Best Aperture Replacement

I have been using Capture One for a year. Generally speaking I like it but regret having to change.

I never got into Aperture sufficiently deeply to know it inside out.

Capture One is good but it's not a Swiss army knife you need other tools to do things like HDR and brushing things out. For these I use Nik and Affinity Photo.

C1 has some very good webinars on YouTube you could start there. My main gripe with C1 at the moment is the documentation which is a bit limited. I haven't been able to find a pdf manual. The online help search brings up lots of irrelevant references.

I went for C1 because I don't like Adobe stuff.

Cheers

I bit the bullet about a month ago and bought Lightroom to replace Aperture which I dearly love to use. Lightroom to me is the industry standard and everything else is just roadkill or playing "catch up". I have used Pixelmator for several years but it is a tool for completely different purposes and should NOT even be considered a substitute for Aperture.

I am very impressed with Lightroom's photo enhancement capabilities and in many ways looks and feels superior to Aperture. I, however, think that importing pictures was far simpler in Aperture, and I am struggling to understand what Lightroom is wanting to do with my pics and where to put them. In other words, library management is difficult for me to understand.

It's just a darn shame Aperture is going away at some point, but since I don't have my druthers, go with Lightroom.

This is a tricky question ! Like other people said the closest thing is the Lightroom (or Capture One). But this will depend on what you really use. Technically I prefer the Phase One's Capture One and Media Pro bundle.

You may also like Corel's Aftershot Pro. It's very inexpensive and you can try it before buying.

Other options will depend on what kind of raw files are you working with. Some raws are very tricky to work, like Sigma's X3F and Fuji's X-Trans files.

To be honest I'll keep using Aperture as long as it runs.

I gave up on Lightroom some years ago. I don't like the idea of software subscription, and I know they still offer the traditional license. To be honest I think Aperture is, in a word, heavy. Adobe's raw engine (ACR) struggles with Fuji's X-Trans raws and the hyerarchical tags aren't so hyerarchical.

Now I use a specific raw developers depending on what format I need to work. For Bayer type sensors, for me, the best one is DxO Optics by a large margin and for Fuji, I prefer to use Iridient Developer or the OSX built in raw engine.

My DAM of choice is Phase One's Media Pro and my external editor is Affinity Photo. Affinity rocks.

But I'm still using Aperture. I like it and it has some very interesting features like the backup vaults and an extremely powerful search engine.

I have used ASP and Capture One but I keep coming back to Light Room or Aperture. Light Room in my opinion is the direct replacement for Aperture.

Some of those (Photo Director, Pixelmator) are not Aperture replacements. A lot of folks end up with Lightroom, as many hate it and CaptureOne is the most frequently mentioned as an alternative. Not hear much about Aftershot, but there's a new one in beta testing from On One right now. Somewhat different in terms of photo management but quite a powerful processor, worth checking out.

https://www.on1.com/products/photo-raw/

Have also a look at Affinity Photo. It is a very good photo editor. And the manufacturer is currently working on a photo database system to to add the missing asset management capabilities.

Pixelmator integrates well with iCloud, but the editing tools are not as photo centric as in Affinity. It is more about graphics compositing. Also, Pixelmator does not have any DAM support. Affinity is a more professional photo editor.

The closest to Aperture as a professional tool would be Lightroom or CaptureOnePro. When you compare the two, try to find out, if the look and feel, and the workflow will be suitable for your needs.

How do you transfer all your library from Aperture to Lightroom? I have thousands upon thousands of pictures and videos in Aperture. Also, my Aperture is in an external hard drive due to space issues. Is it possible to do the transfer from there?

One for the Adobe Lightroom forums, but it has a tool to import the Aperture Library (somewhat imperfectly).

https://forums.adobe.com/community/lightroom

LightRoom has an import tool that will import your library. I have tried it and its works good.

There are a lot of videos on YouTube that might help with the file management in LR. It's different from Aperture, but not that much. Basically, it's like referenced mode.

Thanks for your input! I'm stumbling my way through Lightroom but am still hoping to use Aperture as long as it still works properly.

Thank you, I found the videos and seem to be quite helpful. I appreciate your assistance with this transition!