Questions preparing for Aperture Independence

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Level 1

21 points

Questions preparing for Aperture Independence

Hello - I bought Aperture rather late - about the time they announced it's discontinuation. But I love it as an organizational tool for our 35k+ photos. Our previous organization was using Windows Explorer which is dangerous and difficult to manage - and we never used any keywords. I've decided to keep using Aperture until it doesn't work. After looking around I see two DAMs - Lightroom and Photos - both of which have their shortcomings. Maybe Affinity will come up with a good DAM.

I know some day I will have to leave Aperture. My question is: which Features of Aperture should I use that will be Portable for use in other DAMs such as Lightroom or Photos.

Keywords and other metadata? - Will all metadata added in Aperture stay with the photos after Aperture? Is Metadata saved with the Original Masters or Versions?

Stacks? Will stacks be kept when moving to Photos or Lightroom or will they have to be re-created?

Faces? I believe faces won't move to Lightroom, but might move to Photos. Is it better to create Keyword Metadata for People for portability?

Adjustments? I love the easy tools for touching up the photos, but I understand I will lose these in Lightroom and Photos. If I adjust photos in Aperture I believe I need to export versions which will take up additional space. Is this correct?

Adjusted Data and Time - Some photos are scanned images or photos taken on a camera that didn't have the correct date. I adjust these dates in Aperture. Will these new dates stay with the photo after converting to Lightroom or Photos? Are they written back to the original master or only the versions created in Aperture?

Anything else I'm forgetting?

Thank you for any insight you can provide for the above topics

Geno

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Feb 4, 2016 4:17 AM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

194,871 points

Feb 4, 2016 5:46 PM in response to gno2

I don't use Lightroom, but most of Aperture's features will migrate safely to Photos.

See this document: How Photos handles content and metadata from iPhoto and Aperture - Apple Support

The biggest loss after migrating to Photos was theloss of hierarchical keywords and custom metadata tags.

Use a flat keyword structure to be ready for migration. For example, instead of having a keyword "bird" and a subordinate keyword "sparrow" use a single flat keyword "bird:sparrow". Append your custom metadata tags to the captions.

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Answer 2

gno2 Author

Level 1

21 points

Feb 5, 2016 4:13 AM in response to léonie

Leone - Thanks for helpful tip about Keywords and the link. I have a question - does Photos support versions? Like if I want multiple versions of the same photo - like to crop a photo a different way, or have a black and white version of it, will it support versions like Aperture? Also - what about Stacks? Does photos support the Stacks built in Aperture?

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,871 points

Feb 5, 2016 5:47 AM in response to gno2

I have a question - does Photos support versions? Like if I want multiple versions of the same photo - like to crop a photo a different way, or have a black and white version of it, will it support versions like Aperture?

Yes, Photos supports versions. But not an automatic versioning as Aperture had. But you can duplicate the photo several times and edit the copies in different ways. The versions will share the same original master file, and you can edit them independently. I am using these versions to see the RAW &JPEG versions separately, otherwise they would be stacked.

Photos does not have stacks like Aperture, but it will combine photos taken at a short interval as bursts. The bursts behave like stacks and you can select a key photo for them.

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