Q: Affinity as a replacement for Aperture?

Affinity is a powerful image editor; you can use it to replace Photo Shop, but it has no support for metadata or to organize a image database. You will need a different application to manage the photos, if you want a photo library like in Aperture.

Hi to you both,

Affinity Photo is an image editor as pointed out. However on the Affinity forums they are hoping to release a DAM software in 2016 (deemed HOT). This is very interesting. The Affinity team appear to have done an excellent job on Affinity Photo & Designer. So hopefully it bodes well.

I had to switch the studio from Aperture to Capture One for pure business sense. Personally and for all my own photographic work, Aperture still remains the best software for me.

I know the day will come when I need to change DAM but until it does I continue to enjoy Aperture.

However on the Affinity forums they are hoping to release a DAM software in 2016 (deemed HOT).

If that will be as good as Affinity Photo it will be an interesting option!

Affinity Photo is a great App and I look forward to Serif producing a DAM programme soon!!!

While it isn't an Aperture substitute, it does do a better job of editing, as it's more akin to Photoshop or Pixelmator than Aperture, as others have noted.

But if you are most interested in image adjustment, note that it has a few extensions that can be used in Photos. Depending on how much use you made of Aperture's organizational features you might find Photos acceptable for that, since in conjunction with Affinity it means you'd get far more tools for adjusting your images, either using Affinity as a standalone or in a more limited way with the extensions.

The extensions in  Photos edit panel are starting to get as easy to use as the plug-ins in Aperture.  All in one place, and easy to switch between them:

The support for metadata is still very poor in Photos, however.

It really depends on what kind of editing and database you need for your photo projects.

For my needs it suffices to use Photos as the database, and for ninety percent of the editing I can do it directly with Photos own adjustment tools. For the remaining 10% I use the extensions or Aperture. If I need brushes, I go back to Aperture.

Photos is a compromise:

• Pro:
  1. I am using it mainly because  I need to keep my main current photo library in sync on four macs. With iCloud is it finally possible to have one library syncing between macs.
  2. And the photo editing extensions make it easy to use more than one application for editing, all in one place accessible.
  3. The integration with other mac software using the media browser is very good.
• Contra:
  1. The workspace cannot be customized - no custom presets, custom  keyboard shortcuts, no advanced batch processing
  2. Only very basic scripting support
  3. The user interface is similar to the iOS version for small displays - we cannot compare photos side-by-side or open more than one photo at once. To many clicks required for simple tasks
  4. Poor support for EXIF and IPTC
  5. No custom themes for books, calendars, slideshows

If you need to use your photo library professionally and need an efficient workflow that makes it easy to process large amounts of photos with high quality adjustments, forget Photos.  It is not yet up to it.  Most things can be done in Photos, but you cannot customize it in a way, so you can do repitative  tasks more  efficiently.

Do you know another good photo organizer? To me, Aperture's system makes the others I've seen look awkward and hard to use. I also really like the Import function. I use referenced images, and Aperture imports them from my SD card (or other source); saves the originals in folders and subfolders organized by year, month, and day; and copies backups to another drive, using the same folder organization. I really like the fact that the originals are available - and findable by date - even if Aperture blows up entirely.

I have not explored the other DAMs thoroughly enough to be able to recommend one. The look and feel of Capture one is closer to Aperture than the Look and Feel of Lightroom. But both are powerful.

I am using Photos for the time being, because I want an organizer that integrates well with other Apple products and iCloud and does not break with each software update.

I have been exploring digiKam.  It is free and open source, and powerful, and supports a referenced library well. But the problem is, I have to reinstall it after every system upgrade, and it too much work to ensure that all developer tools are installed properly, and the updates for the mac versions are not released quickly enough.