Most stable OS for Aperture 3.6?

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Level 1

121 points

Most stable OS for Aperture 3.6?

I'd like to get some opinions as to what people believe to be the version of Mac OS that is best suited to running Aperture. Though we know Aperture runs on High Sierra, I would not necessarily say that is is 100% stable, as certain features are pretty flakey. When I buy my next Mac I'll be locked in to High Sierra (or Mojave, depending on when I buy), without the option of going back to an earlier version of the OS. I plan on keeping my current iMac (27" late 2012, maxed out) as a machine dedicated to Aperture with an OS version I'll never update.

As an aside, I currently have my Mac setup to boot into any one of several versions of the OS depending on what I'm doing. I'm usually running High Sierra and do find Aperture mostly stable on that OS, though I switch over to Sierra when I need to do significant brushing.

Is there a nice matrix that maps OS to Aperture features?

Thoughts?

iMac and MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 20th Anniversary Mac, 128K Mac, original Apple II

Posted on Aug 26, 2018 1:18 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 13, 2018 7:41 AM in response to John Purlia

HI John,

The 2012 is a great iMac because you can upgrade the RAM to 32GB! I haven't seen issues with Aperture on 10.13, but I'm not a power user. The APFS fie system available with High Sierra is really nice and allows you to create new partitions easily for testing.

I think the biggest issue with Macs of that age is not having a SSD boot drive. This can be remedied easily since a 2012 iMac has have a USB 3 port (which is 10x faster than USB 2 on 2011 iMacs) which is fast enough to run a boot drive. The Samsung portable T5 500GB SSD is $122 on Amazon. With your external boot drive, you can run an experiment by:

Install a clean version of High Sierra on the external drive (might take some fiddling)
Copy your Aperture library to the external boot
UNMOUNT your internal drive via Disk Utility. This will make sure your original drive is offline and complete safe from any changes
Have fun!

If you give it a try, I have some notes when my computer was updated.

Good luck!

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

166,086 points

Aug 26, 2018 11:13 PM in response to John Purlia

I plan on keeping my current iMac (27" late 2012, maxed out) as a machine dedicated to Aperture with an OS version I'll never update

That's a dead end. Sooner or later that Mac will go down. The only question is when. So, really, your choice is to find and migrate to a replacement app now, when it will be a PITA, or wait for that machine to fail and then do it when it's a crisis and a PITA.

As for the most stable: the one current when 3.6 was released: Yosemite.

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Answer 3

Aug 26, 2018 1:23 PM in response to John Purlia

I have had no problems using Aperture with High Sierra 10.13.6

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Answer 4

John Purlia Author

Level 1

121 points

Aug 26, 2018 1:26 PM in response to Allan Eckert

For most tasks, yes, I would agree. There are problems, though, if you do a significant amount of brushing in of adjustments (including cursor conflicts with notifications), or apply an excessive number of retouching adjustments. Other issues with previews, and assorted other things.

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

200,735 points

Aug 27, 2018 6:25 AM in response to John Purlia

. Migrating RAW processing and adjustments is just one part of my equation to reproduce a final image, as I also rely on those other files within the Aperture Library. At some point, yes, this will stop working and I'll only have the final images without the possibility of reproducing all the steps that got me from point

This has already been broken by previous aperture updates, whenever Apple updated the RAW processing or changed how the adjustments are implemented - the good old Highlights&shadows tool (from Aperture 3.2) has been different from the current one in Aperture 3.6 or and the Sharpen tool seems also to have changed. Slideshows and photo books kept changing between Aperture versions.

As for your great audio mastering example - none of my early GarageBand projects from GarageBand 6.0.5 sounds the same, when I open it in Garageband 10.3.2 or Logic Pro X. Audio regions will shift. instruments will sound differently, plug-ins will be incompatible.

I m sorry to say, Apple does not have much respect for the details of artistic projects. Layouts created by the users have to yield to the new designs, when updates come out.

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Answer 6

John Purlia Author

Level 1

121 points

Aug 26, 2018 1:34 PM in response to Allan Eckert

I'm glad High Sierra works effectively for you. Of course, not everyone will have the same experiences based on their work flow and what they wish to get out of a particular software product. Like I said, High Sierra works for most of my photo workflow needs, but not all, and I know which capabilities work best for me. I'd like to see what experiences others have had when using Aperture with various versions of the OS. Where do features break down, understanding that few of us have ever used every available feature, and each of us will rely on a different set of features.

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Answer 7

John Purlia Author

Level 1

121 points

Aug 26, 2018 11:54 PM in response to Yer_Man

The Yosemite answer is helpful, thank you.

We all know Aperture is going away and I know a replacement needs to be found at some point down the line. For me, it's not simply a matter of migrating libraries to another package or editing tool. The workflow I've developed to create my artwork relies on exporting and manipulating files within the Aperture Library itself as one step in a much more complex process that involves several additional applications. Creating new images with an Aperture replacement is a given. My concern is to retain the ability to recreate or modify legacy images using the same set of tools that created them for archival reasons, for as long as possible. Think of it this way... take The Beatles multitrack recordings which were recorded in the studio on analog tape. The tape was running at a particular speed when the sounds were recorded and must be played back at that exact same speed — ideally on the same piece of equipment. The mastering engineer sets and notes output levels on each track and any external processing equipment so that, in the future, the master can be reproduced, precisely, from the original tapes using the same setup and equipment. I kind of want to do the same thing with Aperture. Migrating RAW processing and adjustments is just one part of my equation to reproduce a final image, as I also rely on those other files within the Aperture Library. At some point, yes, this will stop working and I'll only have the final images without the possibility of reproducing all the steps that got me from point A to point B. But until then, I'd like to have a dedicated machine to support those archives.

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Answer 8

Yer_Man

Level 10

166,086 points

Aug 27, 2018 4:24 AM in response to John Purlia

I appreciate that yours is a rather unique and specific usage scenario. You know best the workflow that you need, we can only deal in generalities. My point was simply that using Aperture is, ultimately, a dead end, and it might be of use to others who read the thread. Best wishes.

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Answer 9

John Purlia Author

Level 1

121 points

Aug 27, 2018 8:44 AM in response to léonie

Exactly. This has become an industry wide problem as more traditionally analog processes have moved into a digital realm. While digital brings a lot of compatibility for the final product (graphic and audio formats), the tools that led to the creation of the 1's and 0's are constantly changing how they work and don't always produce a zero where a one had previously been. I know several pro photographers who maintain multiple old machines, OS versions, and app versions for the purpose of recreating past work as it had been originally created.

When Aperture was in it's hey day I was always hesitant to click the "reprocess" button when a new app versionwas released, having learned from past disasters. Ever try to reprocess an image with lots of spot'n'patch adjustments? Ugh...

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Answer 10

léonie

Level 10

200,735 points

Aug 30, 2018 12:24 PM in response to CDC3

No more new Macs for me

Then you have to take very good care of your current mac. None of my newer macs lasted longer than five years. Only my good old PowerBook G4 has turned into a Methusalem and is still working and stuck in MacOS 10.5.

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Answer 11

John Purlia Author

Level 1

121 points

Aug 30, 2018 1:18 PM in response to léonie

I've had very good luck with my Macs. My original 1984 Mac still works, though I seldom turn it on, as does my 20th Anniversary Mac. Of my newer machines, my 2007 27" iMac, late 2009 white MacBook, and 2012 iMac all get a lot of use and work fine (though the MacBook battery is definitely on its last legs).

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Answer 12

Sep 30, 2018 8:20 PM in response to léonie

I am currently in a similar boat as John Purlía. I also wonder which OS is best before I can cease Aperture in my workflow at some more prepared point in the future. Because my old OS X doesn't support 16 GB of RAM on my new second hand computer, I will encounter - by updating the OS and Aperture - the dreadful "This image has to be reprocessed" dialog. So would it be possible to make a preset of the 'old' image first, start reprocessing the image and then apply the preset to the newly processed one? Doing so the visible change would be only the new RAW conversion, and I guess it will not change dramatically; minor compared to the other applied (heavy) adjustments. This will be a time consuming process - I fear - is there really now way that you can copy and paste those XML-files (where all these adjustments are stored)? By the way: Where are those XML-files stored anyway?

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Answer 13

Aug 26, 2018 1:28 PM in response to John Purlia

So far I have seen none of those.

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Answer 14

Aug 26, 2018 3:13 PM in response to John Purlia

While I am looking for a replacement for Aperture since Apple has dropped it, From the sounds of what you are saying it sounds like finding a replacement for it is even more important for you.

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Answer 15

CDC3

Level 1

4 points

Aug 30, 2018 12:19 PM in response to John Purlia

I am running Yosemite and have no plans to update it. No more new Macs for me. Aperture is to important!

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