Have you had a chance to try out some of the options out there? All the tools have trial periods, where you can test the software for a few weeks to check them out.

Before recommending you to switch to this or that my recommendation would be to really check all the alternatives out there and then make a decision.

It’s not that LR is the only option available to long time Aperture Users. When I was starting to move away from Aperture, I was pretty sure to end up with LR in the end and was totally surprised to find a different option, which not only feels a lot more like Aperture than LR but has also better image quality. I took both tools through a deep evaluation phase, was writing down all my Pro’s and Con’s to not forget something crucial and then made a decision in the end.

I think that we have to talk about the functions of Aperture that we use. First you say that your use managed originals. Thats fine. Further we know that LR will not take over all the adjustment we did with the rulers in Aperture. And C1 cannot either. As we can assume that many tools (first of all LR or C1) can do a good editing job then you come to the conclusion that it does not really matter to which tool you move to. Use the trial period then you know. On the other hand you say that in your club most members work with LR (I face exactly the same situation) then you must really question why NOT to move to LR. With any other tool you stand fully out in the green. Further with LR you have access to many videos ans tutorial in the web.

Finally hand we have to think of the other functions of Aperture that we might use: Keywords (maybe cascaded), faces, tags and stars. Do you use those? If not you’re fine. If you do use them then it gets tricky. In my case I am a heavy user of cascades keywords and faces. I do not know yet how to mange that.

As a migration path I imagine that I could export out of Aperture ALL my working copies that are fully edited as JPGs so that I have the final product available for viewing in the new too (I work with referenced files and exclusively with Canon CR2 RAWs).

As I am still very unsure I decided to wait. A colleague gave me a demo of LR5 and I was a bit disappointed with the brush tools. I ask myself why I have to make the move NOW. Is there any reason? I do not think so. Therefor I wait.

Hi Susan,

I made the move late last year,

Nikon abandoned Capture NX2, was my main editing software, then changed to Aperture, (I am all Apple as well), then Apple abandoned Aperture, that then encouraged me to make the push to a another software editing option

As mentioned above, unless your files are tiffs, all edits are lost and this can become a pain if you have a large library, I had all my current year managed and then referenced, I changed all images to referenced before the move and had a cloned drives of all the originals, used Carbon Copy Cloner

Just to be sure to be sure, I bought new drives and started afresh and imported images into lightroom as I gradually started up a library , by year then subfolders into type, Joseph is the expert on this, (I remember his teaching from his Aperture days), 

A few images that had a huge amount of edits, I changed to tiffs, to be honest, there was only one that really needed this as I soon found out later I could edit faster in LR

Once I had the images sorted into years and sub folders like landscape etc, I soon found out that once I had one image edited to what I was happy with, the new software made it easy to highlight a group of images and apply those edits very quickly

The other thing you will find is that learning the new software and starting over with editing, its a great way to learn the new software, although I have 8TB of images, still edited with the old software, although I lose the old edits on import, I’m finding doing a re-edit is not such a big deal, actually, I’m getting a better result second time around

lastly, I went for the Adobe CC $9.95 subscription plan, works a treat, don’t use PS that much but very handy when you have to do things that PS does best, like content aware fill for example, also, the new LR CC 2015, (LR6), has some new features I’m sure you will like, HDR and Panorama, reports so far are very encouraging, I haven’t had a chance to try the new tricks out

Glad I made the change,

Regards,

Gary

It seems to be a consensus that C1 delivers excellent image quality that is superior to LR and indeed to Aperture. As I wrote above I think that a move to C1 is the best move when you have the image quality as your first priority. When other criteria are important then it gets difficult: What to do with keywords, faces, tags etc? Intelligent albums? … . . Aperture was much more than just an editing tool.

Hi Susan

My situation is very close to yours. I have photos in both Aperture (mostly for camera club and personal use) and iPhoto (family).  I honestly thought I was going to be one of, if not the last, hold out on Aperture but decided to abandon that ship just about a month and 1/2 ago.  Although a lot of Aperture users here have decided to go to Capture one I decided to go with LR.  For me it wasn’t that I had anything against Capture one (I honestly didn’t even try it).  My reason for going to Adobe CC was that I didn’t want to get into another situation where there was basically one website with training on the program I choose.  I’m sure there are a few with tutorials on C1 but no where near as many as for LR.  This was my personal choice and it certainly wouldn’t be right for everyone.  Although Aperture was by far the best at managing a photo collection LR in my opinion blows it away when it comes to editing.  I never believed it but now that I’ve tried it I believe it.  I own the Nik plugins and don’t find myself having to use them nearly as much as before.  I still miss Aperture’s DAM and I’m still upset that Apple abandoned it.  I have to be honest it feels really good to be using a program that is adding features (something we were all waiting for from Apple).  I wish Nik would take note of this too.

I’m not going to lie it took me most of the month under the free trial to figure out the Library module (and honestly the whole module concept.  Tabs are so much easier).  I still miss being able to add a smart album right off an album but I’d getting used to it.  I put in a lot of late nights watching tutorials on LR.

There is a TON of free and paid training on LR (Kelby, Lynda, Youtube).  I just really love the editing ability of LR.  I think that is where Aperture really lagged behind in the last couple of years (I had such high hopes after WWDC last year).

I converted all of my iPhoto’s over to new Photo app and will continue to use that for family photos.  We don’t edit those much and basically use it to organize them.

My conversion over to LR has been very slow but that has been on purpose.  I’m exporting each project one by one into a folder and then adding them into LR.  Slow process but I’ve decided to change the way I organize my photos so it makes the most sense to me.  I’m also deleting a lot of photos while I go through the process.  Since I edited a lot of my photos in Nik plugins those come over already processed.  For the rest I will go back and try to re-edit them using LR.  Something I’m actually looking forward to getting the time to do.

I have two Aperture libraries and are moving them to external drive for storage once I’ve moved them over to LR.  I store all my photos on my main drive (3.1TB iMac with fusion drive).  I still have 1 TB left so I’m not planning on moving to external drive until I have too.  For me this is the easiest way to back up.  I backup through time machine and clone with SuperDuper (one on site and one off).  I’m hoping Apple introduces a 5TB 5K imac before I run out of space. Come on Apple don’t let me down again.

This certainly isn’t going to be the best path for everyone, I just thought I’d share my story with you.

The original post from Susan could have been written by me - Mirrors what I was exactly. When I bought a MFT Olympus & Aperture was never going to be able to import my ORF raw files I tried LR5 as a trial. The learning curve was just a steep as when I started with Aperture, maybe a good bit easier because there are more free tutorials for LR than you could ever possible view. I started with a clean sheet only ‘importing’ new stuff not any APT libraries & watched Christine Kost free video’s. Terrific.

Now this last week I have decided on the subscription of $10/mnth for PS & LR CC. Bargain! Oh I’m still a committed Mac user but PSE & LR on my MBP is the fastest editing I have ever had AND my photo’s are kept where I put them not in an obscure Library file. I dint realize how inconvenient that was until I didn’t need it!

There has been much angst over Apple’s photo decisions but there is no way back, they decided numbers were for them not photographers who want serious editing. In passing I wonder in one day their will be raw capability on an iPhone. Other smartphones are already looking at it. Then what for Photo’s app.

I think Susan makes an excellent point about being in a community and that driving the choice of a tool that might otherwise otherwise be regarded as second-best. I can’t tell her what to do, but I’m trying to get people to talk about images and tonality which is the fundamental thing we’re after surely? Isn’t the point that the image needs, say, a bit of a a boost in the shadows, or toning down a bit here or whatever? The fact that that means pressing Cmd-Option-R in one piece of software or Shift-Option-P in another is surely irrelevant. With a well-designed piece of software it shouldn’t be that hard to work out which button to press.

But I do feel the pain. While I will probably go Capture One I have a good friend who will likely follow me and I am nervous about isolating her from others. But my mind is (almost) made up and as I say I will put my effort into understanding what needs to be done to make an image great (and outside of advertising photography and camera clubs that’s 90% pre-capture) and as for post-processing concentrate on the 9% that is image evaluation and deciding what changes are required, and take my chances with the 1%! 

I’ve not even got as far as downloading the trials yet, but I’m looking at videos and support communities and spotting features it would be difficult to live without before I jump.

Finally, a brilliant community has formed here (PhotosExpert) so whichever way you jump you won’t go wrong!