Anyone still using aperture

With extensions, Photos is workable, although Affinity Photo sadly does not (yet) support the HEIC format.

HEIC is still problematic in Photos, even Photos 4.0 on Mojave.

• Photos cannot yet export HEIC; the edited versions will be exported in a different format.
• On older iMacs with a certain graphics card an edited HEIC image can be corrupted by artifacts. (Re: Help- Artifacts/Corruption in several Photos)
• All my HEIC images (if not edited) will be duplicated for the media Browser as JPEGS, so they need a lot of additional storage. My iPhone HEIC fils are using 8GB of storage in my Photos Library, but 10GB additional storage in the Media Browser for JPEGs: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.MediaLibraryService/Data/Library/Caches/com.appl e.iLifeMediaBrowser.ILPhotosTranscodeCache

As a work-around to pass HEIC files to affinity: I am using the External Editors Extension to call the external editors, that do not yet support HEIC. External Editors allows us to convert the file to a different format, for example TIFF, before sending it to DxO Optics Pro or Affinity.

External Editors allows to save any edited file back to Photos as the edited version, also HEIC files, if we use Preview to convert to HEIC

1) Tabbed panes (ala Aperture's Library, Info and Adjustments panes; and those in Pages, Numbers or Keynote); 2) Dynamic resizing of the description and keyword fields, based on their contents; 3) Adjustment brushes (though Luminar 2018 does a fine job); 4) Side-by-side (2-up) view feature; 5) Batch rename File and Title names.

These are all very good points. To add to this list:

• Photos lets us lift and stamp adjustments, but not metadata. That is a real pain. And we cannot batch apply a "lift&stamp", because it is only available in Edit mode, and so only for one photo at a time.
• The user interface is not suitable to navigate large libraries. The list of keywords is quickly getting too long, because we cannot group them hierarchical. We cannot group the Faces either. This makes it clumsy to pick keywords or faces as a rule when trying to create smart albums. we cannot sort the photos by the filenames or the file size or pixel size. There is no list view.
• I really need the ability to flag photos and add ratings. And these need to be visible as badge overlays. The favorite heart alone does not suffice. I miss the five rating stars.
• The access to EXIF and IPTC metadata is very limited. We cannot show all EXIF data, and not use all of them in smart albums or searches. Some limitations are just silly - if a photo carries GPS coordinates, I can see the name of the place, but not latitude and longitude, and the altitude is not available at all. we can copy and paste the location name as assigned by Photos, but not the precise GPS coordinates, because coordinates are not shown in Photos. The altitude cannot be changed even by an Apple script. And we have to jump through the hoops to find out the timezone that is used with a capture date.
• We cannot name the basic items in the library in a way, that is meaningful for our projects. Moments and collections are named automatically according to the date and location, but we cannot assign a name that is more meaningful for the project. For example, Photos is frequently calling a moment for the name of the state or worse or ocean, when I would prefer a more distinctive name, like the name of the island, the cape, the reef, or "Measuring site 1".

For those just getting started with Photos, here is an index to the user tips with "how to"s and many Apple Scripts, that help with batch changing or looking up metadata:

Thematic Index to Photo Related User Tips: | Communities

AppleScripts come in handy to mitigate some of the deficiencies of Photos metadata.

And I am frequently using Power Photos as a second browser for my Photos Libraries.This will allow me more sorting options and provides a nice list view.

The Edit mode in Photos offers a menu with all Photo Editing extensions we have installed. It makes it easy to switch between external editors for each photo.

It is easy to use Aurora HDR, Affinty, Luminar 2018 and many others this way.

Only, when I take Exposure brackets for HDR processing in Aurora, I do not import them directly to Photos. I collect them on an external drive, develop them in Aurora, and then I only import the developed photo to Photos.

for LR support contact their support team - this geivs a lot of info about moving from Aperture to Photos - Notes on Migrating an Aperture Library from Aperture to Photos for Mac

and although these links are for iPhoto most of them apply equally to Aperture - : Links to User tips re migrating from iPhoto to Photos

LN

. Someone in the Mac community told me Photos is a lot better now, almost no difference with Aperture. After reading comments here, I’m starting to doubt.

Photos 3.0 on. High Sierra is a lot better than Photos 1.0 on Yosemite, but there are still important tools missing in Photos 3.0. It is hard to work with it efficiently.

• You cannot customize your work space with presets for editing or metadata
• You cannot batch change metadata using presets. There is no list view for metadata and limited sorting options.
• You cannot use brushed adjustments for dodge and burn, or sharpening, or brushing in color, or skin smoothing. The only brush available is the retouche brush, and it does not work properly.
• You cannot even compare two photos side-by-side. I used the work-around to put the two photos onto a book page to compare them, but Photos does no longer have a native tool to create books.

I am using photo editing extensions for advanced editing tools, and Power Photos as a second Browser for Photos.

How have people got on moving pictures from Aperture to Photos or Lightroom?

I keep still Aperture 3.6 around foo be able to see my archive of Aperture Libraries and iPhoto libraries as they originally have been, or creating PDF files of Photo books, creating maps with pins, or some advanced adjustments that are easier in Aperture, like skin smoothing.

But for most purposes I could break Photos in to suit my needs, with a little scripting to help with the metadata and photo editing extensions. For advanced editing I am mostly using two applications that offer photo editing extensions - Luminar 2018 and Aurora HDR 2018 for combining exposure brackets into a HDR photo.

I would like to know too.

I have been using Aperture for years and am loathe to change. I love how I can switch out to Photoshop, or Aurora (my preferred HDR app) or Portrait Professional (my preferred portrait retouching app) and back again and still have everything organised.

Have recently been a little concerned about some of the RAW processing results and am considering doing my RAW processing using an Adobe app then importing the resulting file in Aperture.

Having said that, I know that Aperture is a dead end and hence am seriously considering Photos simply for the database management aspects of things. Am not keen on Lightroom as I don't want to pay subscriptions.

I am keen to know if anyone has similar needs to mine, or a similar workflow, and how you've tackling this.

Thanks.

Yep. Still using it.

Although I'm looking to what Luminar provides as their DAM effort. For now it is still providing the goods.

I have looked at Photos. But it still lacks a lot of features to keep me in the Apple realm (eg. brushable adjustments, importing GPS logging data, creating multiple versions, custom keyboard shortcuts and lots more).

The interface is so good. Or suits my workflow.

I have used Aperture professionally and also Capture One in a studio environment. Aperture is still the best.

My imports to Aperture are referenced now. Knowing that I will need my images to be accessed by another app in future.

If Photos were to offer a few more alá Aperture wisdom / Pro features. It may have my attention.

Until then, Aperture, suits my needs.

In_between_dreams wrote:

Yep. Still using it.

Although I'm looking to what Luminar provides as their DAM effort. For now it is still providing the goods.

I have looked at Photos. But it still lacks a lot of features to keep me in the Apple realm (eg. brushable adjustments, importing GPS logging data, creating multiple versions, custom keyboard shortcuts and lots more).

The interface is so good. Or suits my workflow.

I have used Aperture professionally and also Capture One in a studio environment. Aperture is still the best.

If Photos were to offer a few more alá Aperture wisdom / Pro features. It may have my attention.

Until then, Aperture, suits my needs.

Ditto, pretty much!

Even though I still use aperture occasionally, I’ve moved to capture one pro. I liked aperture better, but what can we do.

The thing about using the photos app is, I don’t trust apple anymore. I can’t. They didn’t hesitate to drop a well established professional app without explanation, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing wuth photos whenever they feel like it.

So, even if the photos app were to gain feature parity with aperture (which I doubt), I won’t use it, because apple may do the same thing they did with aperture/iPhotos.

The only reason I have been buying Apple Computers are the professional applications that do not run on any other platform - Aperture, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and the good integration across devices.

Without superior native professional software I see no reason to buy the expensive Apple hardware any longer.

Same here. I suspect a lot of us are on the same page regarding the very sad state of the mac and pro software.

I wish they’d just spin off the mac and pro software division, so that they’re run by people who actually care.

TheCuerco wrote:

Even though I still use aperture occasionally, I’ve moved to capture one pro. I liked aperture better, but what can we do.

The thing about using the photos app is, I don’t trust apple anymore. I can’t. They didn’t hesitate to drop a well established professional app without explanation, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing wuth photos whenever they feel like it.

So, even if the photos app were to gain feature parity with aperture (which I doubt), I won’t use it, because apple may do the same thing they did with aperture/iPhotos.

Ditto and Amen!

léonie wrote:

The only reason I have been buying Apple Computers are the professional applications that do not run on any other platform - Aperture, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and the good integration across devices.

Without superior native professional software I see no reason to buy the expensive Apple hardware any longer.

Ditto and Amen!

TheCuerco wrote:

Same here. I suspect a lot of us are on the same page regarding the very sad state of the mac and pro software.

I wish they’d just spin off the mac and pro software division, so that they’re run by people who actually care.

Spectacular idea!!

The only problem is that Tim doesn't care so there will never be any who do.

Yes still using it exclusively on my iMac 27. Suits me fine. Does a good job with Nikon raw files. A bit disappointed with the raw files coming out of the FudjiFilm xt20. Not sure if it is the raw conversion or the conversion. I see jagged edges where it should not see them. Anyways, still happy about Aperture. Someone in the Mac community told me Photos is a lot better now, almost no difference with Aperture. After reading comments here, I’m starting to doubt.