Apple is right to let Aperture go

All good points.

Dunno about Apple's fiscal gain/loss from Aperture, but they need a more powerful organizer/editor/cloud storage solution for regular non photo geeks. Time was only some DSLR shooting pro or prosumer had tens of gigs of photos. Now some 14 yr old with an iPhone does. And his are probably much more disordered than the pro or hobbyist. And the kid is also using some high powered app oriented filtering and editing apps, and sharing over all kinds of cloud solutions. Egad. Way more difficult problem and no one has yet sorted it. You go Apple. Meanwhile, there a lots of Aperture alternatives (yeah, you may not like the details but they really aren't that different. Change is hard.)

But I totally lost you on the tags thing. It's here now, and has been long before Mavericks tags and even before open meta tags: image files are very cool in that not only do they INCLUDE metadata keywords, but have structures for caption, copyright, location, etc etc etc. in IPTC and exif. And this can carry over to XMP sidecar files. And it's in a universal formula: even computers in your camera can read and write it. Mavericks tags are total losers by comparison; they are in extended attributes and don't even carry over past OS X. Fail.

And photo metadata is already indexed by Spotlight. TONS of it. Try this: open up a Spotlight window (like when you search in the menubar, then hit "Show All in Finder." Once it's open, erase the Search for: field. Hit the little plus button, and then you get a another line with like "kind is" or something. Change it to "other..." and then have a look at all the photo (and media) metadata Spotlight already searches. You can select say "Focal length" and "less than" and put in 3 and get all your photos with f stops less than that. Or use "keywords" and get the keywords you wrote in with LR. Or even all photos above a certain latitude. It goes on and on. Way better than Mavericks. But hey, I use mav tags a lot too: so you search for both say a mavericks tag like "wedding" and a keyword like "wedding" (it would be OR in the search) and you'd have both say the wedding calendar events you tagged and the photos keyworded with wedding. Cool, no?

BTW, HoudahSpot makes this way easier.

And unfortunately it's not likely that edits can be traded like this. Moving a contrast slider in Pixelmator or even developing a RAW is peculiar to each app; it's not like adding ASCII text. Apple would have to make a tool like "contrast" that everyone would agree to use instead of their own. It may work for some stuff, but you're still gonna have proprietary edits just like your have Numbers and Excel files.

Finally, LR and Aperture aren't photo browsers. They are non-destructive editors; they have to produce copies so that you don't edit the RAW. They store the info about the edits use those instructions to produce versions. If you need a version you have to export it. But your point is well taken: if I wanna insert an image here in this post, why when I select "insert image" aren't I brought into Aperture, where I select the version, and then when I go back to this post I can just paste it? It's a frustration for anyone who has to use any other software for images.

if I wanna insert an image here in this post, why when I select "insert image" aren't I brought into Aperture,

When I select the camera icon to insert an image the file selection window that opens has the media Browser which allows me to select from my Aperture library.

Finally, LR and Aperture aren't photo browsers. They are non-destructive editors; they have to produce copies so that you don't edit the RAW.

Can't speak for LR but what you wrote there as far as Aperture is concerned is totally wrong.

Thee is a lot of noise in this community right now, understandable considering the way Apple handled this but at least we can try to keep the factual errors to a minimum.

Well there are standards and they are the IPTC/exif metadata. Across all OSes. And even after Apple adopted Mavericks tags it still uses keywords in its photo applications. And no mav tags in iOS either (but you CAN read IPTC/exif data in photos in iOS). Tags are in extended attributes, and hence may be inaccessible in another filesystem.Even Apple Mail doesn't use them. You have to put the tag in the form of x-tag or something into the header info (BTW, if you like tags, as I do, check out MailTags. It does this and more).

If you photo apps don't read standard IPTC/exif data something is seriously wrong. Also you don't have to dig through hundreds of criteria to search for photo metadata. The stuff is already indexed; the categories like aperture, caption, etc are ways to narrow searches. All your LR keywords would be in the Spotlight index, assuming you enable Spotlight on the volumes where they reside, and that you wrote the keyword metadata to the files.

I think you have a stronger point re tagging/keywording in regards to XMP sidecars. Yet another area for improvement. If you add keywords to a RAW in Aperture or LR they are not gonna write that keyword to the RAW unless you apply some force. The standard way of doing that is by using XMP sidecar files. And short answer is that for some Spotlight indexes the XMPs via the rich text mdimporter; for some this means modifying that same importer. In either case, if Spotlight finds the keyword it can only point you to the sidecar, not the companion RAW. Since a tag is in the extended attributes, it sorta isn't in the RAW, but Spotlight would send you to the RAW if it were tagged. So allowing THAT kind of tagging in Aperture, LR or whatever would be great IMHO.

And I'd like to ADD tags from Aperture. But I'd always want it to be in addition to photo keywords and other metadata. Just like captions, filenames, and other stuff is separate. I can still search for them at the same time if I want. Or ignore them. And you may already have the "wedding" problem: that word may in the content of files, or in a filename, or in an email header, or a web url, or whatever. Even without photo metadata you sometimes have to tell Spotlight to ONLY search tags and ignore other criteria.

Since you like tags, check out Leap. I use it to keep lots of stuff together that have tags and keywords, and other searchable attributes. Even email. All in one place. And HoudahSpot; it has templates you can set up for just photos and it displays all the photo metadata in one panel.

And although I'd like to see it happen, non-destructive editing can be a problem because edits have to be stored somewhere. A universal format would be cool, but we'll see. Editors like Pixelmator are different tools than DAMs like Aperture, even though they both can say crop or change contrast. You'll find tons of photographers who never use PS, and tons of graphic artists who never use Aperture. Depends on the focus of your work. Even the system wide versioning Apple introduced for stuff like Pages or Text Edit hasn't been universally loved. And BTW, not sure Pixelmator doesn't view Apple as a competitor. Sure, Apple may provide them with some cool tools to sell more Pixelmators...or may develop an application that'll make Pixelmator disappear. And Filemaker is an interesting example: Apple formed Claris, which bought whatever FM was at that point (from MS?). Eventually Apple brought stuff from Claris back in (AW?), and left FM with Claris, which changed its name. Maybe they should Aperture OUT to Pixelmator 😉 I'd LOVE that. Shoot, given Apple's assets they could send it to 'em free.

And sorry Frank, I shoulda been more specific. I meant "in Aperture" as in the program itself, not a media browser like what you show (and basically iMedia Browser is the same thing, but with LR catalogs in addition to Aperture or iPhoto or file folders).

pik80 wrote:

"Sure, Apple may provide them with some cool tools to sell more Pixelmators...or may develop an application that'll make Pixelmator disappear."

I can't see Apple killing Pixelmator. They have their hands full with overhauling a raw browser app so trying catch up, not to mention kill, Pixelmator would be a hard and arguably pointless task. Pixelmator made an app that will make some people consider buying a Mac over another computer. Why would Apple mess with that?

You'd think they wouldn't. But I'm sure that if Apple bought Photoshop and gave it away with systems Pixelmator wouldn't be happy (er, on second thought maybe given the difference in complexity they'd be ecstatic). Apple has a symbiotic relationship with developers of software that makes Macs attractive, but that marriage, like any, has its bumps. The tagging we're discussing is an example: some applications, like Punakea, were on the cutting edge of developing open meta tagging. Apple sorta ran with that and created Mavericks taggng system. Punakea? Now redundant, and has been contributed to the open source community, and seems to be dead. Too bad; I miss it. Utilities and add ons like that always run a bigger risk that changes at Apple will negatively affect them, but there are no guarantees. But the changes also make it possible for some new good non-Apple products to appear too.

And sorry Frank, I shoulda been more specific. I meant "in Aperture" as in the program itself, not a media browser

So you're saying that if you are in Safari and need to imbed an image you actually want Aperture to open, not just have access to the library?

That is not a workflow I would ever want to see implemented and I don;t think most users would. When I want to use Aperture I will open it. When I need an image for use in another program I just want to be able to get the image and I certainly do not want to have to wait for Aperture to startup.

Workflow is an awful term. Takes the fun out of photography.

Photos MUST keep stacks. I eat, live, and breathe stacks for organization.

Pages 5.2 broke the Aperture library link for me, I'd prefer something much more reliable.

Peter

I'm not a fan of bloat or feature creep either, but by your logic Pages would long ago have overtaken Word in the battle of word processors.

Perhaps the Mac OS will be more iOSified, and you'll get more a la carte ordering, like you do on iOS when you purchase filter packs and whatnot via in-app purchases. That's one of Apple's goals since it will increase revenue (I guess they get a 30% cut of in-app purchases too, but I dunno). I'd like more a la carte pricing; sheesh, I'd even like my cable company to offer it. But the packages will still probably be a better deal.

And I dunno about Adobe forcing people to buy new software every year. You've got alternatives. I don't mind the subscription model: I'd prefer a software company have a steady income stream and that they not try to lump stuff together in order to justify an upgrade fee. The latter phenomenon can drive bloat: people are, unfortunately, often inclined to pay when there's a whizz bang feature added that plays well in demos; speed bumps and changes under the hood often aren't enough. I'm not a pro photographer, but a $10/month fee for two of your key tools, LR and PS, is incredibly cheap. A housekeeper pays more than that for tools. And I can easily ignore the features of both programs that I don't use.