Aperture in macOS High Sierra...

I wonder why Apple don't sell Aperture to another developer?

I bought GraphicConverter 10 for batch renaming and find it to be an incredibly powerful app that does all sorts of magic things! Has a great 'auto' fix plugin too called Xe8472 which has really helped my scanned stuff.

To David Strait.... 50,000 pics sounds daunting. I was delaying scanning my old boxes of photos because it was just taking too long on my Nikon flat-bed scanner. After a couple of years of doing nothing, I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500.... not as good scans as you'll get off a professional flat bed, but for most of my holiday snaps it's been absolutely perfect, and meant the difference between getting them digitised or leaving them in the box...😁

600 dpi setting (top) works great, and it flies through the scanning! Good luck to you.

Duchy777,

I have been working on the 50,000 old photos for ~15 years — I just work on it periodically when I want to. That way it becomes more of a hobby rather than a chore. I bought a Nikon film/slide scanner when I started the project (they longer make the scanner) and use a flatbed scanner for the photos with no film. I also have a ScanSnap iX500 that I use for document scanning — it is an amazing scanner! I have scanned all my parent’s and grandparent’s letters and postcards to preserve for future generations (plus current important documents to get rid of all my office “paper”).

Scanning the old photos is actually not a huge part of the time I spend on the project. Most of the time is spent gathering information for photos, identifying the people, location, date, adding a description, then adding keywords so the photos are gathered in “smart galleries.” I will typically have from 5 to 15 galleries per year, depending on how many photos are available for that year.

I include all this information in the photo so I can locate the photos on a map, by date, person, etc. Aperture adds the “face names” as keywords on export — which is one reason I want to finish the project in Aperture. All this “imbedded information” makes the photos independent of a specific photo program. Any decent photo DAM will use the embedded location, date, description and keywords. I use the old letters to help determine all this information, then write a yearly narrative of family events. All of this is interesting to me, so it makes it more of an enjoyable hobby than a chore. There are many different “chores” to complete this, so I don’t get bored doing one thing for a long period of time. I just complete one year at a time so I cycle through these various chores every couple months. I have learned a great deal about my parents, grandparents, etc. while completing this project. The photos have much more meaning to me after I went through all this. Also, my kids can have this as a permanent record of their heritage. They can look at a photo of a “stranger” and it will now mean something to them.

Anyway, my point is that preserving the photos can actually be an enjoyable hobby if you enjoy doing the kind of family research I am into. If that is not your “thing,” scanning the photos in a quick and easy manner — like using the ScanSnap — is a fantastic way to easily preserve photos that may otherwise be lost in a shoebox in the basement!

Hi David,

That sounds like an amazing project and I admire your dedication. You're creating a treasure trove.

I don't have old heirloom photos, just thousands of "snapshots" taken when I started out with photography in the days of film and prints. They're mostly rubbish from an artistic point of view, and it's when I admitted that I realised a ScanSnap would be fine for my "work"..😁

Rubbish as my photos are, at least I can now share them with people who are interested on iPads, phones, TVs.... they're not just sat in the box and never seen.

I would love to do something like you are doing.... but I don't have the material to justify it.

Good luck with your project. You should probably consider not upgrading MacOs or your computer until you've finished!

Cheers.

Forgot to mention... have a look at GraphicConverter 10. They've been around almost since Macs were invented, and I was amazed at what it can do.... I do not have any link to them by the way!

I have a rather big library of Aperture files (5 TB) with some 350,000 photos.

My new way is using Capture One 10: it is an ideal replacement and or addtion to Aperture. It reads the libraries perfectly, leaves the originals in their place. Which means, I can still use the same photo in Aperture and in CaptureOne.

CO10 has great tools on raw files. This made me change my workflow totally on raw. There is so much more in a raw file than jpeg, that the disadvantage of the space it uses is acceptable. I am using the Canon 5MKIV.

nigbo wrote:

My new way is using Capture One 10: it is an ideal replacement and or addtion to Aperture. It reads the libraries perfectly, leaves the originals in their place. Which means, I can still use the same photo in Aperture and in CaptureOne.

Are you saying Capture One 10 can read Aperture libraries?

Can I trust the ACD Company ? Has they a long term costumer relation ship ?

Anyway, I will never buy a professional software from Apple. I have spend approx. 300€(200+100upgrade)for a Aperture and the same for plug ins like Nik complete edition. Good by Apple.

Great discussion - I absolutely, positively, hate hate hate Photos. I still use Aperture [so far on Sierra] on my Mini, iMac and MacbookPro. So far so good. I have too many images on too many harddrives and my plan is to start going through them [most are in a variety of Aplibraries, and some are duplicated too much] and delete as much as I can and save the RAW or improved versions to TIFF to a separate drive until I decide what can replace Aperture. I use MacPhun Luminar [and Noiseless, Tonality etc] to work on photos and have PSElements but haven't used it for quite some time. Given the reports that High Sierra doesn't destroy Aperture, I'll probably upgrade when I need to = I really don't see the need to do it now, Sierra works fine for me.

Sounds like the plan to go thru and save best images in 'original' form is best while continuing to use Aperture until something comes along. Thanks to all for the discussion and explanations.

Yes, it does perfectly. This is quite a relieve for me, as it means, even, if the Aperture software does not work, the libraries can be opened.

CaptureOne 10 is a pretty good DAM, very similar to Aperture. The software is very much RAW oriented. It is much better than Aperture ever was in respect to work on your photos. I changed completly to raw, as this gives me much better photos.

There are, though some points which i am missing (and many other user too) coming from Aperture. No stacking is maybe the most important. But they are adding to the software and there is hope that this might come in the next version. Slight other things: double-clicking on a thumbnails opens the viewer picture, but not the reverse. (not going back from viewer by double-clicking to the browser) But you can easily define a key for doing it: N is my work-around for this.

CaptureOne does not support to big libraries. I have some really big ones in Aperture. So you have to change your habits in work on smaller libraries. I would say 10000 to 20000 photos is ok. As this is also a problem for converting Aperture to CO10, it means, i have to make the libraries smaller by exporting parts into separate libraries.

That is great news about Aperture and High Sierra. I have been holding off doing the upgrade until I read that Aperture was compatible, so thank you to everyone here! I have a huge number of photos (126,000) in Aperture and I dread the day when I have to switch over to Lightroom. I don't want to get on the Adobe treadmill of paying a monthly fee for the rest of my life for their Creative Cloud. And shame on Adobe that if you do buy a standalone version of Lightroom, they will not provide you with any updates. Aperture has served me fine for many years, and I have yet to find anything else that comes close for my particular workflow.

All imaging software will have it's quirks and benefits.

I personally find working in the Aperture space more enjoyable. I know I will change to another DAM someday.

I have used Capture One in a pro studio, great software. I do try Lightroom from time to time and that's my decision made again and again (not for me).

I do see other DAM software on the horizon, Affinity mentioned doing a DAM awhile ago (still waiting), 'ACD See' looks to have potential and today I see 'On1 Photo RAW', again looking good.

nigbo wrote:

Yes, it does perfectly. This is quite a relieve for me, as it means, even, if the Aperture software does not work, the libraries can be opened.

How did you do this? I tried using On1 Photo Raw 2017 to open a small (less than 300Gb, 1300 images) Aperture library in MacOS 10.12.6 with no luck. What's your secret?

Herwig,

Thank you for your reply.

I'm going to give your advice a try. First, I plan to backup my Aperture library.

Do you suppose that I am using Sierra rather than 'High' Sierra might make any difference?

I don't think this makes any difference. You also don't have to back up your library, as Capture One is reading only the library.

But one thing is important: the files are not transferred to the CO catalogue. They stay in the aperture library.

This also means: you do not copy your files and waste space. But you must keep your aperture library at the same place as when importing. So also store a catalogue from CO10 in the same folder with the same name so you have it together.

Normally I include the files in CO10 in the catalogue. (as I did with Aperture) But this is not what the import from Aperture is doing.

Thanks for the update. I am waiting until my wacom drivers are updated, too. Meanwhile, for an Aperture replacement, try Capture One Pro. Its a great replacement to Aperture. You can try a 30-day free trial. Works very similarly to Aperture and you can adjust the editing tabs to work almost exactly like Aperture. Good luck!

nigbo wrote:

Just use the menue item under Files: Import Catalogue>ApertureLibrary...

Look for your catalogue to import and choose and start importing.

This works for me without any problems.

Herwig

I have tried in several ways to get ON1 to open an Aperture Library. So far I have had no luck in doing so. I am using ON1 Photo Raw 2017 (v.11.6.3844) and macOS 10.12.6.

First of of all, I see no "Import Catalog" option under Files. My ON1 software does not seem to recognize my Aperture Library. I tried adding a 'Cataloged Folder'. I even dragged my Library into the 'Drop Your Folders Here to Catalog' with no positive result. My Aperture Libraries are Managed not Referenced.

I'm not sure what I doing wrong, but importing my Aperture Library to ON1 isn't working.

Thanks for your help anyway. I do appreciate it.

Jerry