Aperture 4.0

[msandersen]

With that said, I'm a bit jaded and I'd rather not have to deal with version 1.0 bugs and issues, and lack of features. I'm making my jump to LR now, its a safer bet since LR is a known quantity, I know what I'm getting and I have a better feeling that LR will be supported longer then what apple provide.

That is, given their behavior, who's to say they won't change directions yet again a few years down the road and release a new image management app. Am I over-reacting on this? Probably, but my point is that adobe has been consistent in its support and improvement of LightRoom, where as Apple has not.

All that is quite valid and I don't blame you, Apple's secrecy may work for springing new hardware on its competitors (before the supply chain started to leak like a sieve), but it doesn't play well with pros who need longterm security and planning. A lot of time and resources are put into using an app like Aperture, hours of image management and keywording, not to mention all those nondestructive edits which tie you to either Aperture or Lightroom or anything similar. Just as an organisation might standardise on Word and rely on the files being readable long into the future.
For me personally, I will happily postpone any decision down the road til I know more of what the future brings, at the very least waiting for LR6 makes sense. There is no hurry as Aperture works fine for me now, and Apple promises Yosemite compatibility.
What I truly dread is having to move my library across to something else like Lightroom without a clean import of all my edits. It is not realistic having to redo even all my top picks, I have a ton of photos I haven't gotten around to organising and keywording as it is.
I experimented with Lightroom when LR4 came out, I used it exclusively for several months to give it a proper chance, but I just wasn't happy, I didn't feel as productive even if I loved it's editing features, but it's auto feature (which I apply automatically on import in Aperture because it is such a consistently good starting point) just wasn't useful for my photos in LR.
For my way of working, switching between adding info to a photo and adjusting on a per-photo basis, then stamping info (sometimes adjustments) across a block of photos taken at the same time, just doesn't work as well in LR. Not for me.
For now, I'd rather forgo the pain of porting everything to Lightroom for all the advantages that gets me in features and continual updates, knowing I feel happier in Aperture anyway, and waiting to see what the future brings.
I do make use of social media (Flickr, Facebook and Instagram), the latter for which I currently export to Dropbox for import to my iPad and tweaking in Snapseed and adding text/watermarks and squaring in Phonto. My family and friends are all on Facebook and like to see what I do, so I cross post there (Sometimes I export from Aperture direct, just easier to cross post via Instagram which is automatic now they own it).
So better integration of Desktop and tablets (and phones) is welcome, some edits for social media is not to make a masterpiece, just to suit the medium. Photos might just be the ticket for that, esp if the apps I use will have plugins to streamline it all in one spot. IPhoto on the iPad was never useful to me, Snapseed is just much better for quick edits currently.
Moreover I have a Wifi card for my camera which I at times use when I'm out and about to import into my iPad, do a quick edit, then send to someone, perhaps send to Instagram. Advanced editing and Raw support in Photos would be most welcome, syncing preliminary edits to picks in the field back home when connected to Wifi.
I choose to be optimistic and adopt a wait-and-see attitude as there is nothing inherently wrong with my current workflow, even if I am currently envious of some of the editing capabilities of Lightroom, if not it's workflow and metadata management. I have PS cs5 (non-CC thank you) with Nik plugins for further edits if needed. Not ideal, but it works.

 

[BJMRamage]

I am an Aperture user. and a bit bummed.

I really like the way Aperture works. I was hoping Photos was the iPhoto replacement and Aperture X was on its way.

Alas that is not the case (or a super crazy ploy/joke from Adobe).


So, since Photos was mentioned. and the thought of Aperture disappearing, I looked into it as best i could. I'd guess that iPhoto/iOS users will enjoy a simply "easy" button or click and done approach. but it also looks like there are some controls that you can access for extra post-processing of the likes of Aperture.
Plus, maybe you can have 3rd-party plugins that will work.

I want to find a new replacement now and not add photos but, i know i need to use something and figure I will keep Aperture and use it.
I will see what Photos has to offer and make a better decision then.

Had Apple said we take the ease of iPhoto and the Power of Aperture and blended them into an app that a photographer of any level can use and create great photos... and we decided to call it PHOTOS. but the way Apple does it makes this whole period of waiting and wondering horrible.

 

[maflynn]

Had Apple said we take the ease of iPhoto and the Power of Aperture and blended them into an app that a photographer of any level can use and create great photos... and we decided to call it PHOTOS. but the way Apple does it makes this whole period of waiting and wondering horrible.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I'm looking into the feasibility of using LR now, since it will take time to set up and convert my images. I'd rather not wait for apple's replacement and then get disappointed by the lack of features in version 1.0.

Plus the whole iCloud integration stuff, that's not for me, I'm not against cloud storage, but for the right situation. I have almost 200gb of images, that's not something I'm willing to see go up to the cloud.

 

[BJMRamage]

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I'm looking into the feasibility of using LR now, since it will take time to set up and convert my images. I'd rather not wait for apple's replacement and then get disappointed by the lack of features in version 1.0.

Plus the whole iCloud integration stuff, that's not for me, I'm not against cloud storage, but for the right situation. I have almost 200gb of images, that's not something I'm willing to see go up to the cloud.

I think I will hold off...but that's just me. I know Lightroom is not a CC app, but I don't want to invest time into LR only to find they switch that over to a subscription model.

I shoot RAW and have read that you should switch RAW to DNG as that is universal and not camera-based (I shoot Nikon, so it is NEF-think that's the an acronym). My thoughts on switching was IF the camera-based RAW files become kaput, I can always take the time at that point to make the switch. There is no need to do it all now. It isn't like the RAW files or Aperture will suddenly STOP working.

Thinking about things more, Photos is the Photo App on the iPhone. Many more Apple Customers are iOS device owners than they are computers. So, make Photos do everything iPhoto could. Right now you have Camera, Photos and iPhoto. Making Photos the default go-to Photo app makes sense. And making the App that syncs to the computer be called Photos also makes sense. I actually am liking the move a bit more. Photos is the default...why not do it all there.

And from what I keep reading there is no NEED to go to the cloud. I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for the cloud-based solution to NOT need my RAW files as that would be a very large Cloud storage. Instead, just send my hi-res jogs or thumbnails to work off and show on iOS devices. Let me store my RAW files locally. Then, I'd be fine buying into the cloud. I understand that storing the RAW files is "safer" for a computer breakdown/fire/etc. but I don't want to have TB of storage for it in the cloud.

 

[maflynn]

I shoot RAW and have read that you should switch RAW to DNG as that is universal and not camera-based

I haven't looked at the RAW vs. DNG for some time, but when I had, it was more of a personal preference. There were no compelling reasons to embrace it, or not embrace it.

I haven't circled back on that argument for some time, so I don't know if things changed. At the moment, I'm content to avoid DNG as that overly complicates my planning.

 

[BJMRamage]

Right.

To me that is just another hassle to take right now when, perhaps the RAW files I have won't ever need the translation. and if it does the App I have can still read them for me to make a conversion at that point.

 

[MCAsan]

Big reason to not do DNG....you can't get the raw files out unless you have used the larger DNG format version. DNG is simply not the universal format Adobe wanted it to be. I stick to native raw formats.

 

[msandersen]

I think I will hold off...but that's just me. I know Lightroom is not a CC app, but I don't want to invest time into LR only to find they switch that over to a subscription model.

I shoot RAW and have read that you should switch RAW to DNG as that is universal and not camera-based (I shoot Nikon, so it is NEF-think that's the an acronym). My thoughts on switching was IF the camera-based RAW files become kaput, I can always take the time at that point to make the switch. There is no need to do it all now. It isn't like the RAW files or Aperture will suddenly STOP working.

Thinking about things more, Photos is the Photo App on the iPhone. Many more Apple Customers are iOS device owners than they are computers. So, make Photos do everything iPhoto could. Right now you have Camera, Photos and iPhoto. Making Photos the default go-to Photo app makes sense. And making the App that syncs to the computer be called Photos also makes sense. I actually am liking the move a bit more. Photos is the default...why not do it all there.

And from what I keep reading there is no NEED to go to the cloud. I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE for the cloud-based solution to NOT need my RAW files as that would be a very large Cloud storage. Instead, just send my hi-res jogs or thumbnails to work off and show on iOS devices. Let me store my RAW files locally. Then, I'd be fine buying into the cloud. I understand that storing the RAW files is "safer" for a computer breakdown/fire/etc. but I don't want to have TB of storage for it in the cloud.

I sincerely hope it won't upload my Raw files; I know it can be a good backup strategy, and people do, but I have somewhere in excess of 1Tb of photos, mostly Raw, some Tiffs edited in Photoshop, and a bunch of jpgs from my old camera. Bandwidth here in Australia and other parts of the world is capped and you're either charged for excess, or throttled until the next billing period. Mobile plans are worse. It would also require a paid subscription plan to support the excess.
I wouldn't want everything I have ever shot synced across everywhere, but I'm fine with small thumbnails which show me what I have and allow me to retrieve it if I did need it on an i-device. I'm hesitant as the current photostream of the last 1000 photos take up quite a bit of space if enabled. Those are full-size jpgs though.
It appears from the screenshot the organisation in the Desktop version of Photos takes from the current iOS Photos with collections divided up into a timeline and places. But on iOS, they deliberately have tried to get away from the concept of the file system and how your files are physically stored, whereas in OSX the filesystem is very much an integral part, though through apps like iTunes they've tried to make users forget about the hierarchy of folders in which the music is stored, and concentrate on using iTunes as the sole means of organising and playing music. iPhoto tried to do the same, and by default the managed Aperture library does too. Which is very different from how Windows people used to Winamp go about things; they were very upset when the first version of iTunes for Windows rearranged and renamed their music by default, something Mac people just took for granted. Lightroom uses the traditional filesystem paradigm where you physically choose the folder you want to look at, as opposed to Aperture's projects and Events abstracting away the physical location.
So I'd have to consider if I'm happy with a future Photos messing with the location or structure of my photos. When in comes down to it, I don't really care about how they are stored, as long as I can have a referenced library on an external drive and easily access the physical file to do as I wish; I may be happy with doing that via the Photos interface, like Export Original, Edit in [editor] , Send to [whatever], etc.

As for the question of DNGs, well that’s something of a religious war probably, with pros and cons. I can easily understand the desire to standardise on one format as opposed to a myriad of proprietary ones that require constant updates to the Raw converters to support every new camera, a bane to everyone including Adobe who have to support them. The main proponents of proprietary formats is Canon and Nikon who both want to protect their positions, to the point of them sometimes playing games like Nikon on certain cameras who encrypted parts of their NEF files to force users to use their software. That is inexcusable and a good example of why open standards are needed. DNG is basically a variant of the TIFF standard and well documented and supported.
When I looked into it, I guess around the time I was first considering Lightroom which is pushing DNG, I read up on it and did some tests, and determined the DNGs were consistently around 5Mb smaller than the original, but seemingly otherwise identical. This fact alone, along with a dislike of closed formats and desire to have a standard archival format, led me to standardise on them since a typical day of upwards of 600 shots would save me several gigabytes, and cumulatively far more over time.
I’m a bit pedantic and can invest the extra time needed to go this route, but it’s certainly not for everyone. I import via Image Capture rather than Aperture to a temporary folder just so I can convert them, then rename them with a Rename utility using a preset (again, a bit anal, I hate DOS and its moronic 8.3 uppercase format and how it persists through SD card’s use of FAT). Then I import into Aperture. Harder to do when using Aperture, whereas Lightroom can import as DNG. It’s a big roundtrip, but having made the choice to save disk space and to use a format for longterm archival use, I stick to it.
One reason against, which I learned later, is that DNGs don’t include a private metadata area of the original Raw, e.g. in the Canon CR2, there is information on the focal points used, which vary according to camera model. Those are not included in DNGs. Import an original CR2/NEF file, then a DNG copy, and notice Aperture can show the focal points for the originals, but not the DNG.
In the end, this doesn’t matter to me, I can see what is in focus, and I sometimes focus then reframe the shot.

 

[BJMRamage]

I sincerely hope it won't upload my Raw files; I know it can be a good backup strategy, and people do, but I have somewhere in excess of 1Tb of photos, mostly Raw, some Tiffs edited in Photoshop, and a bunch of jpgs from my old camera. Bandwidth here in Australia and other parts of the world is capped and you're either charged for excess, or throttled until the next billing period. Mobile plans are worse. It would also require a paid subscription plan to support the excess.

from Apple:

Your precious memories, stored in iCloud.
Once you’ve enabled it on your iOS devices, iCloud Photo Library automatically keeps all your photos and videos in iCloud, at full resolution in their original formats, including RAW files. You can access and download them anytime from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or the web.

Yeah, I too wish they'd keep a condensed version in the Cloud and let you adjust and tweak it as such on any device and it updates the Original/Master on the Home Computer.

Nice to hear your thoughts on RAW/DNG.

 

[MCAsan]

I know it can be a good backup strategy, and people do, but I have somewhere in excess of 1Tb of photos, mostly Raw, some Tiffs edited in Photoshop, and a bunch of jpgs from my old camera.

Copy that. My Pictures folder is over 2TB. I am replacing all 3TB drives with 6TB drives.

 

[msandersen]

Copy that. My Pictures folder is over 2TB. I am replacing all 3TB drives with 6TB drives.

As drives get larger, I get more nervous, as more information is crammed into tinier spaces with smaller tolerances for the hardware and market pressure to keep prices down making it more likely. The old adage of having all your eggs in the one basket rings in my ears even as I know I don't have good recent backups of all my external drives. Good regular backup becomes a necessity, as the price of failure increases with the size of drives and the likelihood of failure happening.

 

[MCAsan]

There is no substitute for system backups. Full stop. None. Nada.

If we all had a $ for every person who comes on one of the forum and wants to resurrect a dead drive that has no backup, we could all have a Mac Pro and a 4K monitor.

Be careful about the logic of all the eggs in one basket. The more drives involved in your total storage system, the greater the probably of having a disk failure. But the damage of one disk failure might be lower that if everything is on one disk. That is why I have been running my external library drive as RAID 1 mirrored for high availability (not true backup) and then have a separate drive for Time Machine backups of the entire file system. The next step would be to have a copy off site via a drive in another location or via an online backup service.

Each person has to decide how valuable their data is and what they are willing to do to preserve it.

 

[Mike Boreham]

There is nothing in the Apple announcement:

"With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere......"

which says that all the photos in Photos must be in the iCloud Photo Library. The announcement says two new things are being introduced "Photos" app and "iCloud Photo Library", which enable, not force, you to store all (if you want) your photos in the cloud.

 

[robgendreau]

There is nothing in the Apple announcement:

"With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere......"

which says that all the photos in Photos must be in the iCloud Photo Library. The announcement says two new things are being introduced "Photos" app and "iCloud Photo Library", which enable, not force, you to store all (if you want) your photos in the cloud.

True. And they said old libraries would be compatible with Photos.

But, just to use an example, I can "safely" (note sneer quotes) put photos in Photostream right now. If I don't, some of the sharing interaction that is built into the existing Apple software is stunted. So sure, I don't have to use it...if I don't wanna share that way. And "compatible with" can mean anything from a one-way import one time to an alternative to iCloud storage. We don't know.

From the WWDC demo it seems a big point of the Photos application and apps is cloud integration. Will it be worth it for just local storage? dunno. There is actually more info about the iOS end of it right now.

And perhaps another telling detail: when Apple got all into photostream, etc, was about the time they dumped LAN sharing from iPhoto and Aperture. Lot's of us loved that feature; we were given no choice: if we wanted to use upgraded versions of those applications we had to give up that functionality. That's a choice, but....

 

[Mike Boreham]

True. And they said old libraries would be compatible with Photos.

But, just to use an example, I can "safely" (note sneer quotes) put photos in Photostream right now. If I don't, some of the sharing interaction that is built into the existing Apple software is stunted. So sure, I don't have to use it...if I don't wanna share that way. And "compatible with" can mean anything from a one-way import one time to an alternative to iCloud storage. We don't know.

From the WWDC demo it seems a big point of the Photos application and apps is cloud integration. Will it be worth it for just local storage? dunno. There is actually more info about the iOS end of it right now.

And perhaps another telling detail: when Apple got all into photostream, etc, was about the time they dumped LAN sharing from iPhoto and Aperture. Lot's of us loved that feature; we were given no choice: if we wanted to use upgraded versions of those applications we had to give up that functionality. That's a choice, but....

I would be lost for words if Photos app forced all the libraries to be in the cloud. They have stated that it will be possible to migrate from Aperture to Photos, so they are expecting Photos to meet the needs of at least some Aperture users, not just the iPhone photographers. Apple know that people who use Aperture will often have big libraries which don't all need to be in the cloud. The current PR emphasises the sharing possibility because that is the new bit, and will appeal to the iPhone photographers.

EDIT. I think it will be like Pages and Numbers where you can chose whether files are local or in iCloud.

 

[flynz4]

I would be lost for words if Photos app forced all the libraries to be in the cloud. They have stated that it will be possible to migrate from Aperture to Photos, so they are expecting Photos to meet the needs of at least some Aperture users, not just the iPhone photographers. Apple know that people who use Aperture will often have big libraries which don't all need to be in the cloud. The current PR emphasises the sharing possibility because that is the new bit, and will appeal to the iPhone photographers.

EDIT. I think it will be like Pages and Numbers where you can chose whether files are local or in iCloud.

Robert Boyer spoke out today on ApertureExpert. I've been waiting to hear from him as he contemplated this new direction. A very good read by one of my absolute favorite Aperture gurus.

/Jim

 

[Mike Boreham]

Robert Boyer spoke out today on ApertureExpert. I've been waiting to hear from him as he contemplated this new direction. A very good read by one of my absolute favorite Aperture gurus.

/Jim

Thanks for pointing that out.

http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2014/7/1/aperture-i-come-not-praise-thee#.U7PGMiRqq0s

 

[maflynn]

Thanks for pointing that out.

http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2014/7/1/aperture-i-come-not-praise-thee#.U7PGMiRqq0s

It is a good read but I can't see how he can postulate that apple cares about photography given their lack luster updating of Aperture, some of his comments ring a little hollow.

Apple Cares About Photography
Let me revise that… Apple cares about media, all of it. Does this mean they will serve the needs of every single solitary requirement for every single person… nope. They do care a hell of a lot about photography though, just like they care a whole lot about video, audio, music, et al. So why not Aperture X? Great question and I wish Apple would actually just satisfy my personal curiosity but I’ll take a stab in the dark here. I could be completely off. I am prognosticating after all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-aperture or anti-apple, but rather just disappointed in what they're doing. I'd rather go with a company that has a history of updating/upgrading their app instead of changing it to meet the whims of consumers.

 

[MCAsan]

The right product at the wrong time is the wrong product.

IMHO, Apple has so mishandled the relationship with photographers over the past ~4 years, it almost does not matter what they release in 2015.

Ex-Aperture users are likely queued up at Adobe's LR sign on line and trying to figure out how to get both their raw images and sidecars into an LR catalog.

 

[maflynn]

IMHO, Apple has so mishandled the relationship with photographers over the past ~4 years, it almost does not matter what they release in 2015.

I think this is the major point, many aperture users (including myself) are not willing to trust apple given how they mismanaged Aperture and are so consumer focused. We've seen how they handled their other pro apps and only angered them, I see no reason why they would not make a consumer app that some professional features but not a fully pro app like LR.

Ex-Aperture users are likely queued up at Adobe's LR sign on line and trying to figure out how to get both their raw images and sidecars into an LR catalog.

I've seen it Dpreview.com and here in the MR's Digital Photography forum as well.

 

[flynz4]

I think this is the major point, many aperture users (including myself) are not willing to trust apple given how they mismanaged Aperture and are so consumer focused. We've seen how they handled their other pro apps and only angered them, I see no reason why they would not make a consumer app that some professional features but not a fully pro app like LR.


I've seen it Dpreview.com and here in the MR's Digital Photography forum as well.

I think a very narrow sample of Aperture users felt betrayed by Apple over the past 4 years. Personally, I still believe that Aperture remained way ahead of LR despite a few check-off items that LR exploited, irrespective of any value they actually provided.

When I look at the analysis that Joseph and/or Boyer provided... I personally think that it is a mistake to move off of Aperture at this point. Apple is changing the architecture at the core of computing, and they both believe that Photos will allow the next major step forward in technology.

Look at a few cases that we have seen 1000 times here on Aperture. I would say the largest areas of disappointment (by class of user) is:

• Consumer: Sharing their library... (ex: husband/wife teams who want to share a library that was never meant to be shared). How many times have we given the advice to just avoid doing so. How many of them listened to advice to try and share via a NAS... and how many of them ended up with corrupted libraries. Photos will solve that problem once and for all. Instead of being built on a non-sharable library (like every other DAM out there)... Photos is built on a core that fundamentally will support optional sharing.
• Professional Photograhers: Probably the biggest single complaint has been the lack of non-destructrive round trip editing through 3rd parties. Every DAM works this way... requiring TIFF or DNG bulky new versions to be created... and losing all previous non-destructive edits. We know from the classes at WWDC that the new Photos core fully supports non-destructive editing by any 3rd party application. This is HUGE.
• Check-box examiners: They complain about stupid little features by measuring the minutia between applications and amplifying them. Meanwhile... LR is still at an effective version of LR2.4 (LOL per Boyer)... incrementing the "whole number" to sell newer but insignificant versions... but still stuck in mud of being a lousy DAM. Who gives a crap about the quality of noise reduction or lens correction... especially when the problem gets solved by round-trip non destructive editing by 3rd parties.

It is true that we do not know with 100% accuracy what Photos will bring. It appears (by the examination of the editing screens shown at WWDC) that virtually everything that Aperture currently does, will be brought forward to Photos. I also believe that the first version of Photos may not have all the features that will be there eventually... but it is reasonable to expect the apps to continually improve... hence it may end up with a richer feature set than Aperture.

What is very obvious, is that Photos will be built on a much more advanced core... and that many of the most fundamental problems (such as building extensible RAW non-destructive editing, and sharing) will be built into the core OS... allowing Photos to do things that no other DAM will be able to implement.

Anyone who moves off of Aperture now to something else... will lose some of their work in the process. The most obvious example is any edits that you performed. Given that edits will migrate to Photos... I think it makes sense to stay with Aperture now... evaluate if Photos will fill your needs after it is released... and then decide if you want to migrate.

/Jim

 

[mic j]

I think a very narrow sample of Aperture users felt betrayed by Apple over the past 4 years. Personally, I still believe that Aperture remained way ahead of LR despite a few check-off items that LR exploited, irrespective of any value they actually provided.

When I look at the analysis that Joseph and/or Boyer provided... I personally think that it is a mistake to move off of Aperture at this point. Apple is changing the architecture at the core of computing, and they both believe that Photos will allow the next major step forward in technology.

Look at a few cases that we have seen 1000 times here on Aperture. I would say the largest areas of disappointment (by class of user) is:

• Consumer: Sharing their library... (ex: husband/wife teams who want to share a library that was never meant to be shared). How many times have we given the advice to just avoid doing so. How many of them listened to advice to try and share via a NAS... and how many of them ended up with corrupted libraries. Photos will solve that problem once and for all. Instead of being built on a non-sharable library (like every other DAM out there)... Photos is built on a core that fundamentally will support optional sharing.
• Professional Photograhers: Probably the biggest single complaint has been the lack of non-destructrive round trip editing through 3rd parties. Every DAM works this way... requiring TIFF or DNG bulky new versions to be created... and losing all previous non-destructive edits. We know from the classes at WWDC that the new Photos core fully supports non-destructive editing by any 3rd party application. This is HUGE.
• Check-box examiners: They complain about stupid little features by measuring the minutia between applications and amplifying them. Meanwhile... LR is still at an effective version of LR2.4 (LOL per Boyer)... incrementing the "whole number" to sell newer but insignificant versions... but still stuck in mud of being a lousy DAM. Who gives a crap about the quality of noise reduction or lens correction... especially when the problem gets solved by round-trip non destructive editing by 3rd parties.

It is true that we do not know with 100% accuracy what Photos will bring. It appears (by the examination of the editing screens shown at WWDC) that virtually everything that Aperture currently does, will be brought forward to Photos. I also believe that the first version of Photos may not have all the features that will be there eventually... but it is reasonable to expect the apps to continually improve... hence it may end up with a richer feature set than Aperture.

What is very obvious, is that Photos will be built on a much more advanced core... and that many of the most fundamental problems (such as building extensible RAW non-destructive editing, and sharing) will be built into the core OS... allowing Photos to do things that no other DAM will be able to implement.

Anyone who moves off of Aperture now to something else... will lose some of their work in the process. The most obvious example is any edits that you performed. Given that edits will migrate to Photos... I think it makes sense to stay with Aperture now... evaluate if Photos will fill your needs after it is released... and then decide if you want to migrate.

/Jim

You make many good points. Particularly the non-destructive editing by 3rd party apps.

 

[robgendreau]

Jim I think you're right about your #1; if you consider the family of four with a tween and a teen, so 4 iphones, a coupla iPads, and a shared home Mac, and the equivalent number of social accounts and friends who share baby pics it is YEOW!

But although sorting that problem may improve relations with my family, it won't do much good for #2 necessarily, whether they be pros or hobbyists. Lots of photographers, pro or otherwise, and even more so graphic artists who use photos, need files. The multiuser features in the WWDC demo seemed much more oriented to a family, like sharing iTunes songs, than even a very very small graphics outfit. Photoshop is the king of photo software, and with it you can pass around industry standard PSDs with layers, embedded smart objects, linked objects, and so on, that accomoplish non destructive editing in another way than trying to pass around LR or Aperture edits. I just don't see any DAM supplanting that, although, like LR or Aperture, it might work in addition to it.

 

[flynz4]

Jim I think you're right about your #1; if you consider the family of four with a tween and a teen, so 4 iphones, a coupla iPads, and a shared home Mac, and the equivalent number of social accounts and friends who share baby pics it is YEOW!

But although sorting that problem may improve relations with my family, it won't do much good for #2 necessarily, whether they be pros or hobbyists. Lots of photographers, pro or otherwise, and even more so graphic artists who use photos, need files. The multiuser features in the WWDC demo seemed much more oriented to a family, like sharing iTunes songs, than even a very very small graphics outfit. Photoshop is the king of photo software, and with it you can pass around industry standard PSDs with layers, embedded smart objects, linked objects, and so on, that accomoplish non destructive editing in another way than trying to pass around LR or Aperture edits. I just don't see any DAM supplanting that, although, like LR or Aperture, it might work in addition to it.

I believe that round trip "DESTRUCTIVE" editing will always be possible. Actually, there is no way to prohibit it with any DAM (using manual means). So, round tripping to PS, NIK, etc is not a function that will be lost.

From what I see... most professionals that I know use either LR or Aperture, and use plug-ins like NIK for the vast majority of their work. PS is being used less and less as the plug-ins become more powerful. Hence, new classes of plug-ins supporting non-destructive editing will likely continue to care more of the load as time moves forward.

Regarding sharing... many pros do all of their post work themselves, not needing sharing for the purpose of editing. However some work in a 2 person (or larger) teams... and being able to split up workflow with concurrent editing can be powerful. Finally... certain pros could benefit with sharing for clients.

/Jim

 

[tdale]

He doesn't add anything new about Aperture, other then Apple is changing direction and going to the cloud. I don't think that is any different then what we've already heard. Aperture is not going to be developed, an iPhoto replacement with iCloud connectivity is planned. In other words, he's telling people that Aperture may be dead but trust in apple to produce something that will be great because they do a better job then Adobe because Adobe is awful and their products pale in comparison to what apple does.

Apple's track record of new applications is horrid, look at FCPx, it had less features then its predecessor, Pages, Numbers, and the rest of iWork - same thing. I think FCPx maybe at feature parity of its old version but it took a long time.

To use your verbiage, the wake is still on, because nothing has changed. Aperture is a EOF, and I'd much rather trust Adobe with a long history of image management then Apple who's track record is much more checkered, to say the least (when it comes to pro apps)

Will the new Photos app be able to be used without the cloud? I prefer my source photos to be here, with me

Ive never used a photo app, I just sync my photo folder in iTunes to my iPad/iPhone. Whole new way of workflow to use an app that manages them. So in a quandary to use iPhoto now and learn that, as I was going to buy Aperture, but not now