Too late to start up with Aperture?

iPhoto does work with RAW files and doesn't convert them to JPEGs. There are some limitations in iPhoto's RAW vs JPEG workflow though, and Aperture is more flexible.

I think we won't know EXACTLY what the new Photos app will be, until we see it. It may be a perfectly adequate product for the vast majority of users, from consumers through hobbiests through prosumers. I'm sure it'll be better for syncing across all your devices, and sharing.

The only real downside to Aperture is that it costs $80 and it'll probably only get updates until the next OS X version ships, which if history is a guide, will be until late next year. The new Photos app should be out long before then, and hopefully migrating will be easy. I guess it depends on whether $80 for a year of use is a big deal to you. I personally would use Aperture for editing photos 99.999% of the time over Photoshop Elements.

. I think the best bet for me would be to upgrade to Aerture but I also know it's no longer going to be supported. In fact,

You will be able to use iPhoto or Aperture during the life cycle of Yosemite. Or as long as you do not upgrade to a MacOS X version, that breaks the compatibility.

If you decide to upgrade from iPhoto to Aperture you are not risking much, only the money to buy Aperture. Both applications are sharing the same format for the photo libraries, so you simply need to open your iPhoto library in Aperture and you can start with it. And it will always be possible to open the library again in iPhoto, if you prefer it. Aperture 3.3: Using a unified photo library with iPhoto and Aperture

What Aperture will give you:

• More elaborate editing options, especially for photometric adjustments, and brushes to apply adjustments locally.
• More possibilities to tag your photos with metadata, for example hierarchical keywords.
• A better configuration of your workspace with presets to define frequently used adjustments, metadata sets, ..
• A better timezone control, useful if you are crossing timezones during your travels.

I never regretted switching from iPhoto to Aperture three years ago.

In fact, I've read that Apple is no longer interested in the entire advanced enthusiast and pro photography spaces. Thoughts and advice for me? I have been spoiled by the wonderful Apple apps that work so nicely.

Apple changed the fundamental frameworks for the application development with the Yosemite upgrade considerably. The application structure now supports app extensions, that will it make possible for third party developers to supplement Apple's apps with extensions, that offer additional capabilities. It looks like Apple will produce a line of more basic apps, that we can extend by purchasing the extensions that we want.

By the way, I haven't upgraded to Yosemite, nor do I intend to.

That might be a problem, if you want to upgrade to Aperture.

The current version at the AppStore requires Yosemite. You may need to buy the boxed retail version from Amazon and upgrade to Aperture 3.5.1 using the updaters from the Support Downloads page.

and iPhoto won't even take RAW files into it's library without converting them to Jpegs

This is completely untrue. iPhoto works with exactly the same Raws as Aperture, and in the same way - but with less fine control. Think of the difference between, say, TextEdit and Word. iPhoto imports the Raw and makes a Jpeg Preview for sharing - like Aperture does. But you can process the Raw - like with Aperture, but with less tools. When you do, the preview is updated. You can export the Raw from iPhoto at any time - just like Aperture...

Reasons for migrating to Aperture of course depend upon your intended use. As pointed out here, development for Aperture has ceased. Apple has decided to migrate to another application, using cloud based back end for image storage. There has been more than one or two posts of disappointment on this course of action. In the end it's Apples decision however right or wrong the users believe that decision to be. Your best bet is to look at the features, determine if those are of use to you, scan the threads here for comments, then determine if the cost is worth it.

As opined Aperture probably has about a year of life left. After that you may be able to use it so long as you do not upgrade your operating system. But make no mistake - there will not be an Aperture 4.x. Nor, in my opinion will there be any significant (or heroic) efforts to fix what are now significant issues with Aperture.

The trade off, in my opinion is not worth it. Especially when you can get Lightroom now for a modest price. That is if you don't mind paying a monthly usage fee and really don't need facial recognition. The former being the pricing plan Adobe is moving to and the latter being completely absent from Lightroom. I don't know of any other viable professional package on the market right now. On the upside, Adobe products do support IPTC extended metadata which Apple never adopted. Understandable, it was an Adobe push - but the data stored is pretty nice. Mostly dealing with model and release information (and others, read the IPTC specs if you are interested) - if you deal with that kind of thing.

As for my experiences - Aperture use to be an incredible product. Especially with the introduction of Facial Recognition - which is now horribly broke. Here are some of my experiences.

FACES:

- Aperture now scans my entire photo library for new faces in every image every time the application fires up. This isn't a problem if you have a few hundred images. Once you start hitting about ten thousand (10,000) it becomes a nuisance. It takes about 45 seconds. Multiply that time out based on your library size.

- Aperture now rescans every identified face for a match, every time you identify a new face. Ok, I get this process. You have marked this guy as John Smith, now we are going to look for possible matches for John Smith. The only problem is that it appears to being in every face which it cannot justify as someone else.

- Aperture often double tags a face. To explain this you have to understand what the software is (probably) doing and how it records facial locations. First it applies some order of facial recognition. It looks for things which appear to be faces. Eyes, nose, mouth. It then draws a box around that area. You have the option to select that boxed area and in the upper left hand corner click on the "x" to close the box. Except when two boxes are exactly on top of each other. It's maddening. You cannot get rid of either box. Nor, can you identify the name of the person in both iterations of the box. If you understand all the places where you can name people (every software package has multiple places to do the same task) then you can select one of the boxes and tell Aperture that this area "is not a face". But since you are now telling the AI that the information contained within the defined area is not a face (when in fact it is) you are setting yourself up for a real HAL9000 moment. And if you don't get that reference, you are simply confusing the system. Especially when you leave box 2 in place and give that person a name. So is it a face or isn't it? Aperture appears to be using both decisions (is and isn't a face) in future iterations of facial identification (finding faces in an image) and facial recognition (is this face Johnny Smith or Jane Smith).

PLACES:

- A number of folks have reported problems with the geolocation of images. With the upgrade to the latest OS I have also begun to experience this problem. Images which I shot in my home studio were correctly mapped within a few feet of my home. With Aperture 3.6 many of them are not even on the same block. I actually have photographs which were previously (properly) mapped in central Maryland, that with the 3.6 upgrade are now tagged in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Yes you can manually move them to their correct location - but again, thats great with a few hundred images. Thousands becomes a real nightmare.

This same geomapping problem has reared its head in faces as well with some users reporting the placement of the facial identification box in the wrong location on the image. Far be it from me to disparage software developers but it's almost as if the crew forgot that the image coordinates (whether for dropping a box on a photo or a pin on a map) start at 0,0 being the upper left corner of the display. /snark

STORAGE:

- A couple "upgrades" back Aperture migrated a reasonable and easily understandable storage methodology in which photos were filed (on your hard disk) in a directory architecture based on the date/time of image. So, if something horrible happened a savvy user could open the Aperture package, navigate through the directory and recover lost or damaged data. Not anymore. I defy anyone to explain the system now. It appears to have something to do with the ingest date, solar or lunar cycle and a hashed algorithm of some programmers mothers birthdate which is then translated into an XML filename. All that to say - good luck finding your photo IF you need to AND you are storing images internal to the Aperture database. But lets get serious about filing images under a directory system based on import date/time. This is great - if you import your photos on the date of the shoot. But, if you go on a two week trip of Europe and ingest all your photos the day you get home, well that's not too bad. A year later when you have to recover all your photos from a significant system failure and end up ingesting 10,000 photos on 15 May 2014 that is another story entirely. Now, good luck finding your photos on the hard disk (if you need to that is).

SECURITY:

- Apple applied the "sandbox" theory to image security. Basically in a nutshell all your photos are locked from editing by only approved applications. So don't even think you are going to download some awesome script to do some wonderful task and have it work. Sorry. It took me months of phone calls with apple support before one of those on the line even thought to walk me through my editing process and determined the script/app I was using was not apple approved and this was causing my problem. I get it, new risks in computer data and all. But there comes a point when you have taken security so far as to lock the user out of the loop.

CRASHES:

- We all have them, and they all happen at the worst possible moments. In the past 2 days I have been working in Aperture with my data and experience Aperture crashes about every 45 minutes or so. Yes, I have repaired my permissions, yes I have repaired the database and Yes I have rebuilt the database. It just appears to be another nuisance of Aperture that wasn't there a couple years ago. I have even gone so far as to completely uninstall Aperture, reload it from scratch and re-ingest all my images (that is how I discovered the whole ingest date/time versus shoot date/time storage della described above). My entire library now (in the Aperture Package) falls under a single year (2014) when previously it was spread across 40 years (from the 70's to current date). Yes, I have images from the 70's in aperture. I scanned a lot of film over the years. Regardless, I could never track down exactly why the crashes were happening. Some feedback from Apple would be nice - I have after all must have sent them a few hundred crash reports by now. My RAM is good (yup, I have tested it), drive space is fine and I have plenty of it so ..... Im left scratching my head.

Aside from all of that - I loved Aperture, while it lasted. I will be saddened by it's loss and to date I haven't heard anything yet which gives me hope about Photos. As someone who is occasionally paid, and who occasionally pays to shoot (read into that what you will) I refuse to store my image library on anyone else cloud. I have my own storage architecture which has worked fine for me. I haven't lost an image now in the many many years I have been using it. If you shoot a lot I recommend you look into Drobo. I was an early adopter and have never looked back. I have two 16TB units on my desk - one for live data, one for TimeMachine.

Cloud storage is simply too risky.

1. You are reliant on too many factors which are (a) out of your control and (b) are run by people who really don't care about your data or your business. Not to mention the constant finger pointing. If a switch goes out somewhere in Nebraska I hope you had a local copy of your data because now you can't work. But then again, that defeats the whole purpose of cloud storage doesn't it? How many Apple users signed up and put up web pages in what is now the cloud? You remember those days? You data is your data and will always be there? Until we change our ToS and now longer support personal websites.

2. Pricing. Seriously look at the pricing. The cloud tops out at 1TB for $20/month. Not bad. What do I do with the other 15TB of data I have? Oh, and after 3 months I could have purchased a Western Digital portable USB 1TB. If Moore was right (and so far he has been pretty close) that 1TB next year will only cost me $30 at the local Best Buy. If you can find it. You know 6TB drives come out this fall? Only a couple hundred dollars each. About 1 years payments on the cloud. Now I realize I might get slammed there - not everyone has $60 extra dollars for a portable 1TB drive. But I am assuming you do since you are tinkling about spending $70 for an app which is only viable for another year.

3. Cloud storage really? I don't know about you but the last time I ran an all day shoot I used up about 128GB of card space which took me a couple hours of transfer time (card to local disk). Now, how long would it take me to run that up to the cloud before I can use it. And that was on an older camera which was half the megapixels of what I am shooting now. So, 1/4 of my storage maximum being transferred up to the cloud after only one shoot. Awesome. Ill get a coffee, take a road trip, and in a couple days my images will be ready for first draft editing. Meanwhile my client will be ..... strumming his fingers? Don't worry though sir - a couple more days and your proofs will be available online. For everyone with any mad skillz to hack into. The only secure computer is one not online.

So, there are the down sides from my perspective. Yup, it's one sided. If you want to know the good stuff (and there is a lot of good stuff) just read the sales brochures. It's fine product - so long as you understand the limitations. And overall I am happy with it. And I will, again, be saddened when it leaves the market.

Aperture's days are numbered. I am past denial and isolation. I guess this places me in the anger stage. There is no use in bargaining. It is Apples decision and they have made it. Depression is next. I doubt I will make it to acceptance - unless there are some significant changes to Photos and I don't see that in the works. Apple appears to be dropping their professional line of products and pushing to the general market.

Just to clarify a few points:

As pointed out here, development for Aperture has ceased. Apple has decided to migrate to another application, using cloud based back end for image storage.

This is not at all clear at this time. While it is true there will be an option, most commentators doubt that it will be exclusively cloud based.

That is if you don't mind paying a monthly usage fee and really don't need facial recognition.

You can still buy LR as a stand alone. But likely not for much longer.

I don't know of any other viable professional package on the market right now.

Capture One is often mentioned.

Aperture migrated a reasonable and easily understandable storage methodology in which photos were filed (on your hard disk) in a directory architecture based on the date/time of image. So, if something horrible happened a savvy user could open the Aperture package, navigate through the directory and recover lost or damaged data. Not anymore. I defy anyone to explain the system now.

Really? It's very simple, it's the date and time of import...

20131122-062729

That's 22 November 2013, at 6:27:29 am

😉

But to the more important point:

1. A Managed Library (where Aperture copies the Masters into its own storage is only one of many ways of storing the files and

2. If you have a problem with your Library, isn't that what your back up is for?

I'd love to know what app you were trying to edit with, I've not found one yet that I can't use as a Plug-in or External Editor.

And like I say, I've seen no one suggest that Cloud storage is compulsory.

But to the more important point:

1. A Managed Library (where Aperture copies the Masters into its own storage is only one of many ways of storing the files and

2. If you have a problem with your Library, isn't that what your back up is for?

I'd love to know what app you were trying to edit with, I've not found one yet that I can't use as a Plug-in or External Editor.

And like I say, I've seen no one suggest that Cloud storage is compulsory.

All valid points.

I never had much luck with the managed library approach. I couldn't find anyone to explain the benefits very well either. And, wasn't it more like coding pointers than copying? So it copied the location of your image to the Aperture database and if you took the drive (where the master was) offline you really couldn't do anything with it until you connected the drive back online?

Backups are great for as long as they are viable. Except eventually TimeMachine (depending on a number of factors) may need to be reset thereby rolling over your data and hopefully you catch the corruption before that point or have unedited masters on DVDs which have also maintained viability. In my case it was the latter not the former and, again in my case, driven by current system limitations. My system is comprised of 16Tb partitions which were (are?) the limit for single partition sizes. So, once your TM archive reaches that point you are faced with the options of wiping and re-rolling it - or shortening the internal re-roll.

The software I was using was primarily to rename images, as I had rolled over the 9,999 limitation under JEITF Design rule for Camera File systems (DCF) specifications. So I had, for example, multiple images named (for example) DSC_2722.NEF. Not a huge issue but it can become one.

So I was looking for renaming my images beyond what Aperture was capable of at the time - namely using the actuation count and unique camera id instead of just the standard frame count. So multiple copies of DSC_2722.NEF, would become body_DSC_2722.NEF, body_DSC_12722.NEF and body_DSC_22272.NEF for example.

I was seeking an automated process since shooting multiple cameras all on differing actualization schedules can become confusing. In the early years it would have been easy. I think the first was .. image Majic, the last was a series of scripts, home rolled and downloaded including exiftool. Pretty handy until the sandboxing security release. Perhaps that has been addressed now. I haven't tried revisiting it. I pretty much gave up on it and am just dealing with viewing multiple copies of image names when sorting through large data collections.

Thanks for clarifying the Cloud storage as non-compulsory. They are however pushing it and it's a great option for my parents who want their happy snaps replicated across all their devices for all their friends to see. However once a company starts down that road ... Zawinski's law becomes inevitable. /snicker.

Don't get me wrong - I still like Aperture. Despite the problems I (and perhaps I alone) experience. Like I said there is a lot to like about Aperture. Who knows, maybe Photos will be awesome.

No worries. Note the disclaimers in my response - they are my experiences and not necessarily common. Also, I am clearly among those in the "disappointed" camp. Your individual mileage may vary. So, like I said check out the brochures and see if Aperture might be for you - realizing it has a limited life.

Even better, contact Apple support and see if you can get a trial license. They use to run those right off the apple website. I just looked and they don't appear to have one posted now - but a trial would really inform you on whether or not it will meet your needs.

Also, as noted in other posts, the current release requires you be on Yosemite. So if you haven't upgraded your OS and/or don't plan to then it's a mute point.

If it doesn't look like it will work, then as Terrance points out you can still get LightRoom as a stand alone product for mac. Prices vary depending on the version, but a free trial is available from Adobe.

I just looked and they don't appear to have one posted now - but a trial would really inform you on whether or not it will meet your needs.

Sorry, no. The trial version has been pulled, when Aperture was moved to the App Store. That is very unfortunate for a Pro application.

Let's change the perspective again. You have described, what a long-time pro photo application user would have wanted Aperture 4 to become. And I have described, what a long time iPhoto user could gain by switching from iPhoto Aperture. It has many advantages, because the applications are related. The upgrade is a gentle transit, because the database is shared, the basic concepts are the same, Aperture has a lot to offer compared to iPhoto, and it is easy to switch back and forth, when in a hurry. Migrating from iPhoto to any other professional application would be much more bother, because the libraries cannot be directly migrated. Migrating the master-version pairs to another Pro application will be a lot of work, and the workflow will need adjusting. Capture One promised to be working on a fully supported , lossless transit from Aperture to Capture One. I have not yet heard, if that promise has been fulfilled.

- Aperture now scans my entire photo library for new faces in every image every time the application fires up.

Really? Even with Faces disabled?

léonie wrote:

- Aperture now scans my entire photo library for new faces in every image every time the application fires up.

Really? Even with Faces disabled?

No. But I did make that statement under the section in which I discussed the Faces capability. So I didn't think I needed to state that this occurred when faces was enabled. So to be clear - this only happens when faces is enabled.

However, every so often Aperture does rescan all images (generating previews) for some unknown reason. I haven't found anyone who can explain why. One person on a thread opined that it was perhaps due to a corrupted image and the database not being able to update properly beyond that point. So, for example a dataset of 1,000 images with a corrupted image number 900 would result in the last 100 not being able to be properly updated in the sql database. I would concur with that analysis if it were only the last 100 images being re-generated. However the Activity window indicates that the entire dataset is being rescanned.

The problem would of course be tracking down which image was the culprit. A process that would require deletion of blocks of images until you stopped having the issue. Since one never knows if the absence of a pseudo random act is the randomness or the resolution of the issue - it would be an impracticable troublshooting act to accomplish. At least without inside knowledge of the pseudo code which kicks off the process.

Thanks for the explanation. I am a bit biased, because I spent a lot of time over in the iPhoto forum, and there are more users dissatisfied, because they cannot disable Faces, than with the performance of Faces.

However, every so often Aperture does rescan all images (generating previews) for some unknown reason. I haven't found anyone who can explain why.

It des not happen in my large main libraries, so it may indeed be a problem of corrupted original files. But in that case you should also see Aperture continually trying to render previews and not only scan for Faces, for the same reason.

akgallagher, you seem like an organized person. And kinda old-school.

So perhaps the standard Aperture-alternatives recommendations may not be necessary or useful for you in particular, so let me suggest that perhaps you don't need the very model that iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom are based on, which is a database that keeps track of your organizaton and adjustments.

First, lets take organization. Digital asset managers like those above aren't the only way to to organize your stored photos; there are also photo browsers. They don't import, they just show you what you've already stored on disks, DVDs, etc. Unlike just the plain old Finder, they add things like previews, metadata editing, and other stuff. Examples are applications like Lyn, or Graphic Converter. And in particular for you, NeoFinder, since it excels at cataloging offline disks, DVDs, SD cards, etc. NeoFinder indexes those and keeps that info handy even if the cards are in their little boxes under your bed. Super handy.

Second, much of your organization can be handled with info in the photo metadata itself. "Events" in iPhoto are not significantly different in concept than just a search on a specific date or dates, or a smart folder. Just a prettier presentation, which is something. But they also give you much much more flexibility in viewing, filtering, finding and sorting than iPhoto. And sometimes even more than Aperture or Lightroom. For example, sometimes I find it handy that I can see non-photo files in the browser, sorta like Adobe Bridge. And so if you have keywords, captions, exif and/or IPTC metadata in your photos (and odds are you do, you can filter by camera, by lens, by date range, by type of photo, by keywords, etc etc.

In fact, many people don't realize they can just use Spotlight (or better, a Spotlight improvement like HoudahSpot) to search for metadata in photos on their Macs.

Third, many of these browsers can do quite a bit of photo editing. Take Graphic Converter: it can do lots of sophisticated image adjustments. And it had RAW support for my camera months before Apple did. And it can do some more sophisticated stuff than even Aperture or Lightroom in certain areas, especially conversion and metadata. It can geolocate too. And it has been around forever; it predates iPhoto and now will outlast it...and maybe even Photos. It has demos, runs without Yosemite (and you can probably get old versions as well; I still use version 8 for scanning, another nice feature it has over Aperture/Lightroom). Support is outstanding, better than Apple or Adobe. NeoFinder also has great support and a long long Mac history.

So do check out these alternatives to the alternatives. They may actually fill your needs better.

VERY GOOD INFO. I AM ALSO VERY UP SET ABOUT THIS

I would go with Adobe Lightroom. Building a photo library is a multi-year process and very painful to redo when Aperture eventually has the plug pulled (trust me, I went through this with Final Cut Pro… not fun). Adobe has remained committed to the professional in ways that Apple has abandoned. Their entire business model is built around the pro, so they can be counted to stick around.

Don't buy Aperture, buy Lightroom.