Glad to see Adobe has created a plugin to ease transition. Guides have been helpful, but aren't as a complete solution as this may offer. Unfortunately, it seems most users can't find a way to install it.
https://creative.adobe.com/addons/products/3213#.VDgVnynCMox
Although if you have hundreds of thousands of images, this may not be up to the task. Lets hope.
I managed to install it after a long time, updating Adobe softwares, syncing files with Adobe Creative Cloud, etc, etc...
But now, I can't use it from Lightroom, the button "import" stay "grey"...
Is that because I'm still on Aperture 2? no mention about that anywhere...
Or because I want to import from Another Mac (target disk) to an external hard drive?
No clue for the moment...
Does anyone have a solution?
Proceed warily: all but one of the user comments state problems and errors:
https://creative.adobe.com/addons/products/3213#.VDgVnynCMox.
I'm not happy about having to download the CC app, but at least they didn't make me buy a subscription for an application that I already own. I did a small test, and it appears to work as advertised. I suggest starting with a new (empty) LR catalog and importing a small A3 library first just to make sure nothing breaks. I exported one project as a library from A3 then imported that as a test to LR5.
I STRONGLY suggest that you make all of your Aperture files referenced, rather than managed, and choose the option in the Lightroom plug-in to leave them in their current location, or it will make a real mess of the file structure and duplicate all of your images.
I plan to break my huge library into smaller pieces (e.g., Documentary, Stock, Commercial etc) before proceeding.
As with any new technology, back up, back up, back up.
DLS
PS I'm using A3.4.5, but I was able to import an earlier A3.x library. I don't have any A2 libraries to test
This blog post from Adobe provides some welcome additional information:
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2014/10/aperture-import-plugin-now-avail able.html
UPDATE: When you have an eight-year-old 100K+ library like I do, this is one hel…..heck of a chore. Most of my problems have come from housekeeping issues- of my own creation- in the Finder. I'll make a blog of my experiences when I've finished and post it here in case anyone is interested.
If nothing else, it's worth it just to have your metadata in two different DAM applications.
The long time contributors to this forum will attest that I'm no troll. I'm just sharing knowledge.
DLS
If DLScreative is a troll, I'm kelp 😀 .
Please post your progress, etc. Maybe in a new thread.
I am working on just listing the fields (and elsewhere) that contain _all_ of my Aperture data (for instance: Project Name, Project Path, Project Description). I have — we are not alone — made extensive use of Aperture's excellent filing and tagging resources. We all have _two_ logical filing systems to replicate — files as presented by the Finder, and Images as presented by the Library — along with the relationships between items in each.
Porting a complex database from Aperture to another "Image" database is going to be a several-weeks hassle. The end result will almost certainly not provide the same functionality as Aperture.
😠
The converters currently supplied by LR and P1 are no more than quick & dirty single-afternoon products, imho. They seem to do the least amount, as simply as possible. (I think LR converts each Aperture Stack to a keyword. I have thousands and tens-of-thousands of Stacks in my databases. I don't have a better suggestion, but the keyword "Stack7328" is not going to be useful to me.)
I won't move for a while, and certainly not until "PhotOSX" is out.
—Kirby.
I'm pleased just to get my ratings and keywords over, but it does more than that.
One trick I came up with on stacks is to put the keyword, "A3 Stack Pick" on my stack picks in Aperture. That way if and when I rejoin a stack in LR I know which was the pick. I started out doing it to all stacks then decided to just do the ones with 4 or more images to save time.
The key I think is a clean library and a clean finder. I prefer to use my finder structure in LR rather than collections, but it does make a collection for each project, and I think every album. This can get messy, so I try to get rid of albums and especially web pages and books.
I export an A3 folder as a library for each category, then I really scuba that new library before importing it. In process, I'm breaking up my huge A3 library into small, clean libraries which is something I should have done long ago.
One problem I ran into with my finder structure is that I have subfolders in the referenced folders for my projects, and the subfolders will come over stand alone if there are no images in the parent folder. Therefore, I found it necessary to relocate one image to each parent folder so it comes along with the subfolders nested inside. See below
DLS
DLScreative wrote:
One trick I came up with on stacks is to put the keyword, "A3 Stack Pick" on my stack picks in Aperture.
One more important datum. Thanks — I'll add it to my list.
When I migrated from LR to Aperture (I started using them concurrently in order to make an informed decision which to commit to for ... the long run), rating couldn't be directly transferred, so I made keywords "LR1Star", "LR2Star", etc.
That was easy to encode, transfer, recode. A lot of what I've done since then ... well, I'll just have find out.
There are a lot of complexities, to be sure. I just ran a test conversion on the entire library.
First thoughts? We've been blessed with Aperture these many years. Lightroom certainly has some capabilities when it comes to photo editing, but I can see why so many professionals have held out so long with Aperture. There just isn't a better personal-level DAM. I've been reading a book on Lightroom, and there are several limitations as far as manipulating and cataloging. Definitely some neat features as well, but for the most part, not as versatile as Aperture. I'm going to miss that.
I don't like the folder/collections paradigm. Feel like I'm in a straight jacket. But at least it gives me some versatility. Based on testing, I figure I'll reference my masters as year/project, to provide some organization. More than that, it gets difficult to move around within the browser pane.
The plugin has it's problems, but it did perform better than expectations. Out of 40,000 photos, it managed to import all but 200 or so. Oddly, many groupings the same Aperture project. It did a good job of stacking images, but you don't see stacks in collections! It also did find and migrate a bunch of duplicate JPEG "masters" that were presumably created as I've exported to Facebook and other projects.
One gotcha, you should create full-sized previews if you want those migrated, too.
The faces tagging doesn't work yet. And much of my keywords were scrambled. Certainly can pick up the pieces, but that endeavor will take several hours as well. Lightroom won't make this very easy. It seems a bit more cumbersome to navigate, filter, and sort, but perhaps that's just due to my lack of experience.
I only have 1400 stacks, so I figure I'll create a metadata reference for the "pick", flag them in Lightroom, then go through stacks one by one and restack them. Shouldn't take more than a half a day.
Adobe support and forums just aren't very good. Few people participate, even though there is a larger Lightroom community??
Yeah I have a mac platform dedicated only to imported and processed Adobe/Lightroom images. I would never attempt to convert my other Aperture 3.6 image libraries to an Adobe product. I will keep these imported image libraries completely separate. The risks of conversion are simply too great.
torreypines wrote:
The risks of conversion are simply too great.
What does that even mean? I've been referencing the same images with both Lightroom and Aperture for years The two applications aren't even aware of one another. That's the whole point of non-destructive editing.
DLS
I'm doing my 100k image library 20k-25k images at a time. I've had to do a good deal of clean up in the Finder, but that needed to be done anyway. I've trashed, tweaked, and reimported my documentary catalog quite a few times. It wasn't absolutely necessary, but I felt it would save enough future work to be worth it. Now, it's going swmmingly.
Tip: For some reason, the plug-in doesn't like sub-folders. It was leaving out tons of images when I had referenced Project Files divided into sub-folders. It took a good deal of trial and error to conclude that subfolders were the problem.
DLS
There is also an Aperture to Phase One Capture One Pro - for those not wanting to pay Adobe rent. COP is Superb in latest version just released - especially RAW conversion. Plus there is a free version for Sony users. It also lets you move from Lightroom to COP too!
Caveat: of course, not all things come across from Aperture to LR or COP because each program did some things a little differently or did or did not do them at all. So moving at all (and there is no rush IMO) works about as best as one might expect.
Be realistic and, keep in mind, you can keep using Aperture for organizing as you transition.
I’m waiting for Photos comparisons in 2015, then probably transition entirely to COP or DxO. 2015 will be a watershed year in image management once all the players are visible in latest versions.
Terrific to see all the competition. Good for advances.
I have multiple mac platforms and multiple external storage devices for even more multiple Aperture libraries and multiple LR libraries. Why would I want to apply an adobe LR conversion program to Aperture libraries that I am deliberately keeping separate from my other LR libraries. Most folks I know here in SoCal keep separate libraries specifically to avoid having to convert - and in the conversion process lose original raw edits? 🙂
Well apparently the folks you know in SoCal have an incomplete understanding of how non-destructive editing works, so allow me to explain it. Your "RAW edits" are nothing more than a glorified text file that instructs the application- either Aperture or Lightroom- how to display the images. A RAW file cannot be edited, so the changes you make are not applied until the file is exported to a different format leaving the RAW file forever untouched. Again, both applications work this way.
Similarly, the Aperture to Lightroom plug-in imports the Aperture library to a Lightroom catalog leaving the Aperture library untouched. In other words, the library is imported not converted. In fact, in developing my migration workflow, I have imported the same Aperture library to Lightroom catalogs multiple times: I would import the library to a Lightroom catalog then delete the catalog and go back to Aperture, make some tweaks, and import it again until I was satisfied.
As I said before, I have been referencing the same RAW files with both applications for years, and neither application is aware that the other is referencing the same files.
To recap, no conversion takes place, and neither application alters you RAW files.
DLS
Adobe creates Lightroom Plugin for Aperture
