Aperture Phase Out, Lightroom Migration?

You're not wrong.

" For a library of thousands of photos, that would mean throwing away months and months of work that could never be duplicated."

You do not need to throw away anything ... Apple has stated that they will support Aperture at least through Yosemite ... that means Aperture will work just fine for a bare minimum of 1.5-2 years ... (much longer if you don't feel compelled to update your OS beyond that).

Apple has also indicated that all your hard work performed in Aperture can be transitioned to the new Photos app ... So why not stick with Aperture just a bit longer? You have nothing to lose by waiting a bit. If the Photos app will fill your needs, no script from Adobe is going to be as easy or painless than what Apple may have to offer.

If, at that point in time, what Apple ends up offering isn't acceptable for your needs ... Lightroom will still be there ... so will any options to make the move easier if they ever materialize.

Either way, if you wait, it will cost you much less in both money for the investment in new software and the training on how to use it.

BruceM, I doubt that new "Photos" is intended for nor designed for high-level photo work even at the so-called "pro-sumer" level. It may well be a great tool for the majority of Macintosh customers, but it is unlikely to be suitable for people that shoot in RAW format and do significant post-processing work. It is improbable that a one-size fits-all Swiss army knife will work for the high end, much as Final Cut Pro users are unlikely to find iMovie suitable.

Perhaps you should read around more on the subject:

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

https://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2014/6/28/comment-follow-demise-aperture

https://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2014/6/30/closer-look-photos-adjustments-bar

maybe the change won't be as radical as you fear.

In fairness, Aperture has never been able to do everything ... even if you use Lightroom, there will still be times when you must resort to Photoshop or plugins to finish the job. Not to mention how abysmal the Slideshow and Book moles are compared to Aperture (those are two of the main reasons I left Lightroom to work full time in Aperture)

I was merely pointing out there is little potential loss in waiting a bit before making the move and a distinct possibility that you can retain all that hard work you invested in your RAW images.

I know over my 39 years in the business, I have just shy of 16TB of RAW images since I bought my first DSLR in 2000 ... I'm content with giving Apple the benefit of the doubt ...but only for a little while longer ...

No reason not to hedge bets and make a move now. Even if the speculation that Photo can recreate your Aperture edits is true, you might not like the WAY it does it. Or other features. Or maybe you've got a new camera and Apple is behind on RAW (like mine). Or maybe you just don't wanna have all your photo edits in one basket.

I doubt anyone is gonna come up with an acceptable tool to import edits. We would have seen that already. But how often are you going back to those edits in Aperture? as opposed to re-editing? Even with some of my old photoshopped stuff and whatnot, and even though I have the tools to do so, some of the newer editing software is so good it's better to start over from the original anyway. And as noted, Aperture will be around for that. My copy is, even though I abandoned it quite a while ago. It's just an old tool you keep around.

So one strategy is that only new imports go into LR (although there are other choices). If you need a bunch of older stuff, you transition that. Otherwise you leave things be. In that situation, if I needed edits and/or embedded metadata, I'd export TIFFs into the finder folder where the masters were, writing metadata to xmp and/or jpgs as appropriate, and import into LR. Note that Aperture is still referenced those and can still find them. So you can either work forward from the TIFF, or redo the edits on the original.

What would be super useful IMHO would be a tool to export the metadata into jpgs and into XMPs for RAWs WITHOUT having to export. You wouldn't get edits, but location info, keywording, captioning, etc would be very very nice to have.

And that brings me to structure. The LR analogue to projects/albums/folders are collections and collection sets. How to replicate that for an existing group of folders, since it doesn't import? (Because LR just mirrors your filesystem folders, it's "import" (almost more like "show") function has no "import folders as projects" kind of deal.) For this I used keywords, since they can be hierarchical, and can be written into the files.

So you when you export a project/album like "2014 Wedding Project/Ceremony Album" you keyword all the photos with that (in LR 2014 wedding project>ceremony album). That way you can find that structure in that form even if it was stored in a finder folder called ~/Pictures/Family Photos. And in LR it's easy to turn a filtered selection into a collection, or use a smart collection. This way you can preserve some of the structure you're used to seeing in Aperture in the LR collection set/collection tab. And if later synchronize another edit or metadata (a very handy tool for use on folders within LR), it can bring up updated metadata and import new files. And if they have the same keywords, you could use a smart collection based on those keywords to replicate "2014 Wedding Project" or whatever.

No reason not to hedge bets and make a move now. Even if the speculation that Photo can recreate your Aperture edits is true, you might not like the WAY it does it. Or other features. Or maybe you've got a new camera and Apple is behind on RAW (like mine). Or maybe you just don't wanna have all your photo edits in one basket.

And the opposite is true...you might like the way it works, you may prefer it... y

No problem ... as someone who came from Lightroom to Aperture ... I can warn you that the grass isn't any greener on either side of the fence.

I only responded when I read your concern for losing all the edits you invested in your Aperture Library. I can relate.

For me, I left Lightroom for good reasons. Adobe has still not addressed those concerns and is not likely ever to do so. If on Thursday past, there was no compelling reason to move to another solution, nothing has changed since then to warrant a move.

Kelby and Koslowski cover all the details of migrating in the rebroadcast of their webinar.

http://kelbyone.com/aperture-to-lightroom/

But you still HAVE Aperture, and will for quite a while. Even if you had to export a year's worth of TIFFs, it can still be done. Or use automation tools and presets in one of the many Aperture alternatives to edit the originals. Yeah, it's substantially more work, but not the end of the world. I dunno what kind of work you do, but odds are that you may not need the edits stored in Aperture as much as the TIFFs generated from them. You probably stopped editing that image because it was done; you have a "print" you're satisfied with. And with storage cheap, generating a ton of TIFFs isn't that problematic from a storage and organizing point of view. I had a friend who had all his prints burn in the Oakland Fire; he had negs and had to reprint all that. THAT's a disaster, and actually pales in comparison to losing the negs. You've still got those, so take heart.

But having said that, to say as ButchM did that nothing has changed to warrant a move is contradicted by all the angst we see around us here. Even if Aperture (a program that was aging before it was axed, BTW) continues to run for even a couple of years do you really want to commit more and more edits to it? Of course not; no sane person commits data exclusively to a program that is dead. That doesn't mean you can't run stuff through it, however, for a while to come. But you WILL have to move. The ONLY question is to what? Some apparently trust in an announced option that won't be available until well into next year, with no guarantee (and I use that word very deliberately, since Apple could have used it) that your edits will be available in it the new program. I would prefer to trust in something that works now, and have a plan B for its demise as well.

If you watched the session all the way through you would have heard Scott Kelby recommend NOT to use, NEVER to use tiffs but instead to export a high quality JPEG of your edited photos (the ones worth keeping) He says very clearly that he does not consider it worth the storage space to save TIFFS.

There is a way to export projects into a folder structure that follows, details are here. You only get two levels, but hey, it's way better than nothing and probably is enough for most of us. How to relocate masters and maintain project structure?

However the Kelby One tutorial is clearly more of a promotion than a tutorial. For example Matt tells us to save our Aperture library as a backup but doesn't go on to say make sure you have the hardware and software that can open it! They also don't ever announce clearly that the exported 'version' will not be linked with it's master after they are both in Lightroom.

And they didn't say anything about the possibilities of the new Photos app in Yosemite... how useful/powerful it might be. They just say that iPhoto and Aperture will no longer supported, without saying that current versions will continue to run in Yosemite and we don't have to all panic and run out and buy Lightroom and make the conversion immediately.

I'm going to continue working with Aperture and my many thousands of images until there is a good reason to switch.. like it won't run. 🙂 In the meantime I will work at cleaning up the library, getting projects and folders organized ready for a conversion when absolutely necessary. I have used both programs and much prefer the organization and interface within Aperture. I am working with a large managed library and I guess first step will be to gradually convert to a referenced system of storage.

Rob Gendreau wrote:

No reason not to hedge bets and make a move now.

Not true. Thee are major reasons not to make a move now:

• Stopping future development does not cease the Aperture app. Aperture will run solidly on Mavericks for many years, and Yosemite has not even been released yet. Pro users usually wait for year or two before moving to a brand new OS anyway.

• Anyone using Aperture already decided LR was not ideal. Why move to a known less-than-ideal solution?

• Lots is happening in image capture, editing and management right now. New, often superior, solutions are coming out.

Why anyone with a current Aperture workflow would move to LR instead of first waiting to see what Apple Photos, Corel's new app, etc. look like makes no sense.