Have you tried dragging and dropping photos from LR to Photos? If not drag them from LR to desktop then desktop to Photos? Careful though - I’m using Capture One Pro and it moved the originals, whoops! But there must be a way of setting up exports to a temporary folder that you then drag into Photos.
I’m not sure how heavy a user of Elements you are - but have you considered using Photos + Snapseed and keeping it all in the cloud? That said Snapseed 2 is iOS only at the moment.
Another possibility is using Flickr - now greatly improved by the addition of a timeline - and the Mac uploader. That’s my preferred route for having access to all content on all my devices.
Suggest you play with the options for now - there’s no reason to hurry out and Capture One (and no doubt Adobe too) is falling over itself to make its product a suitable replacement for Aperture, so the later you leave it the cheaper and better!
I have to confess to having an on-off affair with Capture One since version 4 and have withered for ages about whether to jump ship from Aperture or not. I am now on C1 8, which I love for its conversions. It is certainly true that its catalogue function is not on a par with Aperture’s, especially in its handling of keywords. I actually find the drag and drop method of keyword application pretty straightforward (it was something I liked in Media Pro). However, the killer is that there is no way to batch remove erroneous keywords. On the plus side, it does ingest Aperture libraries. It has some strengths as well, such as being able to have more than one catalogue open at a time (if you need this). Still there is no doubt that at the moment (it is only at v2 of its catalogue function) C1 8 doesn’t stack up to Aperture’s flexibility. It also doesn’t link into the Apple ecosystem as well; so, I think that there is likely to be a recurring need for something like Photos or Aperture to handle this seamlessly.
Like one or two others I have moved to using Photo Supreme as my DAM. It too can ingest Aperture catalogues. It has very strong rewording features. It does take a little while to get used to after Aperture. The interface isn’t as smooth and the documentation is sparse although there is a very helpful user form and the developer is very active in sorting problems out. The bits I like about this app are that:
1. Metadata is written to XML, so it is portable with your images.
2. You can specify any number of external editors to send the image files to for development so you are not locked into a sole source provider. For instance, I can use Iridient Developer and Capture One from the app, and you could therefore use the most appropriate develop app with each camera (or even the OEM’s developer).
3. It is actively developed (at least two updates this year so far, from memory, possibly more).
I am not a subscriber of the one stop shop theory for photo apps any more. Too many eggs in one basket. Use the right tool for the right job.
Another thought: maybe not transferring edits of your best shots is an advantage - it frees you to reinterpret them (take a baked version of your previous attempt as a back up)
Thanks for starting this thread. I have already learned a lot and am just beginning to test some Aperture alternatives.
My aim is to preserve as much of my Aperture workflow as possible but also to see how I might also use Photos for OS X.
My current workflow is to import all new images into Aperture as managed, then after editing, keyboarding etc to move all images to a referenced location in order to keep the size of the Aperture library small.
I am currently trialling Capture One and to keep the Aperture and CO environments completely separate I exported a year’s worth of images into a new Aperture Library called COtest with the original Raw images copied into it.
I then imported COtest into Capture One as a new catalog.
The good news is that I can use my Aperture workflow as above including using two screens, one for browsing and controls and the other for full screen images.
Some things like keywording appear clunky compared to Aperture but I was not expecting a perfect match.
All the referenced images from Aperture remain referenced in CO and they “live” inside COtest as MASTERS so if I were to continue in this mode then COtest must be preserved.
I also tried importing and editing some images as managed and moving them to a different, referenced location leaving COtest alone for the old referenced stuff.
So far so good.
If however I decide to pay for CO then I would expect to import my entire Aperture library into a CO catalog so that I could preserve the projects and albums etc.
The CO website makes it very clear that this is a one time move and that continuing to use the Aperture library using Aperture would probably end in tears. This is because CO would ”own” the Aperture library as its source for the references originals and it would be wise not to change from outside CO.
I was hoping that I could run Aperture and CO side by side for a few months while I learn CO but I can’t think of a way to achieve this. Suggestions would be very welcome.
Then I started thinking about playing with Photos. As I have learned from this site Photos will hard link to the Aperture Library so will also think that it owns it.
The thought of Aperture, Photos and CO all thinking that the own my poor Aperture library makes my brain hurt.
Maybe there is some simple way of running three parallel environments by suitably copying libraries and referenced files but I have not found one yet. There would be no problem if all the programs were started from a clean slate but I would like both Photos and CO to inherit my Aperture file structure and metadata.
Maybe my ideal world is not possible but at least I now understand where referenced images will live in the CO and Photos worlds. I hope that this might be useful to others.
Have you tried exporting an Aperture library with referenced images into C1? I believe that it should retain the reference and import the metadata. If this works then you could run parallel Aperture and C1 libraries/catalogues using one set of images. I have to say that I haven’t tried this.
I have just set up a new Aperture library with some referenced images and imported it into CO.
As you thought, CO did the right thing and copied the file structure, albums etc from the Aperture library and used the referenced images in place.
Now as long as neither Aperture nor CO makes any changes to the referenced file then they can coexist. Any new images in either program should be managed, or referenced in new locations.
Great. I can live with that and if Photos works the same way then I can live with that too.
So far I am happy with what CO does but I am missing the smooth intuitive interface of Aperture. I am going to have to learn to live with that.
I too have experimented with this. The result is that everything works as expected as long as all the image files to be imported are readable by CO. The catch is that CO does not read images that are less than 500 x 500 px and there are possible issues if they are jpg or tiff. My experience has been that CO chokes when creating previews if there is folder in the library being imported that has an image in it that does not conform to CO’s requirements.
Dave-D’s idea about new images introduced after import of a library being stored either as managed or in a different location makes sense. As both applications do non destructive edits the referenced file should not be affected. As for Photos edits would be quarantined in the application they were carried out in. However some care would be required when importing new images to override CO’s default import settings although I would hope that CO would adopt the previous location for on going imports.
I think you could use the sync folder command in C1 and the find referenced images command in Aperture to manage unintended modification of the image folders.
The next thing to do with C1 is to customise your workspace so that you have just what you want where you want it. One tip I saw in a webinar (have you signed up for the webinars and seen the back catalogue?) was to take everything away and just add back the tools that you most commonly use to declutter the workspace.
It has taken a bit of time, but I find that I can get where I want to quicker with C1 now than I can with Aperture. However, it hasn’t a patch on Aperture for linking to the wider ecosphere.
To me, C1 feels closer to the “Aperture brain” than Lightroom, for a number of reasons.
However, at the points where it falls short, it falls WAY short of what I have and need.
1. Keywording in C1 is a joke. I think iPhoto has more functionality here. There’s no database-managed, global keyword list. I’ve read on the C1 forums that they are stored in a preferences file (.txt), this says it all.
2. No stacking of DIFFERENT master images, only stacking of versions (“variants”) of one master. This is huge. This means you can’t autostack based on the EXIF timer or stack otherwise totally unrelated images. So C1’s stacking is more an intelligent handling of versions, that’s all.
Folks: I read all of these posts about alternative work flows and I am overwhelmed–in the best sense of the word. So many valuable insights by so many of you who put in a lot of time to tell the Aperture community what you are finding. For that I say thanks, A big thanks,
I also am overwhelmed in another sense. Look at what so many are doing—trying to find a workflow that ‘just works’. Trying to meld at least 2 programs to manage photos. Trying to meld at least 2 programs to do what Aperture does.
It’s hard to believe that the ‘user community’ is trying to make sense of various tools of the ‘coder community’. All of this to do 2 things. Manage and edit photos.
So let me try one more time: Apple, please–what are you thinking? Surely there is a way to satisfy your need to satisfy the big universe of users out there who have no interest or time to invest in Aperture. And surely there is a way to do that and make the profit margin from such a focus–WITHOUT abandoning Aperture?
Like others, I’m very impressed by the contributions on this topic.
I’ve been putting off thinking about the process of moving from Aperture, partly in the hope that Photos will come good, but also because of the sheer amount of work in transferring one’s library, metadata and hopefully not dropping something in the process.
I have a copy of LightRoom 4 which I acquired when doing a photography course, but which I only really used during the course rather than for my day to day use. I’ve not updated yet to LR5 (and probably will now wait for the assumed impending LR6). Like others in this thread, while there are aspects of LR that I really like in the Develop module, the DAM aspects seem weak.
I’m not a very advanced user of Aperture, but I do use a lot of plug-ins - Topaz, onOne, Nik, and, recently, I’ve become a convert to DxO. I fear that it may be a while before we see these types of plug-in available for Photos, and so I’m becoming resigned to move to LightRoom. For the past several years most of my images have been geotagged (not in camera, but using HoudahGeo to relate to my handheld GPS trails, or manually). While I do keyword, I have not been very consistent and so that is something I probably need to clean up. I do star rate images and use a lot of albums/smart albums for selecting subsets of images for sharing, etc. I tend to shoot RAW+JPEG so will have to face that challenge.
I have to say that PhotoSupreme looks interesting, but I can’t help feeling that there are advantages to being in the “main stream” Adobe community. Capture 1 would seem too expensive for my purposes, and the Media product from C1 (the old iView) seems to have quite a lot of negative comments in the C1 forums.
So, from my point of view, I’m resigned to having a major upheaval and moving my images (a bit under 30,000 at the moment). I shall continue to monitor this thread and forum to learn from the experience of the community.
I wonder whether we have all been seduced over the past several years by the attraction of combining asset management with non-destructive editing?
The asset management part is an intuitively simple process, although sophisticated in implementation. Essentially it is the construction of a database. As was noted in another reply in this or another thread, Aperture, Lightroom and Capture One implement their databases with similar underlying technology but a different structure with differing numbers of tables and indices. There are many open source tools that do similar (I even wrote my own database years ago for cataloguing my analogue film images). The differences tend to be in the flexibility of keywords and indexing, the user interfaces and the performance. Being able to scroll smoothly through thousands of thumbnails of images in a database requires some careful design and implementation. Exporting images from an asset management system and importing in to another should not be too difficult if the destination tool has reasonable representations for all of the attributes held in the source tool.
However, add non-destructive editing to this and things become much more locked down and difficult. The actual representations of the edits will vary between products and outside of any open-source offering, are going to be proprietary (and reflect the “secret sauce” of the implementor). The best we can hope for is the ability to output additional processed images as baked JPEGs/TIFFs/PSDs in additional to our originals and hope that the destination tool sensibly allows us to “stack” these images with the originals.
While non-destructive editing has been a boon to save space, it leaves us entirely dependent on the tool doing the editing. For any proper archiving, one needs to output a full resolution image with the edits applied - probably as a PSD, TIFF or other format that is lossless in its compression and for which there are reasonable guarantees that the format is not going to fade away in the near term.
The dam/editor may be able to import and export adjustments from app to another if they both support XMP import/export. Aperture does not which would make moving photos to Lightrrom or Darktable difficult.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
I took a look at Aftershot Pro and have decided to ignore it.
I went on their chat line and asked if ASP would read aperture libraries. It took a 10 minute wait while he consulted someone – answer: No. Nor did the documentation show that there was any other way. Indeed the documentation on their web site is not very good.
The second reason I’m ignoring ASP is that it’s Corel. Back in the Bad Old Days I remember Corel coming out with Corel Paint 5.0 then CP 6.0 All versions ended in point zero. All were buggy. You exchanged one set of bugs for a different set of bugs. The annoyance factor was such that the program was just barely useful.
Corel bought Word Perfect. And abandoned it. The apparent indifference to quality control, and the lack of committment to long term answers is troubling to me.
PhotoSupreme is on my short list. PSu (PS is taken…)
1. They claim to use open standards. If I decide to move to another package my meta data is safe.
2. They have a product for both Winsnooze and Mac. While this doesn’t mean they will continue to support Mac, the overall practice is there. And if they have to code for both platforms a Mac Upgrade is less likely to screw the pooch.
3. PSu reads aperture libraries.
4. Scriptable. This gives me some optimism for add-ons.
5. Can index PDF files too. So potential to catalog all those pesky pdf documents that have alphabet soup names.
6. Server edition available. Probably won’t use it, but it gives another reason to expect long term usability.
7. Minimum standard. The present version runs on Snow Leopard and up. This is the intelligent way to write software. Don’t use the new features of the new OS unless necessary.
8. Active forum
Downsides:
1. Manual doesn’t seem to be online from their website.
2. They sell a bunch of other image processing pics – “Pimp My Picture” ”Photo Glamour” ”Film Noir” ”PhotoSplash” IDsizer Not clear how tightly integrated they are, but they give the company as a whole a cheesy flavour.
Been testing Photo Supreme. Very solid program. Imports smart albums, lots of granularity in searches, Integrates easily with image processors. The other programs seem to be quick money makers as they are all sold for around $10 at the MacAPstore. The developer is very committed to this program. I’ve been working with the developer (Hert). He is very quick to respond. I’m purchasing a copy in the next week. Download the trial. Any questions – email support
I downloaded PhotoSupreme to try it. But it crashes for me every time I started it (with a nasty dialog). After five attempts, I removed it. But you might have better luck ;)
I thought I would post a copy from my blog which covers the transition period that I have experienced. Copy follows :-
“ Apple, in their wisdom, have decided not to continue support for their photo editing software “Aperture”. They are, however, looking to further develop Photo within their software packages. It would seem that the general feeling, from present users of Aperture, is that this will not be a suitable product and is unlikely to offer the same level of editing power or control.
My thoughts, since hearing of the changes, have been varied. At the beginning I found it hard to understand such a decision. I then read as many articles on the subject as I could find. Seeking the thoughts of others via blogs or simply by magazine articles. I made sure that I covered both the pro and the anti positions. Some were no more than impassioned pleas to Apple to think again. Others were more enlightened.
My feelings moved through many stages from “do nothing, bury my head and all will be OK” to “stop using Aperture with immediate effect”. In the end I realised that Aperture was not going to vanish and will remain with us for a good time yet, although not supported by upgrades etc.
Anyone with an extensive library within Aperture will be fine and can continue to enjoy working within the software. A stance which I took. However, that didn’t mean I wasn’t looking for a sensible alternative and effective method of transferring my library out.
At this point I realised that most of the “talk” used words like “transfer” and “export” files “out of” your “existing library”. To me this subconsciously meant a move or change that was only one way and once taken you could not go back. I suppose it was because I was too close to what was going to happen. The truth is that nothing is going to happen to your original library. It remains exactly as it is and can continue to be used exactly as before.
With these new thoughts I decided that I could set up an independent file structure without the need to know or have another software in place. This made things so very much easier. The task of setting this up took a relatively short time (dependant upon the size of the library) overnight in my case.
So with my mind clear of the worry in file transfers etc I was able to think about a replacement software. My initial choice was Adobe Lightroom but for some reason, known only to Adobe, their software would not run on my system. I believe many others have had similar problems. However, I think this was all in my favour as I found another package that more suited my need to edit RAW files. Capture One Pro 8 by Phase One was my choice. I have been running it for a few days now and have imported (linked to) my library with no trouble at all. I certainly feel that the clarity in each photo is sharper and more vibrant than within Aperture. Obviously there are many differences but as with most new things one just needs a little time and patience.
I realise this post is likely to have a limited audience. However, if it helps just one person it will have been worth while.”
Barry is correct. Aperture won’t stop working. And you probably don’t have to upgrade your Mac.
It becomes an issue when you get a new camera, and you use raw. This can come on you suddenly if you camera gets stolen or drowns, or it can be a pre-planned event. Cameras with identical raw file formats can be still used with some tweaks to the camera raw plist file, but this isn’t that common.
Aperture serves two functions. As I search for possible replacements, I realize that finding both functions in the same software is less likely.
Aperture is firstly a catalog program that allows you to assign keywords, fill metadata fields. It has a bunch of different ways to make groups of pictures (Albums, projects, stacks, versions)
From looking at other people’s comments, C1 is not strong as a DAM tool. I briefly looked at it, but so far will wait. 95% of my photography is not very demanding, and most commonly I use Apertures Levels and Crop, and that is about it.
Aperture is also an image editing program. I don’t use this feature much, but many do.
C1 sounds like it is good at this.
As is common with a tool that does multiple things, it doesn’t do either of them *really* well. But we get used to the flaws.
Things I wish that Aperture did better:
* Manage versions better. I want to have ‘versions’ that are different pixel sizes. E.g. One master image, and 6 different sizes of web version. And aperture knows that they started with the same image.
* Faceted metadata. I want to be able to search for people whose name begins with smith, and not find towns or streets that begin with smith.
* Better support for the keyword hierarchy. I now have 500 keywords, and even with hierarchies it’s awkward to find the right one. I want to type Spruce and have it present me with a a choice of Trees/Conifers/Spruce/Colorado_Spruce Trees/Conifers/Spruce/White_Spruce… rather than hunt and click.
* Better support for external editors. I wish that it knew that when I said “Edit in Photoshop” that it recognized that the resulting file was a ‘version’ of the image that went out. Aperture normally considers a version to be a set of edits on a single master. It needs a new word for derivative images. that are not a list of edits, but share a common origin.
Different people will have different wishes, and perhaps there are add ons that can do this.
I believe that earlier or later we all will migrate to LR. All other programs do not seem to cover all the functions that Aperture covered.
I lost a bit the interest in reading all the long and demanding posts. Most probably I will wait and continue with Aperture. At a certain moment (maybe with the after next successor of Yosemite I will have to make a forced move. Concerning the import of RAWs of future cameras I have no fear as with Apple the Information about RAWs is in the Operating System and not within Aperture.
What I use of Aperture for (about 30’000 photographs):
- Import of RAWs (referenced files) from my 5D Mk III or former cameras
- Crop (sometimes to specific sizes according to needs), Level, Sharpening, Colours etc.
- Noise reduction (if necessary)
- Brushes (sometimes complex things)
- Assigning Faces
- Assigning Keywords ( I have used cascaded keywords not just one single level)
- Assigning stars
- Assigning places (sometimes using the external GPS receiver on my cam)
- Searching for photographs by using faces, keywords and/or stars (maybe by the use of intelligent albums)
- Exporting photographs in different qualities
What I fear most is the fact that I might loose the information of faces, keywords and stars. The possible loss of the places I consider the least issue.
Over many years I took the assignment of faces, keywords, stars and places very, very serious. Only by consequently using this kind of Metadata I was enabled to quickly find needed photographs at any time across al my 30’000 pics. Of course, within Aperture I have sorted my imports the same way as in the finder, i.e. by month/year and maybe within these categories by main events if needed.
So far I have been testing C1 by importing subsets on my Aperture library to speed things up a bit.
I have now tried importing from my ( backed up ) working Aperture library of nearly 10,000 images.
It took about 10 minutes to import the library as catalog and about another 2 hours to build the previews.
Only two issues. The first is that I make extensive use of albums which are mainly in a set of folders in Aperture.
C1 only imported the small number of albums which were not in folders.
It looks as if I will have to take the albums out of the folders in Aperture, re import, then put them into groups in C1.
Tedious! and I am not looking forward to it but I suppose that I will only have to do it once.
The other problem is that precisely 40 images were rejected by C1 as being incompatible. There is no quick way of identifying which 40 did not make it but I had my suspicions about some images which were round tripped to DxO using Catapult.
I deleted these images in Aperture and tried importing again, and again I got precisely 40 rejected images . There was no doubt that some at least of the DxO images were among the rejected the first time so I would have expected to see less than 40 rejections the second time.
I suppose that 40 images is a small percentage but it would have helped to have a report on which images and I am concerned that the number 40 is not a coincidence.
Barry is right that things would be simpler with a an import from an established data base but then I would have to re keyword and re album thousands of photos.
Can any LR enthusiast comment on the Adobe import from Aperture process?
I am not a profesional photographer so I have not yet had a need to use IPTC metadata.
The only metadata I use is exif information from the camera and keywords, stars etc which I add in Aperture.
So far I have found that keywords, stars and colour labels transfer to C1 using the import catalog from Aperture command.
Stacks are transferred as long as they are from one original image.
The folder structure from of the referenced files which I set up using Aperture is exactly copied into C1 with the exception of a small number of missing files. I propose to ignore this problem so that I can concentrate the remainder of my free trial on checking out the C! adjustments. I know that the missing files are amongst my referenced files since they show up in Aperture so I can track them down later.
Only albums which are not in folders in Aperture are transferred. Fixing this will be tedious but not difficult.
At the moment I feel that there are no showstoppers for me in moving to C1.
There are some irritations and some things to re learn but I am hoping that I will be so impressed by the adjustments that I will stop grieving about how much nicer Aperture’s workflow was.
” It ain’t what you do its the way that you do it. And that’s what gets results”
I’m not going to move my Library. I’m going to wait until Aperture dies (5-7 years for me). then after that, i will import it into Photos and start using Darktable with a fresh new library.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
If, as you say, you’re going to start “with a fresh library” in Darktable whilst in the meantime continue using Aperture for as long as possible with your present library. May I suggest you consider the following -
1) continue as you say with your existing photos in Aperture - but don’t add any new ones - this way you don’t add to your library therefore increasing the size for future exporting.
2) you start using your new system as soon as possible and create that new library with all new images.
This way you actually hedge your bets on when and how you change. The advantage will be that you gain knowledge and experience with your new software.
Also, I have no intention of using iCloud Photo Library. When the time comes and I import my Aperture library into Photos, I will only use Photos for the old legacy photos and use Darktable with a fresh library moving forward.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
Folks: permit me once again to say thank you to so many valuable insights from individuals who are reporting back on their experience testing alternatives to Aperture. The information you are sharing is extraordinarily helpful. And the insights some bring about the history of a particular application is also enlightening–for example, the ownership changes, last update, whether an app appears to have been abandoned for whatever reason. All very helpful. Thanks.
I am not moving to another program until it is absolutely impossible to run Aperture. This means that I won’t upgrade, until forced, to a version of OS X under which Aperture will not run. Stipulating that Joeseph is right that Apple will not reconsider it decision to terminate Aperture, they still might consider adding the features to Photos that would satisfy long-time Aperture users. Maybe we should take them to that task? It may be worth remembering that when Apple first removed Firewire from MacBooks, widespread discontent did move them to delay that for awhile. I am just now finally getting over the loss.
A large number of requests for Aperture-compatible features to be added to Photos might very well benefit us.
FWIW. Like many of you I’m trying to figure out what to do. I have downloaded trial copies of Capture One and a Lightroom. After doing some testing on each of them as well as Aperture,.I have come to the conclusion after comparing some SOOC pictures with each of them that CaptureOne definitely has the best RAW converter of the three. Aperture and lightlight room are about equal but both are not are not as good as CaptureOnes converter. There is better dynamic range and more detail. That can’t be the only factor and switching to one or the other but it is a significant a significant one.
I’m done with my evaluation and are currently migrating my whole Aperture library to Capture One because of this: RAW image quality. At the end of the day, its all about the pictures.
Second reason why I won’t be going the Lightroom route is its interface, which totally ignores any advances and research made in the last 20 years in terms of user interface design. There are no floating windows at all, there is no useful dual screen support and you can’t adjust ANYTHING to your own preference and workflow (oh, not correct: you can put in your own logo and you can change the AWESOME “end marks” marking the end of the panels! Fantastic, Adobe! Could you please switch the panels to the other side, because I’m left-handed? Oh, not possible. Ok, well…).
Second class image quality paired with a hair-raising user interface is enough for me.
I’m with you on this. I will be moving to Capture One.
I’m not going to continue to wring my hands about Aperture’s DAM. No matter what anybody decides to do there are going to be adjustments to what you’re used to. We’re all going to have to deal with change. Apple screwed us, let’s face the facts. Whether Photos is ever worth much is debatable but to wait 1, 2, or 3 years to find out is ridiculous. By then whatever option you choose will be second nature and Apple will be in the rear view mirror.
I found that using the library was a bit of a struggle at first. There is nothing intuitive about it. You just have to fully understand the functions of Catalogs,Folders, Albums, Groups and Projects. Then you need to memorise or write down exactly what you have to do to put your actual and virtual copies of images in the right place.
Then you have to think very hard if you want to move, remove or delete images.
However I was half way through the trial period before I began to master this stuff. After a few months of use I will probably be as proficient as I was with Aperture.
I would strongly recommend creating some small managed Aperture libraries, exported from the real thing, then imported into C1, and just playing around to see what happens.
This way the real thing is kept safe and you can experiment with creating your preferred workflow with no consequences if ( when ) you screw up completely as I did many times.
Things that I like:-
Total customisation of workspaces including excellent use of dual monitors.
Different workspaces for different jobs will make using a single screen on a laptop much easier.
Both managed and referenced libraries just like Aperture.
Importing images from Aperture generates previews which interpret the adjustments made in Aperture with pretty good results.
I am pleased that all the professional reviews I have read report better raw conversion by C1 than Aperture or LR.
Comprehensive and easy to use perspective controls.
I am still exploring all the adjustment functions and so far things look pretty good.
Things I don’t like:-
No ability to adjust time of shooting or GPS location
Clumsy Keywording compared to Aperture
Er….Thats just about it. (Once I have got used to using the library of course)
Please Phase One, if any body is following these posts, just copy the way that Aperture handles Keywords and GPS. I am sure that the nice folks at Apple will be too busy playing with their watches to notice.
I agree with your comments especially the “don’t like” list. Interesting that it’s only two, however, having been using C1 for a few weeks now I confirm that is just about the sum total. Perhaps it’s more to do with C1 is aimed at professionals and therefore concentrates on workspaces and it’s editing qualities.
For me its Photo Supreme as a DAM (reads Aperture libraries) and C1 (and occasionally Iridient) as a developer (e.g Iridient for my ancient Sigma DP2 and maybe my Fuji images). Both PS and C1 allow you to keep images in your existing Aperture libraries. Once ingested into PS, I have found that PS metadata changes can be recognised by C1 (the ‘reload metadata’ command).
Forgot to add that I also do initial filtering/selection in PS and then send the selects to C1 for editing - you get a smaller and more nimble C1 catalogue that way.
@Andrew I too am trying to get the Photo Supreme and C1 combination to work.
Initially I was dissuaded as the color rendition of files edited in C1 was not accurate enough in PSu, so I am now testing with converting to TIFF and reimporting to PSu. Far from ideal but a solution.
However, I am having some problems in that any Sony files opened in Capture One (with or without editing) and exported as TIFF or JPG, appear to lose camera information in the meta data. I am using the full version of C1 version 7.2.3 and not the Sony version, which I believe is free.
Maybe this could this be due to the set-up in C1? I think I have exhausted all combinations in the Preferences> Image> Metadata fields.
Thanks. I’m looking for another user of both programs. What results do YOU get when importing an image into Photo Supreme that has been edited in Capture One?
I’ve just checked the metadata from some photos that I processed in C1 and then imported into PS. The EXIF camera data is missing, but the lens type is still recorded, but not the actual f-stop etc. When I imported the same files into Aperture there was no problem in seeing all the data. The data also seems to show up in Media Pro as well and in Perfect Browser.
Since I don’t routinely search metadata for EXIF information (although I have used smart albums in C1 to segregate shots by-lines type), this hasn’t been a problem for me. It does cause me to take stock of my current solution before I go too far down the road. I might go to a sessions/catalogue approach in C1, now I have cracked geotagging files using a 3rd party app.
Hi Katie
Have you tried dragging and dropping photos from LR to Photos? If not drag them from LR to desktop then desktop to Photos? Careful though - I’m using Capture One Pro and it moved the originals, whoops! But there must be a way of setting up exports to a temporary folder that you then drag into Photos.
I’m not sure how heavy a user of Elements you are - but have you considered using Photos + Snapseed and keeping it all in the cloud? That said Snapseed 2 is iOS only at the moment.
Another possibility is using Flickr - now greatly improved by the addition of a timeline - and the Mac uploader. That’s my preferred route for having access to all content on all my devices.
Suggest you play with the options for now - there’s no reason to hurry out and Capture One (and no doubt Adobe too) is falling over itself to make its product a suitable replacement for Aperture, so the later you leave it the cheaper and better!
d.
d.
Coming a bit late to this conversation …
I have to confess to having an on-off affair with Capture One since version 4 and have withered for ages about whether to jump ship from Aperture or not. I am now on C1 8, which I love for its conversions. It is certainly true that its catalogue function is not on a par with Aperture’s, especially in its handling of keywords. I actually find the drag and drop method of keyword application pretty straightforward (it was something I liked in Media Pro). However, the killer is that there is no way to batch remove erroneous keywords. On the plus side, it does ingest Aperture libraries. It has some strengths as well, such as being able to have more than one catalogue open at a time (if you need this). Still there is no doubt that at the moment (it is only at v2 of its catalogue function) C1 8 doesn’t stack up to Aperture’s flexibility. It also doesn’t link into the Apple ecosystem as well; so, I think that there is likely to be a recurring need for something like Photos or Aperture to handle this seamlessly.
Like one or two others I have moved to using Photo Supreme as my DAM. It too can ingest Aperture catalogues. It has very strong rewording features. It does take a little while to get used to after Aperture. The interface isn’t as smooth and the documentation is sparse although there is a very helpful user form and the developer is very active in sorting problems out. The bits I like about this app are that:
1. Metadata is written to XML, so it is portable with your images.
2. You can specify any number of external editors to send the image files to for development so you are not locked into a sole source provider. For instance, I can use Iridient Developer and Capture One from the app, and you could therefore use the most appropriate develop app with each camera (or even the OEM’s developer).
3. It is actively developed (at least two updates this year so far, from memory, possibly more).
I am not a subscriber of the one stop shop theory for photo apps any more. Too many eggs in one basket. Use the right tool for the right job.
Another thought: maybe not transferring edits of your best shots is an advantage - it frees you to reinterpret them (take a baked version of your previous attempt as a back up)
Andrew Macnaughton
Thanks for starting this thread. I have already learned a lot and am just beginning to test some Aperture alternatives.
My aim is to preserve as much of my Aperture workflow as possible but also to see how I might also use Photos for OS X.
My current workflow is to import all new images into Aperture as managed, then after editing, keyboarding etc to move all images to a referenced location in order to keep the size of the Aperture library small.
I am currently trialling Capture One and to keep the Aperture and CO environments completely separate I exported a year’s worth of images into a new Aperture Library called COtest with the original Raw images copied into it.
I then imported COtest into Capture One as a new catalog.
The good news is that I can use my Aperture workflow as above including using two screens, one for browsing and controls and the other for full screen images.
Some things like keywording appear clunky compared to Aperture but I was not expecting a perfect match.
All the referenced images from Aperture remain referenced in CO and they “live” inside COtest as MASTERS so if I were to continue in this mode then COtest must be preserved.
I also tried importing and editing some images as managed and moving them to a different, referenced location leaving COtest alone for the old referenced stuff.
So far so good.
If however I decide to pay for CO then I would expect to import my entire Aperture library into a CO catalog so that I could preserve the projects and albums etc.
The CO website makes it very clear that this is a one time move and that continuing to use the Aperture library using Aperture would probably end in tears. This is because CO would ”own” the Aperture library as its source for the references originals and it would be wise not to change from outside CO.
I was hoping that I could run Aperture and CO side by side for a few months while I learn CO but I can’t think of a way to achieve this. Suggestions would be very welcome.
Then I started thinking about playing with Photos. As I have learned from this site Photos will hard link to the Aperture Library so will also think that it owns it.
The thought of Aperture, Photos and CO all thinking that the own my poor Aperture library makes my brain hurt.
Maybe there is some simple way of running three parallel environments by suitably copying libraries and referenced files but I have not found one yet. There would be no problem if all the programs were started from a clean slate but I would like both Photos and CO to inherit my Aperture file structure and metadata.
Maybe my ideal world is not possible but at least I now understand where referenced images will live in the CO and Photos worlds. I hope that this might be useful to others.
Have you tried exporting an Aperture library with referenced images into C1? I believe that it should retain the reference and import the metadata. If this works then you could run parallel Aperture and C1 libraries/catalogues using one set of images. I have to say that I haven’t tried this.
Andrew Macnaughton
Thanks for the suggestion Andrew.
I have just set up a new Aperture library with some referenced images and imported it into CO.
As you thought, CO did the right thing and copied the file structure, albums etc from the Aperture library and used the referenced images in place.
Now as long as neither Aperture nor CO makes any changes to the referenced file then they can coexist. Any new images in either program should be managed, or referenced in new locations.
Great. I can live with that and if Photos works the same way then I can live with that too.
So far I am happy with what CO does but I am missing the smooth intuitive interface of Aperture. I am going to have to learn to live with that.
I too have experimented with this. The result is that everything works as expected as long as all the image files to be imported are readable by CO. The catch is that CO does not read images that are less than 500 x 500 px and there are possible issues if they are jpg or tiff. My experience has been that CO chokes when creating previews if there is folder in the library being imported that has an image in it that does not conform to CO’s requirements.
Dave-D’s idea about new images introduced after import of a library being stored either as managed or in a different location makes sense. As both applications do non destructive edits the referenced file should not be affected. As for Photos edits would be quarantined in the application they were carried out in. However some care would be required when importing new images to override CO’s default import settings although I would hope that CO would adopt the previous location for on going imports.
I think you could use the sync folder command in C1 and the find referenced images command in Aperture to manage unintended modification of the image folders.
The next thing to do with C1 is to customise your workspace so that you have just what you want where you want it. One tip I saw in a webinar (have you signed up for the webinars and seen the back catalogue?) was to take everything away and just add back the tools that you most commonly use to declutter the workspace.
It has taken a bit of time, but I find that I can get where I want to quicker with C1 now than I can with Aperture. However, it hasn’t a patch on Aperture for linking to the wider ecosphere.
Andrew Macnaughton
To me, C1 feels closer to the “Aperture brain” than Lightroom, for a number of reasons.
However, at the points where it falls short, it falls WAY short of what I have and need.
1. Keywording in C1 is a joke. I think iPhoto has more functionality here. There’s no database-managed, global keyword list. I’ve read on the C1 forums that they are stored in a preferences file (.txt), this says it all.
2. No stacking of DIFFERENT master images, only stacking of versions (“variants”) of one master. This is huge. This means you can’t autostack based on the EXIF timer or stack otherwise totally unrelated images. So C1’s stacking is more an intelligent handling of versions, that’s all.
Folks: I read all of these posts about alternative work flows and I am overwhelmed–in the best sense of the word. So many valuable insights by so many of you who put in a lot of time to tell the Aperture community what you are finding. For that I say thanks, A big thanks,
I also am overwhelmed in another sense. Look at what so many are doing—trying to find a workflow that ‘just works’. Trying to meld at least 2 programs to manage photos. Trying to meld at least 2 programs to do what Aperture does.
It’s hard to believe that the ‘user community’ is trying to make sense of various tools of the ‘coder community’. All of this to do 2 things. Manage and edit photos.
So let me try one more time: Apple, please–what are you thinking? Surely there is a way to satisfy your need to satisfy the big universe of users out there who have no interest or time to invest in Aperture. And surely there is a way to do that and make the profit margin from such a focus–WITHOUT abandoning Aperture?
Please. Thanks.
Like others, I’m very impressed by the contributions on this topic.
I’ve been putting off thinking about the process of moving from Aperture, partly in the hope that Photos will come good, but also because of the sheer amount of work in transferring one’s library, metadata and hopefully not dropping something in the process.
I have a copy of LightRoom 4 which I acquired when doing a photography course, but which I only really used during the course rather than for my day to day use. I’ve not updated yet to LR5 (and probably will now wait for the assumed impending LR6). Like others in this thread, while there are aspects of LR that I really like in the Develop module, the DAM aspects seem weak.
I’m not a very advanced user of Aperture, but I do use a lot of plug-ins - Topaz, onOne, Nik, and, recently, I’ve become a convert to DxO. I fear that it may be a while before we see these types of plug-in available for Photos, and so I’m becoming resigned to move to LightRoom. For the past several years most of my images have been geotagged (not in camera, but using HoudahGeo to relate to my handheld GPS trails, or manually). While I do keyword, I have not been very consistent and so that is something I probably need to clean up. I do star rate images and use a lot of albums/smart albums for selecting subsets of images for sharing, etc. I tend to shoot RAW+JPEG so will have to face that challenge.
I have to say that PhotoSupreme looks interesting, but I can’t help feeling that there are advantages to being in the “main stream” Adobe community. Capture 1 would seem too expensive for my purposes, and the Media product from C1 (the old iView) seems to have quite a lot of negative comments in the C1 forums.
So, from my point of view, I’m resigned to having a major upheaval and moving my images (a bit under 30,000 at the moment). I shall continue to monitor this thread and forum to learn from the experience of the community.
Thanks.
Stephen
I leaning towards Darktable. Price: Free!!!
it’s open-source.
http://www.darktable.org/
Eventually, Yosemite and Aperture will be dead so I need to explore migration from Yosemite and Aperture to running Darktable on Ubuntu.
Other alternatives besides Lightroom and Capture One Pro:
PhotoDirector
ACDSee Pro
AfterShot Pro
My biggest regret was going with an Apple solution. My big lession is I want to move away from anyone company and use open-source software instead.
Good luck with your post-Aperture migration.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
I wonder whether we have all been seduced over the past several years by the attraction of combining asset management with non-destructive editing?
The asset management part is an intuitively simple process, although sophisticated in implementation. Essentially it is the construction of a database. As was noted in another reply in this or another thread, Aperture, Lightroom and Capture One implement their databases with similar underlying technology but a different structure with differing numbers of tables and indices. There are many open source tools that do similar (I even wrote my own database years ago for cataloguing my analogue film images). The differences tend to be in the flexibility of keywords and indexing, the user interfaces and the performance. Being able to scroll smoothly through thousands of thumbnails of images in a database requires some careful design and implementation. Exporting images from an asset management system and importing in to another should not be too difficult if the destination tool has reasonable representations for all of the attributes held in the source tool.
However, add non-destructive editing to this and things become much more locked down and difficult. The actual representations of the edits will vary between products and outside of any open-source offering, are going to be proprietary (and reflect the “secret sauce” of the implementor). The best we can hope for is the ability to output additional processed images as baked JPEGs/TIFFs/PSDs in additional to our originals and hope that the destination tool sensibly allows us to “stack” these images with the originals.
While non-destructive editing has been a boon to save space, it leaves us entirely dependent on the tool doing the editing. For any proper archiving, one needs to output a full resolution image with the edits applied - probably as a PSD, TIFF or other format that is lossless in its compression and for which there are reasonable guarantees that the format is not going to fade away in the near term.
Stephen
Ya, they all use SqlLite. https://sqlite.org/
The dam/editor may be able to import and export adjustments from app to another if they both support XMP import/export. Aperture does not which would make moving photos to Lightrrom or Darktable difficult.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
I took a look at Aftershot Pro and have decided to ignore it.
I went on their chat line and asked if ASP would read aperture libraries. It took a 10 minute wait while he consulted someone – answer: No. Nor did the documentation show that there was any other way. Indeed the documentation on their web site is not very good.
The second reason I’m ignoring ASP is that it’s Corel. Back in the Bad Old Days I remember Corel coming out with Corel Paint 5.0 then CP 6.0 All versions ended in point zero. All were buggy. You exchanged one set of bugs for a different set of bugs. The annoyance factor was such that the program was just barely useful.
Corel bought Word Perfect. And abandoned it. The apparent indifference to quality control, and the lack of committment to long term answers is troubling to me.
PhotoSupreme is on my short list. PSu (PS is taken…)
1. They claim to use open standards. If I decide to move to another package my meta data is safe.
2. They have a product for both Winsnooze and Mac. While this doesn’t mean they will continue to support Mac, the overall practice is there. And if they have to code for both platforms a Mac Upgrade is less likely to screw the pooch.
3. PSu reads aperture libraries.
4. Scriptable. This gives me some optimism for add-ons.
5. Can index PDF files too. So potential to catalog all those pesky pdf documents that have alphabet soup names.
6. Server edition available. Probably won’t use it, but it gives another reason to expect long term usability.
7. Minimum standard. The present version runs on Snow Leopard and up. This is the intelligent way to write software. Don’t use the new features of the new OS unless necessary.
8. Active forum
Downsides:
1. Manual doesn’t seem to be online from their website.
2. They sell a bunch of other image processing pics – “Pimp My Picture” ”Photo Glamour” ”Film Noir” ”PhotoSplash” IDsizer Not clear how tightly integrated they are, but they give the company as a whole a cheesy flavour.
Been testing Photo Supreme. Very solid program. Imports smart albums, lots of granularity in searches, Integrates easily with image processors. The other programs seem to be quick money makers as they are all sold for around $10 at the MacAPstore. The developer is very committed to this program. I’ve been working with the developer (Hert). He is very quick to respond. I’m purchasing a copy in the next week. Download the trial. Any questions – email support
www.markrosenphotography.com
I downloaded PhotoSupreme to try it. But it crashes for me every time I started it (with a nasty dialog). After five attempts, I removed it. But you might have better luck ;)
– Magnus
Did you try support. ? I’ve been using it for almost month without any problems
www.markrosenphotography.com
No, not at this moment. Might do that later.
I thought I would post a copy from my blog which covers the transition period that I have experienced. Copy follows :-
“ Apple, in their wisdom, have decided not to continue support for their photo editing software “Aperture”. They are, however, looking to further develop Photo within their software packages. It would seem that the general feeling, from present users of Aperture, is that this will not be a suitable product and is unlikely to offer the same level of editing power or control.
My thoughts, since hearing of the changes, have been varied. At the beginning I found it hard to understand such a decision. I then read as many articles on the subject as I could find. Seeking the thoughts of others via blogs or simply by magazine articles. I made sure that I covered both the pro and the anti positions. Some were no more than impassioned pleas to Apple to think again. Others were more enlightened.
My feelings moved through many stages from “do nothing, bury my head and all will be OK” to “stop using Aperture with immediate effect”. In the end I realised that Aperture was not going to vanish and will remain with us for a good time yet, although not supported by upgrades etc.
Anyone with an extensive library within Aperture will be fine and can continue to enjoy working within the software. A stance which I took. However, that didn’t mean I wasn’t looking for a sensible alternative and effective method of transferring my library out.
At this point I realised that most of the “talk” used words like “transfer” and “export” files “out of” your “existing library”. To me this subconsciously meant a move or change that was only one way and once taken you could not go back. I suppose it was because I was too close to what was going to happen. The truth is that nothing is going to happen to your original library. It remains exactly as it is and can continue to be used exactly as before.
With these new thoughts I decided that I could set up an independent file structure without the need to know or have another software in place. This made things so very much easier. The task of setting this up took a relatively short time (dependant upon the size of the library) overnight in my case.
So with my mind clear of the worry in file transfers etc I was able to think about a replacement software. My initial choice was Adobe Lightroom but for some reason, known only to Adobe, their software would not run on my system. I believe many others have had similar problems. However, I think this was all in my favour as I found another package that more suited my need to edit RAW files. Capture One Pro 8 by Phase One was my choice. I have been running it for a few days now and have imported (linked to) my library with no trouble at all. I certainly feel that the clarity in each photo is sharper and more vibrant than within Aperture. Obviously there are many differences but as with most new things one just needs a little time and patience.
I realise this post is likely to have a limited audience. However, if it helps just one person it will have been worth while.”
Regards, Barry
Barry is correct. Aperture won’t stop working. And you probably don’t have to upgrade your Mac.
It becomes an issue when you get a new camera, and you use raw. This can come on you suddenly if you camera gets stolen or drowns, or it can be a pre-planned event. Cameras with identical raw file formats can be still used with some tweaks to the camera raw plist file, but this isn’t that common.
Aperture serves two functions. As I search for possible replacements, I realize that finding both functions in the same software is less likely.
Aperture is firstly a catalog program that allows you to assign keywords, fill metadata fields. It has a bunch of different ways to make groups of pictures (Albums, projects, stacks, versions)
From looking at other people’s comments, C1 is not strong as a DAM tool. I briefly looked at it, but so far will wait. 95% of my photography is not very demanding, and most commonly I use Apertures Levels and Crop, and that is about it.
Aperture is also an image editing program. I don’t use this feature much, but many do.
C1 sounds like it is good at this.
As is common with a tool that does multiple things, it doesn’t do either of them *really* well. But we get used to the flaws.
Things I wish that Aperture did better:
* Manage versions better. I want to have ‘versions’ that are different pixel sizes. E.g. One master image, and 6 different sizes of web version. And aperture knows that they started with the same image.
* Faceted metadata. I want to be able to search for people whose name begins with smith, and not find towns or streets that begin with smith.
* Better support for the keyword hierarchy. I now have 500 keywords, and even with hierarchies it’s awkward to find the right one. I want to type Spruce and have it present me with a a choice of Trees/Conifers/Spruce/Colorado_Spruce Trees/Conifers/Spruce/White_Spruce… rather than hunt and click.
* Better support for external editors. I wish that it knew that when I said “Edit in Photoshop” that it recognized that the resulting file was a ‘version’ of the image that went out. Aperture normally considers a version to be a set of edits on a single master. It needs a new word for derivative images. that are not a list of edits, but share a common origin.
Different people will have different wishes, and perhaps there are add ons that can do this.
***
I believe that earlier or later we all will migrate to LR. All other programs do not seem to cover all the functions that Aperture covered.
I lost a bit the interest in reading all the long and demanding posts. Most probably I will wait and continue with Aperture. At a certain moment (maybe with the after next successor of Yosemite I will have to make a forced move. Concerning the import of RAWs of future cameras I have no fear as with Apple the Information about RAWs is in the Operating System and not within Aperture.
What I use of Aperture for (about 30’000 photographs):
- Import of RAWs (referenced files) from my 5D Mk III or former cameras
- Crop (sometimes to specific sizes according to needs), Level, Sharpening, Colours etc.
- Noise reduction (if necessary)
- Brushes (sometimes complex things)
- Assigning Faces
- Assigning Keywords ( I have used cascaded keywords not just one single level)
- Assigning stars
- Assigning places (sometimes using the external GPS receiver on my cam)
- Searching for photographs by using faces, keywords and/or stars (maybe by the use of intelligent albums)
- Exporting photographs in different qualities
What I fear most is the fact that I might loose the information of faces, keywords and stars. The possible loss of the places I consider the least issue.
Over many years I took the assignment of faces, keywords, stars and places very, very serious. Only by consequently using this kind of Metadata I was enabled to quickly find needed photographs at any time across al my 30’000 pics. Of course, within Aperture I have sorted my imports the same way as in the finder, i.e. by month/year and maybe within these categories by main events if needed.
Best regards, Alex
So far I have been testing C1 by importing subsets on my Aperture library to speed things up a bit.
I have now tried importing from my ( backed up ) working Aperture library of nearly 10,000 images.
It took about 10 minutes to import the library as catalog and about another 2 hours to build the previews.
Only two issues. The first is that I make extensive use of albums which are mainly in a set of folders in Aperture.
C1 only imported the small number of albums which were not in folders.
It looks as if I will have to take the albums out of the folders in Aperture, re import, then put them into groups in C1.
Tedious! and I am not looking forward to it but I suppose that I will only have to do it once.
The other problem is that precisely 40 images were rejected by C1 as being incompatible. There is no quick way of identifying which 40 did not make it but I had my suspicions about some images which were round tripped to DxO using Catapult.
I deleted these images in Aperture and tried importing again, and again I got precisely 40 rejected images . There was no doubt that some at least of the DxO images were among the rejected the first time so I would have expected to see less than 40 rejections the second time.
I suppose that 40 images is a small percentage but it would have helped to have a report on which images and I am concerned that the number 40 is not a coincidence.
Barry is right that things would be simpler with a an import from an established data base but then I would have to re keyword and re album thousands of photos.
Can any LR enthusiast comment on the Adobe import from Aperture process?
Could you tell us what exactly is in C1 now? You spoke about the folders. What about meta data?
Best regards, Alex
Helalwi,
Check out these links. They cover lots from starting with the basics, moving on to editing etc and full on webinars.
Phase One
Craig Bucket
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDMRz3ssFQH5bVekS7WX6rW9pZu_X_vLJ
Also keep an eye on “Capture One Pro” in this forum.
Regards, Barry
Helalwi,
I am not a profesional photographer so I have not yet had a need to use IPTC metadata.
The only metadata I use is exif information from the camera and keywords, stars etc which I add in Aperture.
So far I have found that keywords, stars and colour labels transfer to C1 using the import catalog from Aperture command.
Stacks are transferred as long as they are from one original image.
The folder structure from of the referenced files which I set up using Aperture is exactly copied into C1 with the exception of a small number of missing files. I propose to ignore this problem so that I can concentrate the remainder of my free trial on checking out the C! adjustments. I know that the missing files are amongst my referenced files since they show up in Aperture so I can track them down later.
Only albums which are not in folders in Aperture are transferred. Fixing this will be tedious but not difficult.
At the moment I feel that there are no showstoppers for me in moving to C1.
There are some irritations and some things to re learn but I am hoping that I will be so impressed by the adjustments that I will stop grieving about how much nicer Aperture’s workflow was.
” It ain’t what you do its the way that you do it. And that’s what gets results”
I’m not going to move my Library. I’m going to wait until Aperture dies (5-7 years for me). then after that, i will import it into Photos and start using Darktable with a fresh new library.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
If, as you say, you’re going to start “with a fresh library” in Darktable whilst in the meantime continue using Aperture for as long as possible with your present library. May I suggest you consider the following -
1) continue as you say with your existing photos in Aperture - but don’t add any new ones - this way you don’t add to your library therefore increasing the size for future exporting.
2) you start using your new system as soon as possible and create that new library with all new images.
This way you actually hedge your bets on when and how you change. The advantage will be that you gain knowledge and experience with your new software.
Regards, Barry
Re your point 2): This would mean that you could not use the kind of metadata that you had before: Faces, cascaded keywords, stars . .
Best regards, Alex
Thanks.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
Also, I have no intention of using iCloud Photo Library. When the time comes and I import my Aperture library into Photos, I will only use Photos for the old legacy photos and use Darktable with a fresh library moving forward.
Robert Ke
twitter: rke21
also at:
instagram: rke21
facebook: outdoorphotographynow
Folks: permit me once again to say thank you to so many valuable insights from individuals who are reporting back on their experience testing alternatives to Aperture. The information you are sharing is extraordinarily helpful. And the insights some bring about the history of a particular application is also enlightening–for example, the ownership changes, last update, whether an app appears to have been abandoned for whatever reason. All very helpful. Thanks.
Joseph: this thread, MOVING TO ANOTHER PROGRAM,still seems jammed up. Clearing cache doe snot help. Can we free up this stream? Thanks.
I am not moving to another program until it is absolutely impossible to run Aperture. This means that I won’t upgrade, until forced, to a version of OS X under which Aperture will not run. Stipulating that Joeseph is right that Apple will not reconsider it decision to terminate Aperture, they still might consider adding the features to Photos that would satisfy long-time Aperture users. Maybe we should take them to that task? It may be worth remembering that when Apple first removed Firewire from MacBooks, widespread discontent did move them to delay that for awhile. I am just now finally getting over the loss.
A large number of requests for Aperture-compatible features to be added to Photos might very well benefit us.
Steve
FWIW. Like many of you I’m trying to figure out what to do. I have downloaded trial copies of Capture One and a Lightroom. After doing some testing on each of them as well as Aperture,.I have come to the conclusion after comparing some SOOC pictures with each of them that CaptureOne definitely has the best RAW converter of the three. Aperture and lightlight room are about equal but both are not are not as good as CaptureOnes converter. There is better dynamic range and more detail. That can’t be the only factor and switching to one or the other but it is a significant a significant one.
I’m done with my evaluation and are currently migrating my whole Aperture library to Capture One because of this: RAW image quality. At the end of the day, its all about the pictures.
Second reason why I won’t be going the Lightroom route is its interface, which totally ignores any advances and research made in the last 20 years in terms of user interface design. There are no floating windows at all, there is no useful dual screen support and you can’t adjust ANYTHING to your own preference and workflow (oh, not correct: you can put in your own logo and you can change the AWESOME “end marks” marking the end of the panels! Fantastic, Adobe! Could you please switch the panels to the other side, because I’m left-handed? Oh, not possible. Ok, well…).
Second class image quality paired with a hair-raising user interface is enough for me.
I’m with you on this. I will be moving to Capture One.
I’m not going to continue to wring my hands about Aperture’s DAM. No matter what anybody decides to do there are going to be adjustments to what you’re used to. We’re all going to have to deal with change. Apple screwed us, let’s face the facts. Whether Photos is ever worth much is debatable but to wait 1, 2, or 3 years to find out is ridiculous. By then whatever option you choose will be second nature and Apple will be in the rear view mirror.
Another vote for Capture One
I found that using the library was a bit of a struggle at first. There is nothing intuitive about it. You just have to fully understand the functions of Catalogs,Folders, Albums, Groups and Projects. Then you need to memorise or write down exactly what you have to do to put your actual and virtual copies of images in the right place.
Then you have to think very hard if you want to move, remove or delete images.
However I was half way through the trial period before I began to master this stuff. After a few months of use I will probably be as proficient as I was with Aperture.
I would strongly recommend creating some small managed Aperture libraries, exported from the real thing, then imported into C1, and just playing around to see what happens.
This way the real thing is kept safe and you can experiment with creating your preferred workflow with no consequences if ( when ) you screw up completely as I did many times.
Things that I like:-
Total customisation of workspaces including excellent use of dual monitors.
Different workspaces for different jobs will make using a single screen on a laptop much easier.
Both managed and referenced libraries just like Aperture.
Importing images from Aperture generates previews which interpret the adjustments made in Aperture with pretty good results.
I am pleased that all the professional reviews I have read report better raw conversion by C1 than Aperture or LR.
Comprehensive and easy to use perspective controls.
I am still exploring all the adjustment functions and so far things look pretty good.
Things I don’t like:-
No ability to adjust time of shooting or GPS location
Clumsy Keywording compared to Aperture
Er….Thats just about it. (Once I have got used to using the library of course)
Please Phase One, if any body is following these posts, just copy the way that Aperture handles Keywords and GPS. I am sure that the nice folks at Apple will be too busy playing with their watches to notice.
Dave-D
I agree with your comments especially the “don’t like” list. Interesting that it’s only two, however, having been using C1 for a few weeks now I confirm that is just about the sum total. Perhaps it’s more to do with C1 is aimed at professionals and therefore concentrates on workspaces and it’s editing qualities.
Regards, Barry
At present:
Non-destructive Editing
DAM
Actually Barry I forgot another dislike, Stacking.
It would be really useful for focus stacking and panorama stitching to be able to stack any images not just variants of one image.
Thats it though for me. Just three.
For me its Photo Supreme as a DAM (reads Aperture libraries) and C1 (and occasionally Iridient) as a developer (e.g Iridient for my ancient Sigma DP2 and maybe my Fuji images). Both PS and C1 allow you to keep images in your existing Aperture libraries. Once ingested into PS, I have found that PS metadata changes can be recognised by C1 (the ‘reload metadata’ command).
Andrew Macnaughton
Forgot to add that I also do initial filtering/selection in PS and then send the selects to C1 for editing - you get a smaller and more nimble C1 catalogue that way.
Andrew Macnaughton
@Andrew
I too am trying to get the Photo Supreme and C1 combination to work.
Initially I was dissuaded as the color rendition of files edited in C1 was not accurate enough in PSu, so I am now testing with converting to TIFF and reimporting to PSu. Far from ideal but a solution.
However, I am having some problems in that any Sony files opened in Capture One (with or without editing) and exported as TIFF or JPG, appear to lose camera information in the meta data. I am using the full version of C1 version 7.2.3 and not the Sony version, which I believe is free.
Maybe this could this be due to the set-up in C1? I think I have exhausted all combinations in the Preferences> Image> Metadata fields.
I would be grateful for your feedback. Thanks.
Have you checked your export recipe. Is the metadata box ticked?
Andrew Macnaughton
Yes, all of the metadata boxes are ticked. What results do you get when importing an image into Photo Supreme that has been edited in Capture One?
See that there is a thread in the Photo Supreme forum which suggests that it might be how C1 uses XMP that may be the problem: http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=23784&start=60#p109376
Not much consolation …
Andrew Macnaughton
Thanks. I’m looking for another user of both programs. What results do YOU get when importing an image into Photo Supreme that has been edited in Capture One?
I’ve just checked the metadata from some photos that I processed in C1 and then imported into PS. The EXIF camera data is missing, but the lens type is still recorded, but not the actual f-stop etc. When I imported the same files into Aperture there was no problem in seeing all the data. The data also seems to show up in Media Pro as well and in Perfect Browser.
Since I don’t routinely search metadata for EXIF information (although I have used smart albums in C1 to segregate shots by-lines type), this hasn’t been a problem for me. It does cause me to take stock of my current solution before I go too far down the road. I might go to a sessions/catalogue approach in C1, now I have cracked geotagging files using a 3rd party app.
Andrew Macnaughton
“Since I don’t routinely search metadata for EXIF information”
It is useful to know which lens was used and the focal length. I will contact C1. Please post here if you learn more.
… sorry posted in wrong place; can’t see how to delete
d.
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