Thoughts...
I know a lot of people are unhappy with the Aperture announcement, and I saw a comment that mentioned Apple would probably be ok conceding this market to Adobe. They already did that... years ago. When Apple stopped investing in Aperture 3 years ago, other than small updates, they started losing business. They now have like 4% of the photography market compared to Adobe's 85%. They had no choice from a business standpoint. The question isn't what was Apple thinking a month ago when they made the announcement, the real question is what were they thinking 2 years ago when they weren't doing anything with the product.
Lightroom - the transition isn't that difficult, and I think you might be surprised with the tool. I was. Actually, I find the adjustments to be way ahead of Aperture. It's also very fast and hey, watermarks actually work
.
I also hear a lot of noise about Adobe's "subscription" agreement. I guess I get the issue if you are afraid they're going to raise their price - valid point to an extent. I also get the issue if you buy your software and hold it without upgrading for 7 years. because that's what you would have to do...
For arguments sake, let's say I never owned photoshop and i wanted to buy a perpetual license. That would cost me roughly $700 for a new license. I also would like the latest Lightroom at a cost of $139 let's say. that's a total of $840 - out of pocket. now it's mine, but in two years they come out with a new photoshop and i want it...that's roughly $249 let's say for the upgrade. Now my out of pocket investment over two years is $1,088. another year later XYZ company has a cool new tool I want to use so I switch to that tool. after 3 years of using my perpetual licenses I've spent $1,088 out of pocket and now have gone to another tool. yes, i always have my old photoshop to go back to if i want - that's a pro for perpetual licenses.
However, if i went the subscription route after three years i've only spent $360 for both photoshop and lightroom. I've saved $728 and i've been using the latest versions. argument - i've decided to go to XYZ company and i stop paying for my subscription so i lose lightroom and photoshop... you are correct, you do. But I could always go back to the subscription if and when i want. I've still got the $728 bucks in my pocket and i could use XYZ and still have the subscription.
But i want to have it just in case... ok, how often do you replace your hardware? at some point, your 3, 4, or 7 year old software either won't run, or will run like a dog on your hardware.
Other than "the price may go up", and it would have to go up A LOT, if you buy your software and upgrade it, I'm not sure what the issue is.
I want Adobe to come up with a solution to bring over all my edits - understand your desire, but probably not likely to happen. The algorithms used in the sliders for Lightroom are totally different than the Aperture algorithms. going either way would be painful because the math wouldn't work correctly. They could try, but odds are you wouldn't be happy with the results. Secondly, there are sliders, or adjustments, in Aperture that don't exist in Lightroom and vice-versa. The transition software would not have any idea what you were trying to do, or what to do with that adjustment. Again, you wouldn't be happy with the results and would end up making more adjustments anyway.
I get some of you don't like subscriptions, or may just want the option to buy, and i can appreciate that. I'm just saying the subscription model isn't as bad as it's being made out to be... especially if you're going to keep upgrading your software.
Just my $.02
