Aperture Phase Out, Lightroom Migration?

I for one will want to see what Apple has to offer as a successor to the current photo apps, before deciding what to do.

Wise choice.

No need to go off half cocked without knowing precisely what Apple is offering first.

Sticking with Aperture for the intermediate term (months or even years) is the smart choice in my opinion. New DAM solutions from Apple, Corel, etc. are coming that deserve close evaluation.

One thing for sure is that I am moving away from Adobe solutions, not toward them. Quickly jumping to Adobe LR in my opinion would be a big mistake. And this is from someone who has used Photoshop since the early days and owns a full Master Collection of Adobe apps.

Note that Apple of course has the entire, stable existing Aperture code base. Although it is likely that Photos will be a dumbing-down of Aperture 3's capabilities to some extent, it is also likely that Photos will be a broadening of the capabilities of Aperture 3 to some extent.

Aperture is a big part of my professional life and any major changes in my workflow are always made over many months. I have plenty of time (years) to look at evolving alternative workflow solutions, experiment, and evolve my workflow accordingly.

Personally I have been a pro user and Aperture advocate since v1, but that does not mean I am necessarily opposed to an evolution to a new app.

-Allen

SierraDragon wrote:

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.

Those are reasons not to move but you missed the conjunction of "hedge bets."

It's not just a matter of whether you use Aperture or LR or Corel's Aftershot or DxO or Capture One or PhotoMechanic or lots of others. It's a matter of whether you are willing to commit part of your work to Aperture that is difficult to replicate elsewhere, i.e. edits. Although it can be work (in part because Aperture is particularly bad at exporting metadata, a reason to prefer others in itself) you can replicate organizational structure, keywords, etc in lots of other projects. But those edits? That's the bet I'd hedge.

It's a move, really, from reliance on one tool to an openness to many tools. I use Aperture, and decided it wasn't ideal. I started using LR, and I don't think it's ideal. I just bought Capture One Express, and it isn't ideal. Even the Mac OS isn't ideal.They are all tools that I use sometimes on photos, sometimes not. I even use different cameras and lenses. Why commit to one choice, the one that Apple supplies? As noted, superior solutions, sometimes not from Apple, are always around.

Hmm. Here's what ArsTechnica said, which was my source http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/06/apple-to-cease-development-support-of-pro-p hoto-app-aperture/ :

"Apple offered a statement directly to Ars Technica: "With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X.” In addition to telling users that iPhoto will be discontinued and rolled into the new Photos app, Apple also confirmed to Ars Technica that Aperture will be updated to ensure Yosemite compatibility, but users shouldn't expect any further development or updates beyond that."

So put 'em both together and I guess by "development" we're limited to Yosemite compatibility updates but no new features? That's what they mean by no "new" development (sort of an oxymoron, eh? they need a "new" spokesperson perhaps)?

I'm curious.

You all talk as if you have only one, latest model, Mac that runs Mavericks and in the future Yosemite.

None of you have several Macs and need your solution to work across machines?

Peter

I use a few machines. Your concern is justified, but consider that if you had a say a laptop that is running Aperture on an older system and that laptop can't be upgraded to Yosemite or whatever system Photos will require. You can continue to run Aperture on the old machine, but the libraries will sort of only flow one way (even now I believe updating libraries to the iPhoto/Aperture compatible models is a one-way trip). You'd just have to adjust how you work between machines, but the good news is that you'd have an older machine that could run current Aperture for a long long time. I have a G4 that I still use to serve up photos; perfectly useful. I used it to run Canvas, which I hope is still due to come back 😀

One of the features of Photos Apple touted was editing across at least a Yosemite machine and iOS devices. It may or may not work as slickly across older stuff. Apple is, after all, a hardware company and can only support stuff for so long. And even some functions on Aperture are just too slow now on my laptop so I avoid using it for much more than metadata.

Another concern arises if you shoot RAW. Apple provides RAW compatibility through the system; if you have an older system you may not get RAW support for a current camera (currently Apple doesn't even support some cameras that have been out for half a year, I hope this changes for Yosemite). Ditto for Adobe and others; they are faster at getting new RAW support out, but that may only work with newer versions of their software too. You might have to do RAW on one machine and export to another.

I agree. I, too, was troubled by the lack of information in Kelby's video. Their video was understandably a promotion.

But I had hope that our questions would be answered as was indicated by two of the hosts. Perhaps they were, but I can't find them.

I also was never contacted about winning a promotional item.

Yet, I've been contacted four times already by Kelby, Adobe, and two other vendors through the e-mail address I provided… Not impressed.

Hi

At this stage, my position is do not move past picture from Aperture to LR.

But I am evaluating the need to move to LR now for news RAW file.

It is a way to start immediately with the new LR logic without loosing adjustments.

Then wait for the conversion from Aperture library to LR5 later and keep both pgm during the intermediate phase

what do you think about this kind of behavior?

BR Richard

Richard GORRE wrote:

Hi

At this stage, my position is do not move past picture from Aperture to LR.

But I am evaluating the need to move to LR now for news RAW file.

It is a way to start immediately with the new LR logic without loosing adjustments.

Then wait for the conversion from Aperture library to LR5 later and keep both pgm during the intermediate phase

what do you think about this kind of behavior?

BR Richard

LR has a free demo, so no reason not to give it a try if you are interested. Always good to have options.

You can use both programs; they are not exclusive because both can work non-destructively. So your originals aren't changed. The programs can reference the same photos in the same location. Since both will be around for a while, it gives you plenty of time to compare. Start with new photos and you can worry about older ones later. Both programs can export edited photos that the other can work with. It may result in some duplication of effort, but even if you decide to drop one program or the other it will give you some ideas about workflow and how to move from one to the other.