Q: Aperture to What?

I don't know it like Peter Griffin would say: "It grinds my gears!" Because I have tried other software and they all suck, the only one that works for me now of course is photoshop and lightroom but I hate their monthly system and I cannot install aperture in a brand new mbp that I got because it doesn't have a bloody cd reader…

I cannot install aperture in a brand new mbp that I got because it doesn't have a bloody cd reader…

Do you still have the previous Mac with the CD reader? Then use Disk Utility on that Mac to burn disk images of all your installer CDs.

That is what I did with all my old installer CDs.

You can also share the optical drive from an older Mac on your network.

Or get yourself an external optical drive. I bought one for the MacBook Retina and the  new iMac.

If your older Mac is running Aperture 3., you can simply copy the Aperture application to your new Mac. Or download Aperture 3.6 from the Purchases tab of the App Store to the new mac.  Only Aperture 3.6 will run on a new Mac with El Capitan. It cannot be installed from CD anyway. It is APpSTore only.

I went the Adobe route and believe it or not. didn't worry about the subscription. That's about $120 per year for apps that cost much more together, and which I would be updating more or less yearly anyway. I know lots of folks have some sort of ethical issues with it but to me it's just good value. As for a subscription lapsing... just be sure you export your images first... - and of course, your originals are always available anyway.

On the upside, the LR importer did a pretty good job of bringing over my Aperture Library, but yes there were tidy ups to do. Given that Aperture - which I loved - had seen no significant development in the last 3 or 4 years, it's no surprise that LR is more powerful and has quite a few more bells and whistles. On the downside: the interface, of dear lord the interface. Intrusive, crowded, ugly and not very intuitive. Basics like searching... But you learn it eventually.

One nice thing about all the alternatives is that you can try them.

Lightroom and Photoshop have a 30 day trial period. While the Aperture importer can work well for some, it does have issues. In part because Lr and Aperture just do some things differently. It can help if you have a referenced Aperture library rather than a managed one. And if you have exported the images you adjusted in Aperture; Lr cannot read the adjustments like contrast, WB, etc. Another good option IMHO is Aperture Exporter, which helps you export into a setup for Lr that may be more to your liking, and gives control over exporting full versions of adjusted images.

Other candidates are Capture One, Photos Supreme, Dark Table, Aftershot Pro, Mylio, Emulsion, Lyn, etc etc. Some more like browsers; some more like Aperture.

If your older Mac is running Aperture 3., you can simply copy the Aperture application to your new Mac. Or download Aperture 3.6 from the Purchases tab of the App Store to the new mac.  Only Aperture 3.6 will run on a new Mac with El Capitan. It cannot be installed from CD anyway. It is APpSTore only.

Hi Léonie! Well this is what I get when I tried that:

And when I tried with the image disk I got this:

Which basically says that if I run the installation it might do something to the hard drive and even corrupt something, and here's the funny thing when I went to my app store account to download the installation drive I could't because is no longer in it, I called support and some nice chap told me that he knew exactly what had to be done, but he couldn't help me because I am brown… LOL! No, but he couldn't help me because I live in Mexico. But thanx anyway brother!

I totally agree with you on the whole interface thing. They have always been really awful in that sense I don't know why, I mean is not that hard to do something a bit more respectable.

You are running the Aperture Trial installer, right?  This will install Aperture 3.1, and that is incompatible. You could then try to install updates from Apple's Support page, but they will only take you to Aperture 3.4.3.

The aperture versions, that require a registration key are no longer supported for updating at all.

All later updates are only available, if you have an App Store version of Aperture installed, not the Apple Store version, that requires a registration key.

It was possible to convert  the licence to an AppStore licence, when MacOS X Mavericks was released.  You missed that window of opportunity unfortunately. Now it is too late, because Apple stopped the developement of Aperture and only reinstalling AppStore versions is supported.

Your only chance is to contact the App Store Support and talk them into providing a redeem code for an Aperture 3.6 download, to be able to update. This will not be easy. In some cases the AppStore support helped.

Yes… to my dismay is what I saw after reading your previous post with attention and also some other posts. I'll see what I can do, thanx anyway for the advices mate, cheers!

If you want other photo programs similar to Aperture you can test drive Affinity Photo Pro or DxO OpticsPro10.  Both are good programs.  Not hard to use and have good communities to get answers for problems or issues.

As neither app is a Digital Asset Manager they're hardly similar to Aperture... though excellent programs they may be.

I agree that neither is as good as Aperture for DAM.  But looking at the final product of a picture (after using either of these two programs), and ease of use, those are both good programs and certainly as good a picture as developed by Aperture.

I agree that a better organizer would be fantastic but for now not optimized by either program.

Some of the other programs suggested by Rob Gendreau are good but are lacking in developing the photos.  Capture 1 is certainly a very good program but not cheap.

I wish someone would buy the rights to Aperture and keep it going. 

The point is that neither of these are a replacement for Aperture. They're applications from a different category. At best the replace (and even improve on) about half of what Aperture does.

I have to ask, what other programs you would find that would be equivalent to Aperture.  I would leave LlightRoom off the list (for me).  I am interested as I am now going to change to another program from Aperture (and have decided against LightRoom already). I have looked at a number of different programs and agree none of them are Aperture.  Photos will not be adequate for me.  I hate to spend money on both an photo organizer program and a photo manipulator program but I suspect it could be an option.  I would appreciate any suggestions.

You just defined the answer to avoid the obvious conclusion. LR is the nearest equivalent, mix of non-destructive processing and DAM. Note I said nearest equivalent not perfect match. Now it's difficult to compare. Aperture stagnated over the final three years - that's four years now, pretty much - so LR has powered ahead in terms of it's image processing. In Asset management terms it's weaker in some areas but stronger in others. As for alternatives, and their strengths and weaknesses, search the forum on Capture One, DarkTable et al. There's lost of comment on those from folks who've changed to them.