the new product, Photos, and properly mollify the Aperture user base.

Cancelling Aperture is one thing entirely, and I respect Apple's decision to do so. But the way Apple has rolled this out is really poor. Someone has really screwed this up at the mothership.

As we think about post-Aperture life we all need to keep a sharp eye on data lock issues.

I started using iPhoto 2 11 years ago. At the time I new I was marrying Apple's photo management solutions [1]

iPhoto has longstanding problems. I knew of them when I started with iPhoto 2, but I took the gamble that the large user community, and the prominence of Apple's multimedia iLife suite, would pressure Apple to improve the product...

If you proceed with iPhoto, know the risks …

Data Lock - You can check in, but you can't check out.

You can export images -- though it's tricky to export both originals and modifications. You can't, however, migrate your albums, smart albums, comments, keywords, captions, etc. etc. I thought iView MediaPro would take advantage of this and sell and import utility, but they haven't. So when you use iPhoto, you marry iPhoto…

Ten years later I made an excruciating transition from iPhoto, which had stalled and was becoming less useful for me, to Aperture [2]. I knew my commitment to Apple's photo management was deepening.

Now I've hit the end of the road - it's abundantly clear that Photos.app will be iPhoto-lite.

I'll keep Aperture running for several years, but that will mean no new cameras (RAW support issues) and a very slow migration to Yosemite - or a stay with Mavericks. If there are Aperture issues on Yosemite it means no new Apple hardware (since it will come with Yosemite).

In the meantime the options are not good. Lightroom is the only similar product on the OS X platform -- so commitment there means complete data lock with no options. Will Adobe still be in business five years from now? What will Adobe do with Lightroom pricing? Their future is far less certain than even Microsoft's.

This is going to take serious consideration. 11 years ago I wrote: "take a close look at iView MediaPro -- though that's a risky choice too (small market, hard for vendor to compete against iLife)." Indeed! iView Media Pro was acquired by Microsoft in 2006, sold again in 2010 and then turned into Phase One Media Pro (still sold). A turbulent history indeed.

There are no easy answers here -- and lots of implications all of Apple's customers. Indeed, for all users of software of any sort. Strange times.

[1] http://notes.kateva.org/2014/06/apple-kills-aperture-observations.html (footnote)

[2] http://tech.kateva.org/2012/03/iphoto-8-to-aperture-3-migration-notes.html If I'd waited another six months the transition would have been far easier. Who knew?

From what I understand flight room is not subscription.

Now I've hit the end of the road - it's abundantly clear that Photos.app will be iPhoto-lite.

Clear to who?

http://www.dslrbodies.com/accessories/software-for-nikon-dslrs/software-news/ano ther-one-bites-the-dust.html

ApertureExpert agrees with you: http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2014/6/27/aperture-dead-long-live-photos#.U67 ta5R4YSR.

I should have written "I believe ... Photos.app will be iPhoto-lite". If it is otherwise that will be a big change from Apple's recent directions -- and it will take years to get to a reliable solution -- probably 2017 based on Apple's history with FinalCut Pro X and the fact that this is a far bigger jump than the Final Cut (trying to span user bases with one app, cloud, etc).

I'm surprised MediaPro hasn't put out a press release or a blog post on the transition. What was it like to go through the iView Media Pro transition from 2005-2010?

Just to be clear, Capture One 7 (Pro and Express) is more like lightroom and Aperture. iView Media Pro is a cataloging asset management program. Both are owned by Phase One, and both are 50% off until the end of this month. I have no affiliation with them other than buying C1 pro 7 yesterday as a result of the Aperure announcment. The products are cross platform and multi user (license at least) capable. I hear they can be buggy as well but I decided to try it out. The other program that may fill in for Aperture is DxO optics, although I don't know much about it.

If you have a very recent Canon camera, the latest DPP 4 is supposed to be good as well but only 3 or 4 models are supported.

Slightly dated (LR4) but pretty relevant:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/8219582047/raw-converter-showdown-capture-one-p ro-7-dxo-optics-pro-8-and-lightroom-4

This whole situation makes me feel literally sick to my stomach. I have invested so much time and effort into Aperture and now that they're discontinuing such my trust in Apple has been severely compromised. It's sad that us designers and developers who were the ones who supported Apple during their transition to OSX could be so easily discarded. I think I am in shock.

Apple has no sustainable policy with its software. Cuts are made easy.

I do not want to go on a subscription system that will come with some providers.

Today I bought Capture Pro and change there.

That was it.

I am also headed towards Capture One. What we all were waiting for was improved tools, what we got was SW churn and migration churn. Maybe the improved tools will show up - likely, we will not be interested anymore.