Apple Says Aperture Won't Run in Future macOS Versions After Mojave

[Botts85]

I have tried every photo management app available on mac, nothing comes close to Aperture for managing well over 100,000 photos which is why I still use Aperture. If they could finally bring the Photos app up to par I would move away from Aperture. Until I find a replacement with batch name/file editing, exif gps editing, no subscription, and a good layout I will be sticking with Aperture/Mojave for a while.

Lightroom isn't bad at large libraries, but it definitely isn't as nice as the folder/events structure in Aperture.

Lightroom has batch name / file editing, and GPS support but I don't know if it writes to exif for GPS. Typically I use HoudahGeo for tagging though. The subscription think isn't going away sadly though.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

Ugh.

I have no idea what they were thinking. Photos isn't even as nice as iPhoto was, and for pros Aperture was great.

Apple really needs to get their s*** together.

 

[robgendreau]

Here's a good history of Aperture by John Martellaro: https://www.macstories.net/stories/the-history-of-aperture/

It was never as good IMHO as some Apple fans make it out to be, and started almost as expensive as Photoshop. If it were that good, it wouldn't have steadily lost ground to Lightroom. Yes, Apple was first, as they were with many products. MANY. But they don't last (FCP maybe, Filemaker) and that's not good for programs one invests money, and more importantly, time and energy in learning them. As the author above notes:

While Apple has plenty of Aperture's blood on its own hands, Adobe may have been holding the actual murder weapon. In 2005, Adobe Bridge was taking off as an import and organization tool, and Lightroom grew out of that, launching two years later. Adobe poured resources into Lightroom, making improvements on a regular basis.

It was clear to photographers that Lightroom was a focus for Adobe, while Aperture was a side project at best for Apple, and at worst, a distraction.
​

Aperture hasn't really been upgraded since 2014. Long before Apple issued the obituary. And many of us saw that it was falling behind and neglected before that. The good news is that there are tons of alternatives, most of which can do chores better than Aperture ever did. And if you even like the raw adjustments of Aperture still, check out the RAW Power extension and application for Photos; by the same developer as Aperture.

 

[thomas_peters666]

“There are literally dozens of us” - aperture users

 

[MacBeast]

Capture One Pro is my photo editor these days and it can be configured to work similarly to the way Aperture worked. If the thought of giving up Aperture makes you want to make Mojave the last MacOS you'll ever use, do yourself a favor and give Capture One Pro a serious look. It takes a little exporing to figure out how to configure it, but my setup really does mimic Aperture.

I'm also still clinging to Aperture, but have thought of Capture One. Any key tips you would like to share on how you configured it to mimic Aperture?

 

[ravenstar]

I agree mainly with the magsafe. I still have an older mac with the magsafe connector, and the number of times it saved my computer from flying against something, is impressive. This adds up if you have kids, animals or both. The likelihood that something will trip on the cord by accident is absurdly high.

I can't upvote this enough. Magsafe saved me countless times from clumsy dogs and people (including myself). Apple should have found a way to incorporate it into usb-c connectors or adaptors, but I suppose there's no money in helping people avoid bringing their machines in for repairs.

 

[partsofspeech]

FCPX is feeling cold in the spine.
[doublepost=1556641390][/doublepost]Less and less is there to separate Mac from PC.

 

[Justin Cymbal]

I had no idea that Aperture was even capable of running on anything newer than Yosemite! I have been running Yosemite on my 27 inch retina iMac just so that Aperture would be compatible! I’ll be upgrading to Mojave tonight, I already did a back up using time machine.

 

[smirking]

I'm also still clinging to Aperture, but have thought of Capture One. Any key tips you would like to share on how you configured it to mimic Aperture?

Yup, take a look at this screenshot. It kinda looks like Aperture doesn't it?

In Aperture, you mostly worked off one a single tools panel. In C1P, those tools that you got used to are now spread across a whole bunch of tool groupings a lots of them seem redundant with other tools. It's hard to figure out which ones to use.

You have the option to create your own tool grouping. I created the one you see in this screenshot. It's my "Favorites" tools. Then I added in all of the tools from Aperture that I was used to so all of my familiar adjustments were now available pretty close to where I was used to finding them.

There are more tools than I started with in this screenshot. When I started, I kept the tools down to just what I was used to, but after a few months I started getting more adventurous and every month or two, I ended up adopting a new tool that I liked. I really had no idea what I was missing. I used to export to Photoshop to make my more involved photo edits, which was time consuming and ate up gobs of disk space. Now, I rarely use anything other than Capture One Pro for actual adjustments. That is one of the best parts. I only venture into Photoshop if I need to create composite images.

If you need convincing that leaving Aperture is the right move, just edit a RAW photo in Aperture and export it to JPEG. Then do the same in Capture One Pro. The one from Capture One Pro will blow away the one exported by Aperture. The RAW engine in Capture One Pro is tops.

 

[hungedu]

I stopped updating the OS on several of my business-related Macs since Yosemite. Apple made a big mistake by not making the later operating systems backward compatible with older apps.

 

[mavericks7913]

This is a joke. How many Apple software can Mac take advantages of? ONLY FEW! This is why using a Mac computer is so limited for pro users. Apple does not care about third party software and yet there are more Adobe users with Mac. Even Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are great, it's a fact that Apple has only few pro software and not all people want that.

Apple needs to start working on an upgradable computer with different parts such as Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU. Otherwise, there is no future for Mac.

 

[Justin Cymbal]

I’ll post an update as soon as I upgrade my iMac tonight, I hope the transition from Yosemite goes smoothly so I don’t lose any data but I have a back up anyway

 

[w5jck]

Aperture was a huge POS, so let it die. I tried using it years ago just before they stopped updating it. It was underpowered garbage then. I haven't tried using it in years. What would the point of that be? I know Adobe is bloated and hated, but it works well and has three decades of development behind it. Had Apple truly put some effort into Aperture, they could have made it competitive, but they never even tried. Aperture was the stepchild and Apple the mean old stepmom byotch who never treated it right!

 

[smirking]

It was never as good IMHO as some Apple fans make it out to be, and started almost as expensive as Photoshop.

Aperture was good for its day and it served notice to anyone who was developing similar software for the Mac that they needed to up their game. They did and we've benefitted from the dominoes that fell as the result of Aperture being a player for the years that it was.

I've moved on and I realize that I hung onto Aperture longer than I should have. I remember it fondly though. The thing that sticks to about Aperture to me is that it had an impressively wide feature set and didn't suck. It wasn't a world beater in any of its areas, but unlike most programs of its breadth, it managed to do everything it did without sucking at any of them.

 

[Analog Kid]

Capture One Pro is about as fast as Aperture and is more stable.

But less pleasant to use. Having ruled out Lightroom because I hold out hope that some resistance to subscription pricing will bring change, none of the alternatives really feels as comfortable and intuitive as Aperture did.

Capture One is the best I’ve found though. On1 and DxO have both been around long enough that they should have their UX dialed in better, but they feel like skinned versions of cross platform apps (which they probably are) and have kind of clunky workflows with poor support for multiple displays.

Capture One has some quirks that I’m still adapting to, but it feels like a professional tool. It’s reasonably configurable, handles dual displays with some level of agility, and carries a good set of adjustments. Color grading is a particular strength.

Phase One doesn’t seem willing to admit it, but I’m pretty sure Media Pro is dead.

None of these including Aperture, were meant for photo “editing”, and Aperture’s biggest weakness was brushed adjustments.

Still, as a tool to browse a session worth of images, keyword them, sort them, and make some quick global adjustments Before exporting to a more capable editor, I’d switch back to Aperture in a heartbeat. I’m surprised no one has stepped up with a reasonable clone.

Any idea if capture one allows you to import keyword tagging or the aperture 'star' rating feature?

I can't recall how much of my Aperture data Capture One migrated over, but it was most of it. I was quite pleased at how much got ported over.

I'm certain that it kept all of my star ratings because that's what I used the most. I don't recall how well it worked on my keywords though, but I believe it did that rather well too as keyword tagging works pretty similarly in C1P.

What doesn't get moved are your adjustments. This was a huge pain, but C1P's adjustments and RAW processing utterly obliterates anything Aperture did. You will not want to keep your old adjustments anyway.

Yeah, there’s no good way around the adjustment nightmare. You simply can’t expect two tools to provide adjustments in the same way. Capture One’s adjustments might be somewhat more advanced, but that doesn’t solve the problem of not wanting to start over again on every image you’ve adjusted in the past.

First thing I did was filter my Aperture library for images with adjustments and export them to PSD (or 16bit TIFF). It’s a destructive export, but it will lock in your changes.

Capture One has an import tool to bring in your Aperture library, and it’s passable, but it ain’t great. It really didn’t want to injest my whole library, so I had to break it up. Adding an auto export of adjusted images would have been a nice addition to that tool as well.

 

[partsofspeech]

I’m still not sure why Aperture went away, but I wonder if part of the reason was pressure from Adobe. Apple might lose some customers by dropping Aperture, but they’d lose more if Adobe’s support for the Mac platform softened.

Quarterly report, next-day bottom line, second by second stock price— the only reason behind every decision Apple makes nowadays. But they also try to save the world, don’t they?

 

[simonmet]

It’s honestly a joke that Apple suggests Photos—which is the logical successor to iPhoto rather than a professional editing platform—as a successor to Aperture.

The least they can do is do like they did after Apple Maps’ abysmal launch and suggest a range of alternatives from other companies.

 

[jlseattle]

I forgot aperture used to exist. haha

 

[Analog Kid]

I had no idea that Aperture was even capable of running on anything newer than Yosemite! I have been running Yosemite on my 27 inch retina iMac just so that Aperture would be compatible! I’ll be upgrading to Mojave tonight, I already did a back up using time machine.

If Aperture is your main reason for being, you might want to solicit some more feedback here about later versions of MacOS. I have to say, Aperture feels a bit flakey to me if I open it on Mojave...

 

[smirking]

But less pleasant to use.

Yeah, I'll agree with that, but once you get used to Capture One Pro, it feels pretty close. There was a "it just works" quality to Aperture that's missing in everything else, but if you configure C1P right, it gets close.

Still, as a tool to browse a session worth of images, keyword them, sort them, and make some quick global adjustments Before exporting to a more capable editor, I’d switch back to Aperture in a heartbeat. I’m surprised no one has stepped up with a reasonable clone.

The words you're looking for are Digital Asset Management (DAM). I too am surprised at how elusive a good DAM is. It seems that it's one of those things that sounds easy enough, but ends up being a nightmare to develop once you get into the weeds. Skylum promised a DAM as part of Luminar and ended up delivering a scaled back version a couple of years late.

Yeah, there’s no good way around the adjustment nightmare. You simply can’t expect two tools to provide adjustments in the same way. Capture One’s adjustments might be somewhat more advanced, but that doesn’t solve the problem of not wanting to start over again on every image you’ve adjusted in the past.

Well, you could export everything to high quality JPG from Aperture. I considered that, but after I saw how much better things looked when exported from C1P, I decided to bite the bullet and re-edit all of my favorite photos.

 

[jonnyb098]

I stopped updating the OS on several of my business-related Macs since Yosemite. Apple made a big mistake by not making the later operating systems backward compatible with older apps.

At some point things have to move forward. Just like how old 32 bit apps from 15-20 years ago no longer run on Macs. If things never moved forward we would still be on horse and buggy.

Clearly Apple felt there was too small of a market to continue to support Aperture. And it is. Even at its height years ago the Aperture user base was very small.

 

[Analog Kid]

Well, you could export everything to high quality JPG from Aperture.

Jpeg is not really an archival format... If you’re willing to crush the image down to 8 bit, go with PNG (16bit PNG support is spotty at best), but for anything you might want to edit further later, go to PSD or TIFF.

Takes more drive space, but I figure if the image was important enough to work on in the first place, it’s important enough to archive well.

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

Time to lock down the MBP and keep as my Aperture box. It will join my Lion OS MBP. That old sport has been wanting a roomie for quite a while.

 

[gcbarre]

Aperture has been so good that I am still using Aperture right now, I haven't found a better photo management app so far, Im afraid to get chained to a subscription service as Adobe, I may have no other choice...

Anyway I have a dual boot iMac Mini i7, one drive for Mojave other for High Sierra for Aperture.

 

[smirking]

Aperture has been so good that I am still using Aperture right now, I haven't found a better photo management app

If you're just looking for the photo management part, look at Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits. It's awesome. The only reason I'm not using it is because I like to keep my cataloging and editing workflows unified.