Loopinsight reports that Apple will kill Aperture. Apple told them:
“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, there will be no new development of Aperture,” said Apple in a statement provided to The Loop. “When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X.”
Adobe’s world domination is almost fulfilled. Not a good news if we lack of competition 🙁
136 Responses
~hint~
It already was dominated by Adobe….
Adobe already dominates; that’s one reason why Apple is getting rid of Aperture.
In spite of all the internet bluster about the Adobe CC, it has been a huge success. And now more than ever, software is also integrated with services and other add ons. For instance, with Adobe CC one can get cloud based storage and syncing along with iPad apps. That’s a pretty good package to have.
Apple is not in the business of selling software; they make their money by selling hardware. Aperture was going nowhere. Better for Apple to develop their Photos app for both iOS and Mac OS X…create a really nice app for the average user or even advanced prosumer. That will help it sell more devices. And of course, those higher level users who will opt for Adobe will still have Apple products. So Apple wins regardless.
“higher level users who will opt for Adobe will still have Apple products”
“Might” have more like it – its commonly accepted that Photoshop is spread 50/50 between Windows and Mac
Im a cc subscriber and it works out for me as I use most the main design suite for work. I also understand most people who only want photoshop or lightroom wont see the point in subscribing hence the backlash. Guess apple sees the success of the model and wishes to concentrate on moving all apps to cloud / subscription base where the moneys at now. In terms of hardware, i reckon only iPhone or iPod is apple’s lifeline and its slowly giving way to the android takeover.
Photoshop CC is wildly successful, there was a very loud protest (I was one of them) when Adobe forced this on users, but overall the user base has swelled in response to how much more affordable $10 p/month is in comparison to one off $600+ licenses.
10$ per month? In Germany it is 276€ per year corresponding to about 30$ per month. This is not an alternative, this is a rip-off!
What are you telling. The photo cloud is around 12,29 Euro including VAT per month, if you subscribe for a year.
I am referring to the price that you pay for Photoshop CC on Amazon for a one-year subscription. http://www.amazon.de
I referred to the price given by Amazon/Germany
When relying on the cloud what do you do when you have no internet access? It happens.
I’m only an amateur photographer but if it was my living I’d be more than angry if I couldn’t access my images until my service provider sorted out whatever the issue was. My internet supplier is Virgin and it’s safe to say that they can’t provide a 100% 24/7 internet service although to be fair the longest I’ve been offline is perhaps two days, last time I had no service was a couple of weeks ago and when I rang to enquire what the issue was I was told it’d be sorted “in the morning.” I’m in the UK not some third world poor service area.
What do you do when you have no service? Jump on a train and hope that when you jump off 100 miles down the track you’ll have access?
You must be very unlucky to get such regular loss of service I use Virgin fibre with my business 24-7 and have had excellent service for several years. Considering that tens of millions of people have internet access in the UK your 100 mile train journey is not likely to be needed lol. I use cloud storage as a backup to my locally stored images not as the only option as I suspect would most business users
you sound like an adobe pr rep. further, you talk with authority about things you can’t possibly know.
“Apple is not in the business of selling software; they make their money by selling hardware.”
That statement is wrong on many levels.
Apple makes software because hardware is useless without software. The main difference between the Macs and PCs was always the hardware-software integration. I owned 3 Apple laptops, 2 PC laptops and countless PCs. Out of them, only the Apple laptops were 100% properly functioning. Even fully officially supported by MS Windows premium PC laptop had minor niggles, with few major gotchas thrown in.
But you do not even need the Apple as an example. Take Intel. Even when they have entered into the Wintel alliance with Microsoft, they still kept developing specialized software to promote unique features of their CPUs. Yes, Intel works at the scale where few millions dollars invested into one-off piece of software pays off by selling few more million CPUs. And as soon as Wintel crashed (it was semi-official when Intel started selling Linux hardware; official when MS released a smartphone with non-Intel CPU inside) Intel embraced software even more than ever before. Because when people do not need new software, they also do not need new hardware. And when they buy less of new hardware, it is a problem for Intel.
Yeah, but Apple still ain’t in the business of selling software. They make software, they may charge you a nominal fee for it, but it’s only to make you buy their hardware. And they charge you premium for the hardware.
In DXO I trusted.
Well there are alternatives to Lightroom like Capture One, DxO Optics Pro and a few others if you don’t want to use Adobe products.
And Capture One is pretty good too.
..and it’s 50% off at the moment.
darktable is free:
‘darktable is an open source photography workflow application
and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers.
It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them
through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.’
http://www.darktable.org/
Very true, and it’s now my choice since Aftershot Pro (formerly Bibble Pro) developement slowed down, I’m on Linux btw.
Is it? I’ve not seen any offers by email or anywhere else to suggest that. ???
Just click on the ‘buy now’ button, and you’ll see the discounted price 🙂
So it is! Thank you.
I’ve now paid for the upgrade (from Express 7) at half price & am happy. I’ll do the download tomorrow & then I’ll be able to process the E-M1 & Stylus 1 raw files with it now.
Actually, it still doesn’t support the Stylus 1 raw files. 🙁
I’ll just keep using Digikam, thank you.
Within Apple FCPX is seen as strategic and Aperture is seen as a second tier product. And Apple can be pretty harsh in cutting second tier products.
It will be interesting to see how serious Apple is about Photos for OS X.
I would disagree with that contention. Imaging is a high priority within Apple. Catering to professional photographer is not.
Don’t shoot RAW, end of the problem 🙂 RAW is so last decade…
Specially with all the buzz about dynamic range, having highlight clipped away is the way to go 😉
Highlight clipping is overrated, although you can use the histogram or the blinkies to avoid it. Better learn to include those busted lights as part of the composition instead. We are not doing paintings after all.
…So fantastic to learn that proper use of histogram will magically remove the headroom from the file structure and stuff its content into the jpeg…
More headroom is a myth. DPR proved long ago that Olympus engineers obtained the same DR in Jpeg, that is available in RAW.
That is when I started to lose interest in RAW. You really think that you are smarter than them, or that RAW has some magical properties?
Yours is just an excuse to not take decisions when you shoot: you delay to some other day, because you are insecure and perpetually need a safety net.
Simply put, I don’t pretend to be better than Oly engineers, my fun is elsewhere. And I don’t need a safety net.
A simple tests takes very little time and will prove that either the alleged claims on Olympus’s engineer’s feat have never been proven, let alone put to test or that you just made them up.
Either way, it takes 10 minutes at most to debunk that.
By the way, “More headroom” sounds like saying that a car has more gas tank when I suspect you mean to say that it has a greater fuel capacity. …not that I credit you for understanding what you are talking about…
There is ample proof of what I contend in DPR’s reviews of the latest Oly models.
But perhaps you still have an inferior camera of another brand and another era, while you enjoy masochistically being a slave to a RAW developer company like Adobbe which is a pure parasite at this point.
Suits you well: I don’t know worse punishment for those asses who thought they were outsmarting others. Enjoy your expensive ruins.
You used the word ‘headroom’ first. You don’t even know the words you are talking about. Also there is no debunking: there are the precise statements of DPR’s reviewers. and others- At best, with all their efforts they could earn half a stop in RAW. Meaning that we get into invisible differences. And you would even have to *prove* that you are able to do it, lamer.
Olympus did extract as much as possible from the older Panasonic sensor cameras, but since using the later ones with the Sony sensor, there have been a greater dynamic range possible (from the raw file) than what ends up in OOC jpegs thankfully, as some blown highlights are recoverable from the raw file that wasn’t possible with the older Panasonic sensors.
However, I do agree that it is easy to fall into the habit of not optimising the settings at the time of taking the photo & then having to get the best out of the image afterwards from the raw file & that can make us lazy in doing so, so I do believe in trying to get it right for the OOC jpegs but I also save the raw file as well as a back up, because there are still times I want to go back to use it, even if it is only to play with possible Art Filter effects within Olympus Viewer or white balance etc..
It’s rather the opposite. I remember Pekka Potka showing the graphs for both Jpeg and RAW, 1/3 of a stop between them, and DPRlater confirming it. Don’t tell me that by correcting the EV on the scene You get more than that.
It’s a more natural way of shooting: you are on the scene and you remeber obviously what it looks like. Instead if you use RAW, one week later you won’t know what the lights and shadows looked like.
Thirdly, I am not a slave to Adobe anymore, and I resented that a lot.
As I said I would rather shoot DNG, which allows editing without any loss of information, but I can do too with Jpeg LSF, because I usually need no editing at all or v. little.
It’s only about getting into the habit, like when I was shooting slides. I never enjoyed PP in film, and I am sure I am not alone in it. I avoided beautifying an image, which the majority does. And that perhaps is the essence of the debate. Fake pictures.
I remember slides too (although I didn’t venture away from Auto then). I have a stack from our honeymoon (decades ago) that still haven’t been scanned, since we like to have all our photos digitised now (especially if they are on a hard drive that hopefully can be grabbed to run away with should a bush fire threaten us, in Australia).
As far as recoverable files go, I can’t recover blown highlight details from raw files from my E-30 the same as my E-M5, but then the E-M5 does do low light a lot better as well. I also prefer to save the jpegs as LSF (+ RAW), so I can get the best from the JPEGs (when they are good from OOC) & most of my editing has usually just been Oly Viewer 3, although if I want something better I can use Capture One Pro 7 now that I have just upgraded to that (from Express 7).
I take it you don’t shoot in adverse conditions that can often require major adjustments in post. We don’t all shoot the easy stuff like you.
So you do ‘difficult’ piccies? How fascinating!! Do you also do ‘difficult’ plumbing?
I’m assuming this is tongue in cheek as JPEG files on m43’s after 1600ISO are nothing to write home about ;).
Well, not so much. I try to preset the camera, just like HCB was doing. Sometime I do a bit of relighting or reframing with iPhoto, but that’s all.
I was using PS Elements for a long while, and I shot RAW, because 4/3 sensors were so limited, but now I am spoiled.
I always feared to get too dependent on Adobe, and now I feel vindicated. Never put yourself in the hands of one company only.
HCB… so last century….
Brother, JPEG is a compressed version of RAW. A RAW file has all the available data your camera sensor can muster. You loose one to two available F/stops, and loose quite a bit of dynamic range shooting only in JPEG because JPEGs throw away a lot of that data and only keeps what is necessary based on the camera manufacture’s color settings. RAW is for people who want better control in post editing.
Now if you PREFER the pre edited, compressed look your in-camera JPEGs produce over RAW because you dialed in your perfect, preset color settings in the camera body then that’s a different story. Many modern camera bodies produce excellent JPEGs at much smaller file sizes once the photographer tweaks the in-camera settings just right. Fine tuning my image in post is not manageable because my camera only gives me one color profile to shoot in at a time with JPEG. Where in RAW, you have more of a flat image that one can fine tune in a program like Lightroom or Aperture which has more settings and editing tools than in-camera.
So I feel it’s an overgeneralized suggestion to advise someone to always shoot in JPEG.
Been there, done that. I use Jpeg uncompressed LSF, and if I could I’d use native DNG, like Leica I think.
But my point is that if I miss a shot, well It’s missed, and chucked away. It’s a whole different discipline, and it helps concentrating beautifully.
BTW I was doing the same in film, by using slides. Journalists did that all the time.
There’s far more fun in the hunting than in the cooking. And I have weaned out of Adobe, long before Aperture died.
I feel like you missed the boat on my point. You advised someone:
“Don’t shoot RAW, end of the problem 🙂 RAW is so last decade…”
But that, in my personal opinion is an overgeneralized bit of advice.
Look, when I take pictures of fine arts, we are talking about base ISO. not ISO 1600 and on, base ISO. Everything else being equal: optimal light, tripod, flush 90 degree angle and ETTR, f2.8-4.0 using a fine prime.
Simply put : RAW images are far superior to JPEGs out of the box.
I don’t want to be forced to pay for iCloud storage when i can store it natively on my hard drive and backup hard drive for free. If storing online only is my sole option when Photos comes out next year, I’m definitely switching to Adobe.
I wish I could be content with GIMP or any other open source solution, but Adobe Lightroom 5 really is that good.
When I used my Linux box I loved Darktable (www.darktable.org). I hear it has gotten way better with time (and its free).
See a few threads up. So true. Also I don’t want to become dependant of any mfr anymore, so I switched from windows to linux a few years ago and haven’t really regretted it. I now a a satisfactory workflow and I use Darktable and Xnview / Xnconvert amongst some others. But photographers are often conservative lazy old farts and Adobe knows it, but if you are willing to invest in learning different software than it’s nice to live in the “free” world.
Worth to look at!
Lightroom is a powerhouse of a program, no doubt. I have used both programs before and I have no qualms stating LR is more of a true professional photo management system. However, I am not a professional. I am a “prosumer” and have used both programs off and on for three years.
I found in my personal experience both Aperture and Lightroom are almost identical in feature sets. Just about anything I could do in LR I could also can do in Aperture.
I’m currently invested in Aperture because it still does much faster searches of my database, doesn’t require me to endlessly tab out to do basic edits in the same program, the user interface is nowhere near as painfully ugly and unintuitive to access basic editing tools, photos import faster and smoother, batch processing is only two steps long, plus I just have a personal preference to the “brushes” method Aperture uses than LR. I also found Final Cut Pro X to be cheaper and easier to use than Adobe Premiere Pro, and having Aperture means I can access my photos within FCP X, otherwise I would have to manually select my photos in LR, export them, and re-import them into FCP X. Complete waste of time.
Apple says you CAN store your photos on iCloud, not HAVE TO.
Apple said nothing definitive either way at the WWDC14 show. Most likely because Photos is still in development, so I’m hopeful.
I don’t see how they can require iCloud. As much as we all love the Internet, it’s just not currently viable to require “always connect” strategies, especially for things that are highly mobile.
Well, at least FOR NOW, Lightroom is cheap and not on the Creative Cloud so… this really isn’t a huge loss. Though tbh, I actually like using Adobe Camera Raw with Photoshop better than Lightroom. I find that, combined with Bridge is a much faster workflow and more intuitive.
Whatever. I use Darktable anyway.
‘darktable is an open source photography workflow application
and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers.
It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them
through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and
enhance them.’
http://www.darktable.org/
…and its free 😉
I used to use it a lot when I had a Linux box, always loved the program and what it could do. I hear it is way better now. Who knows, I might build another Linux box and use it again (as well as GIMP).
Apple wasn’t doing anything with Aperture anyway. Throwing the users a bone once every 3 years is not how you stay competitive. They obviously didn’t care much about it, so whatever.
This was sad sad news when news broke a couple of days ago.
While I tried LR and generally really like its capabilities… workflow and UI are horrible. Having to constantly switch between tabs for viewing and for editing? wtf!
LR is also not really fast for browsing large libraries with 100+GB. The main reason though why it never really grew on me and why I will sorely miss Aperture is the lack of actual organization features. I want a maintained library… not a folder structure I have to maintain… that I can browse in LR using the sidebar.
The one new screenshot of the new Photos.app makes me a bit hopeful, however that it might also be tailored to Aperture/LR users.
Btw… I recommend you read the article written by Thom Hogan over at:
http://www.dslrbodies.com/accessories/software-for-nikon-dslrs/software-news/another-one-bites-the-dust.html
Thom Hogan’s take makes perfect sense.
Aperture and iPhoto would seem to be merging into one, iCloud connected, application available on OS X and iOS. ONE application, instead of two makes sense. Apple has always been about simplifying.
BUT, Apple does have a history of developing applications, rarely upgrading them and slowly letting them wither and die… ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, ClarisCAD, a spreadsheet I can’t remember the name of, etc.. I seriously doubt Apple would leave Aperture users without a migration path to Photos.
Apple actually alrdy said that there will be an easy way to migrate your existing Aperture / iPhoto Library. So I am rather hopeful.
And concerning the other applications… well… it is a bit of a mixed bag.
Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. And then… sometimes… they re-add features that got axed.
See the updates to the current iWork Suite. Or Final Cut Pro X…
We’ll see what’s gonna happen…
jeffharris, you always have something constructive to contribute on this website. Good to see you in this discussion.
Well, I’d say AppleWorks survived in Pages/Numbers/Keynote. I think Shake is the better example here.
Correct, and Apple has tended to give people ways to still access their data in these changes.
However, I’d note that Claris was not a Steve thing: it was much more a Sculley thing. I’d be the last one to defend Apple’s strategies during that time period. Indeed, I wrote scathingly about it in my columns for MacWorld, MacUser, and other publications during that period.
My sense of things is that Apple knows more about what they want to do and why these days than they ever did. To some degree, the iPod triggered Apple’s current strategies, and they’re not yet to the ultimate expression of that.
Yep, that last paragraph especially makes a lot of sense, I haven’t thought of it that way.
Lightroom dominates because of its quality, it convinces more people than the other alternatives. It has the best price/feature ratio and usually quick support of new cameras.
Before we complain about Apple, we need to know, how the Aperture successor looks like and what feature set it will have. I suppose that the software architecture of Aperture was too outdated to be able to cope with the future trends, of which cloud storage is certainly an important, and not only bad one. The success of this will be based, if the successor will rely on cloud storage mostly or not. The former won’t be acceptable for most users.
On the other hand, Apple is in the wrong direction in many ways. It’s closed eco system becomes a major problem now, because Apple’s software components become outdated in terms of usability and features. iTunes is a prime example for this. Whereas Android gives you the freedom of managing your media assets with many alternatives like JRiver, on Apple devices iTunes is mostly the only and poor way to go.
If the new photo application goes the same route, Apple’s customer base will erode as it does on the mobile (Smartphones and Tablets) market. An eroding customer base will also mean less development, because it would be less attractive for creative people to work for this platform.
Apple dominates in profits in both the smartphone and tablet market. There is profit share and there is market share. Last I looked it’s profits that pays the bills.
Android market share is higher than iOS because of the proliferation of cheap Android phones. Hey, I can have the biggest market share if I give away my product too.
And all surveys of developers show that they still develop first for iOS. Why? Because, once again that’s where the money is. Most apps you have to give away on Android.
Let’s also remember that at the recent WWDC Apple released an unprecedented amount of developer tools. Developers right now are feeling a whole lotta Apple love.
With the eroding IOS market (loosing constantly market share) the profitability of Apple will decline as well. The cheaper iPhone is obviously not successfull and as such it is clear that in the mid price market Apple has no chance. Given the much increased quality of high end Android smartphones, which surpass iPhones in feature set and functionally, Apple will have more problems maintaining its share in the profitable high end market.
The too restrictive Apple Eco system will loose its acceptance quickly, because Apple fails to improve its basic components, while the Android smartphone manufactures lead the crowd with innovations.
I am no Apple hater. In fact I use an Galaxy Smartphone and an iPad 4 in Parallel. However, given today’s impressions iOS 7 vs. Android 4.4, I would not be today if my next tablet would be an iPad.
The closed Eco system makes Apple products unnecessary hard to integrate with non-Apple platforms, while MacOS based systems do not increase in importance. The simple paradigm of Apple not to support MicroSD card slots is a major hassle using my iPad as a backup and image examining system for my travels, it is as simple as that. Practical reasons make Android-based systems increasingly attractive for photographers.
Lightroom dominates because it runs on Windows. Universities and corporations use it because it runs on Windows. It’s all about the market dominance of Windows and nothing to do with LR quality.
That does not make sense. Most successfull commercial RAW editors (DxO, Capture One) run on Mac as well. Non-commercial editors (RawTherapee, Lightzone) also work on multiple platforms.
Therefore, the success of Lightroom clearly does not depend on running on Windows. It is its feature set and its good usability, which drive people getting it. And of course the produced image quality.
I disagree. Lightroom’s success has very little to do with the program features. Both Aperture and Lightroom are almost identical in feature sets. Just about anything one can do in LR one can also can do in Aperture, period.
I think Lightroom dominates because
1. They were first to market on the PC – which outnumbered Macs substantially back then and now thus gaining loyalty of most professionals
2. Lightroom is now compatible on both PC and Mac – no issues with compatibility if you are a professional with commercial jobs
3. Lightroom is better acclimated to communicating with other high end, professional, market leading products from the Adobe Creative Suite – like Photoshop, After Effects, InDesign, etc.
4. As a company, Adobe does not tell their consumer base what to like, they actually have workshops that assess feedback based on professional’s needs and include updates once a year on time
Those four features alone are more attractive and make the LR package a real powerhouse. However, I am not a professional. I am a “pro-sumer” and have used both programs and am currently invested in Aperture because it still does much faster searches, doesn’t require me to endlessly tab out to do basic edits in the same program, the user interface is nowhere near as painfully ugly and unintuitive to access basic editing tools, photos import faster and smoother, batch processing is only two steps long…etc…..
I cannot talk about Aperture. What sold me to LR -despite still missing several features I’d love to have- is how seamless it handles and organizes massive batches of RAW files.
it makes the “auto-everythinng” (my version of shooting JPEGs) as quick as it gets, while making the handling of critical files convenient, intuitive and relatively fast too.
That sounds attractive to me. I quit LR back with LR 3.5 because batch editing was (and still is) only two steps in Aperture. But I have heard that LR 5 is even more refined than ever. I’m going to wait to see if Apple’s new Photos app allows me to backup my files natively to my external hard drive and if they keep all the tools from Aperture. If I don’t get those two things, I’m switching to LR for sure.
According to Adobe, their split in LR/PS between Mac and PC is close to 50/50. A better way to say what you’re trying to say is that LR on Windows enabled the half of the market that Aperture would never touch.
FWIW, digital photography has always had strong Mac support. Even when the first DSLRs came out there were at least 30% Mac users in the digital photography user base. That’s one reason why companies like Nikon always did both Mac/Win versions of their bundled products. They were afraid to select a PC religion ;~). Even Adobe learned that lesson the hard way when they tried dropping Mac support for products like Premiere: in the professionals doing digital media, the Mac mix is just too high to ignore.
Very well said, and yes your clarification is exactly what I meant.
It makes perfect sense. If Aperture ran on Windows as well as OS X, it would have far more users, be adopted by institutions, get more media coverage, and present much stronger competition to LR. Conversely, if LR ran only on OS X, it would not dominate the market the way it does now. LR is not the best total workflow solution, but it’s probably the best CROSS-PLATFORM total workflow solution. Aperture was its real competition, and Aperture gave up 90% of the market right out of the gate.
This is really a lot of nonsense, the usual doom prediction for Apple. The closed eco-system is one of the reasons why people buy Apple’s devices – better security, integration and refinements. Also, as someone pointed out, the eroding market share isn’t much of a sign when most Android offerings are cheap limited devices and Apple is still reaping enormous profits. That idea of open beating closed is really a tired one and has never succeeded in real life.
Finally, Android doesn’t give you alternatives for managing your media, it is simply software provided by third parties. There are plenty of third party alternatives to iTunes.
“enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud”… this makes my day :))
I don’t have Apple or Aperture, so no struggle for me fortunately, but it seems Apple tries to focus on simplicity, which Aperture lacks for majority of P&S users.
For P&S users there was always the iPhoto already included. (Though I personally use the Picasa for JPEGs and upload.)
What they do now to Aperture and iPhoto, is the same what they did few years ago to FinalCutPro and iMovie. FCP users last time were really caught off guard. This time Apple has decency to pre-announce that the pro tool is EOLed.
A dead horse confirmed dead by its owners?
News, indeed. 🙂
Alright, I have to weigh in here…
I’m totally invested in Aperture… Hundreds of hours sorting, organizing, etc… My “cloud workflow” is to basically upload to Smugmug my picks…
If it comes to jumping ship to Lightroom, think of all the time and effort it will take to move. Apple, how can you abandon such a service for photographers? It reminds me of the last time Apple pissed me off and bought out Lala (a music sharing site) and appropriated all my music playlists that I had paid for… They offered iTunes credit for all the music we lost in the takeover…pennies on the dollar…but I digress.
What’s next, Apple is gonna buy out services like Smugmug, and charge 10 X the cost to host my 50,000 photos on the cloud?
I hope there is a silver lining in all this; hopefully Apple won’t abandon the pro-/pro-sumer… But, any iCloud push sounds like less for more, and in a more closed eco-system…
I’m scared! Too bad they couldn’t be better with their PR and try to dam up the leak that has sprung, causing people like me to consider jumping ship before this one sinks… Ugh
apple screwd you.. but hey apple is great isn´t it….. LOL
I am also a Mac user and also invested in Aperture. The preview of the new “Photos” app at the WWDC14 is not a big deal to me. Before one had to pay almost $100 to get Lightroom or Aperture. Now, if one buys a Mac, you get almost the same functionality as Lightroom for free. Not a bad deal overall, plus the photo apps are being consolidated, much better than having either iPhoto or Aperture (a.k.a iPhoto on steroids).
As long as I have the same tools to edit my photos as I did on Aperture 3 then migrating won’t be an issue for me. I WILL, however, have a HUGE issue with the new photos app if cloud storage is the only option. I have over 1TB of photos and videos that I backup for free at my house. I don’t need or want a cloud management system. I think that’s really the two issues here. The ability to still backup files natively and retention of the same editing tools.
Lol, Aperture is not the first nor the last software to be sacked after many years of service. By your logic, everyone is screwing you; better to sit in the corner and cry.
Based upon WWDC, my guess is that Apple now wants Smugmug, et.al., to create third-party add-ons that do that type of work (send to Smugmug). They’ve gone a long way to build the hooks developers need. The question is whether the developers will do that.
It will be interesting to see if the hooks include the ability to swap in a different RAW converter, something that owners of Fuji, Sigma and even Nikon might find useful.
That’s a good question. My guess is that initially, no. That’s the same answer as Aperture and Lightroom, by the way. You can SEND the file to another converter (or send the conversion as a TIFF to another program), but a transparent swap in hasn’t happened.
The actual question here is whether you MANAGE photos in Photos. That seems a bit unclear to me at the moment. I think you do, in which case I’d expect the ability to send the file to something else, but the publicly available information so far has nothing in it I see that would suggest that you can. Then again, we’re six months or more away from Photos Mac OS-X being launched.
I will miss it.
But I’m not surprised. These days, Apple is not a Mac company anymore – they are iPhone company. They do not need the input from professionals as much. In the past, Apple valued “Pro” customers specifically for the input on the development of the platform to make sure it is viable for both content creation and content consumption. Not anymore. They are not underdog anymore, they have stable and large market share and large developer base – but on content consumption devices. Thus content creation – and pro users with it – are redundant.
In a grander scheme of things, we find ourselves again at the cycle when devices used by professionals and consumers are diverging. Intel and Microsoft (Wintel) rose to power thanks to the last convergence cycle in the 90s. But that cycle is over, as even Microsoft now is moving toward content consumption devices (tablets).
Migrating libraries is a disaster waiting to happen. My Aperture 2 library still can’t be read on my Aperture 3 software. At least Aperture 3 was more stable. Still waiting for Olympus E-M10 support but I guess it won’t happen now. Good bye Aperture – I won’t miss you.
Instead of trying to open the old Ap2 library directly, have you tried creating a new empty Ap3 library and then selecting File > Import > Library to import the old one into the new one? In Ap2 I experienced some issues with libraries getting corrupted, possibly due to external hard drives getting unceremoniously disconnected. This technique of importing rather than opening the problematic library sometimes worked for me. I’ve had zero library corruption issues with Ap3.
Apple is only useful for Mac users, we pc guys do not need apple but Capture One.
Does C1 have DAM? Can it do selective adjustments, like brushing skin smoothing onto a face or selecting just the backdrop and making it white? These tools are important to me.
Phase One has a DAM tool that they acquired from Microsoft. Haven’t used it recently, but it was pretty good even before Microsoft acquired it.
Funny thing, that. Post mortem we can see that Microsoft didn’t come close to having a complete strategy that included all the things that mobile enabled. They never tied the pieces together, they just had the pieces, some of which they’ve unloaded. Apple is doing the opposite: they suddenly seem to have a very clear picture of how they want to tie EVERYTHING they make together in a more seamless way, and that will include all the files and data your Apple devices create, too.
All I can say is I used Aperture for a while, then I tried Lightroom and it just works so much better for me. I dropped Aperture 2 years ago and haven’t used it since. This is jut my humble opinion, but Aperture left me feeling strangely disconnected from the physical files on my hard disk.
there are other raw converter in case you did not notice…..
corel after shot (bibble)
capture one
DXO
silkypix
rawtherapee
photo ninja.
etc.
buying overpriced apple is stupid anway… so i don´t care about aperture
ACDsee pro7 for most work it’s great. Corel for layers and Topaz plugins work with both. Don’t need any more.
Adobe free area.
Oh Aperture is far from a simple Raw Converter. It is more in line with LR than with Adobe Camera Raw.
Other than that… do we REALLY have to have this stupid and age old discussion here whether it is a good idea or not to buy a Mac?
As many arguments as you can come up with why it is a stupid call to buy a Mac… I can give you why it is stupid (and in the end MORE expensive) to buy a PC instead.
But this is not the right place and time here. This is about photography… and like it or not… some people use Macs… and some people use Aperture and care about it.
I personally do not care about LR… or Windows in general. Some people do, however, just because it is not MY concern doesn’t mean it is no concern at all…
Right. This is the problem at the heart of the Aperture discussions: Aperture isn’t just a raw converter. Just like Lightroom, it can be (and is for many) most of some users’ workflow.
What Apple has disclosed so far is that Photos is going to be mostly a converter/editor. We have yet to see how all the other pieces (think Lightroom Modules) fit together. For instance, you could have Pages templates to create photo books directly from Photos. That might or might not be the way Apple is planning to handle things, but there are so many things we don’t know and only a few we do.
If I’m correct he Icloud will store RAW too. Hopefully Photos will be able to catalog and develope them and that will mean that for a lot of people Lightroom will be an expense to be saved against a mac.
I had macs for twelve years, then I left for Windows thinking I would save money but i’m finding myself not saving time AND money. Resale is higher; I don’t have to keep disks around to reinstall OS, drivers or sell the computer and my favorite programs have already mac versions (Lightworks, Hitfilm, Photoline, Blender, Inkscape), are cheap ( Pixelmator), upgrades are free for now (FCPX, OSX) or have great options coming (calls directly from the computer)
I need to update my desktop and I’m coming back.
Darktable…. http://www.darktable.org
The apocalypse is not coming. Please–read what Thom Hogan has to say about this. He’s usually pretty right on. And on this one, I think he is again. If anything this is really bad for Adobe, not Apple.
http://www.dslrbodies.com/accessories/software-for-nikon-dslrs/software-news/another-one-bites-the-dust.html
I agree, from what I’ve seen and heard during the Apple developer’s conference, it is Adobe that will take another hit. Apple has been trending on simplicity and this is just another step in that direction.
Thank you. I’m not perfect on these things, but I do have some sources still in Apple. I’m not even sure that a “pro” photo software package is dead at Apple, but it won’t be Aperture. First we get Photos on iOS 8, then on OS-X Yosemite, and that all links via iCloud Photos. What happens after that is unknown at this point.
I used Aperture for a long time. But when Lightroom surpassed it last year and seemed to be pulling further and further ahead of Apple”s stalled app, I made the time consuming migration out of Aperture but easily into LR. LR gets better and better with every frequent update. It has even replaced Photoshop for 90% of my editing and tweaking needs, and the non-destructive workflow is awesome. I’ve moved from “plugins” to “presets,” saving lots of disc space and time consuming round tripping. Dropping pro features of Aperture will likely allow Apple to concentrate on building a unified, synchronized JPG experience for the masses. To me, the worst part of Apple leaving the space is that it leaves Adobe unchallenged. Sure, there are other raw converters and catalog applications, but not from a company with Apple’s marketing resources and presence in the space. Let’s hope the amazing pace of development around LR does not slow as a result. Maybe CaptureOne will gain some market share and keep Adobe working hard.
Well, this has been a long time coming. Hate to say it, but I told you so — they started moving away from the pro platform a few years ago while Jobs was still alive. Jobs always wanted Apple to be the next Sony, so when the i-Gadgets started succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, the Mac OS slowly turned into a toy OS merged with all sorts of gimmicks from iOS.
I write this as an ardent Apple supporter throughout their dark days when they teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Bought a new Powerbook every year from 1998 to 2005 just to support a company whose philosophy I believed in. But just like The Body Shop, at the end of the day, Apple turned to be just another corporation, after all.
So — like cameras today — it really doesn’t matter anymore what computer you buy — they are all good enough to do what we need to do. I left Apple after I found Windows 7 had become what the original OS X had been: a simple, pleasing work tool devoid of consumer gadgetry.
Did you really buy a Powerbook a year to support a multinational? Did you really believe that multinational had a “philosophy” other than making money? One more question: do you own M43 products?
I just finished reading the Thom Hogan article and, you know, never mind Aperture: using Hogan’s own argument, what is _Apple_ going to do when camera companies all have direct links to cloud storage from their devices?
The Leica T is already a step in that direction and I can see Samsung going for it as a first-mover. Perhaps Panasonic, too. Eventually, once people could link to cloud albums directly from their devices, who will need the cloud storage from computer manufacturers?
I can see the future workflow. Shoot and store in onboard memory, a-la Leica T. You will no longer need SD or CF cards then. Whenever the device is within range of a stable and fast connection, the photos are uploaded to the cloud albums where they are stored as digital negatives. All you need to complete the workflow then are editing apps to work on the images you want.
Photos app, Picasa or Pixlr, who cares what you will use then? As it is, a lot of my friends who shoot Instagrams are more than happy to have their images stored just in the Instagram server, without copies on their own devices.
Sort of. I believe the workflow needs a bit more nuance in user choice. I want the camera to wait until it connects to my personal home system (see my article on “nests”) and ingest to there. I’ll then control what and when gets to the cloud, and which cloud.
I can see two models developing: the Apple Way (ie, You only get what we think you should get and we’re basically 95% right, anyway) and the Linux Way (anarchistic, do as you please it’s your asset anyways).
I’m betting the mainstream will opt for the Apple Way: it’s far easier to have someone else sort out the nitty gritty for you. Nerds (and I use that term politely, for I am one) will take more pleasure in being able to tweak the system to their hearts’ delight. But the end result, I think, is that more and more cameras marketed towards consumers will end up operating and functioning like the Leica T and Samsung NX.
Historically it’s three models: the Apple Way (or another company that disrupts), the Copiers’ Way (the companies that then try to mimic that), and the OpenSource Way. That’s also the order in which profits distribute, too ;~).
And for most companies, the Copiers Way is more than enough! Haha. First-mover advantage is, to me, more and more of a myth. Samsung of all people should know that better than anyone by now. In trying to out-Apple Apple, they just seem to be fumbling like Sony, throwing all sorts of things to see what sticks.
And the next thing you know, just like it was with MP3 players, after they get to their 3rd Generation iterations… BAM! Apple comes in and solves everything in such an elegant manner. It’s all about the user experience. Apple has been about UI from its genesis. But I really don’t understand why there is such a dearth of UI professionals in the world, that no one else seem able to figure things out.
And why other companies are sooo intent on becoming an R&D centre for Apple (who I am sure are watching and taking notes from the Samsung watches and Google specs), is also beyond me. Why not just wait, let Apple come out with an industry-changer, and then 3 years later you can have at it with the crumbs (from a pie large enough to satisfy even Samsung)?
Apple completely lost its competence of user friendly design and competence. Just look at iTunes. It is actually a usability disaster. Look at the standard apps, provided by Apple. They are amongst the worst in its class in terms of features and UI. On my iPad except Mail, I don’t use any of them. All of them are replaced in daily use by more competent and better designed applications.
On my Samsung smartphone it is different. There, I use to a much higher degree the apps provided by either Google or Samsung, because they are better designed and offer more functionality. Examples: browser, Google Maps, Music Player, Remote Control etc.
Have you really seen any significant improvements in the usability of iTunes or simple things like the calendar app? Is there any progress?
I think the same thing is valid for photography related stuff at IOS and MacOS. Aperture hasn’t been improved a lot. New camera support rather late. Tablets, which you can use a photographer for image storage and
… and backup (Apple software just did not allow me to continue the same post)? Not really, because you have no way add memory to your device and manage storage effectively.
Apple has to change its closed system attitude quite a bit, to continue as a major player and return to be the leader. The leadership they had, when they invented devices like Smartphones and Tablets was surprisingly quickly lost.
Compare this to Canon, which leads the DSLR industry since more than ten consecutive years.
To who’s cloud storage will they be providing access to? Their own? That will fail (again). To Silicon Valley companies? They can’t keep up with the changes.
I’ve been writing it for almost five years now: short of allowing Silicon Valley and other software companies from programming in an API provided by the camera company (ala what the smartphone companies give developers), they simply are too slow to keep up with the ever-changing Web. The other solution they seem reluctant to provide: Nikon could just make Nikon Transfer talk to the WiFi in their cameras and let you import into your computer directly, and then you can control where the images go from there (including the cloud).
What Apple’s doing is trying to lock-in customers in their hardware. Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and now Photos are all getting reengineered to work with iCloud in ways that “sync” devices in ways we’ve not really had before. Google is now scrambling to copy that. Adobe was already trying to get there. No individual camera company is going to break whatever gets established, they’ll need to play well with it.
In short, Apple just continuing to do what Apple does best: keeping the pens closed off. There are strong arguments for this approach — not least in terms of maintaining a certain standard and security. But now that Apple have become bigger than Microsoft, perhaps it is time for Apple to taste what Microsoft had when Netscape came calling?
As for whose cloud storage the camera companies are going to link to: I think first of all they will try to go on their own. This might work to a certain extent for camera companies with die-hard user bases like Leica, which has been funding their own online user community for years now. Sony and Samsung are two others that may just succeed somewhat. Perhaps Fuji, too.
But sooner or later I can see a replay of the MP3 scenario, where music companies eventually realised it was better to just hand off the distribution to a third party. In this case I’m betting the main contenders would be Apple, Google and Amazon. Microsoft will try to get a foot in, of course, but will still fail to “get” it.
Both Canon and Nikon have tried their own cloud type approach. Both have basically failed (not profitable, not growing). The problem with all workflow is that it is, well, workFLOW. The cloud isn’t the destination for images, it’s a holding pen for images. To make it work, you have to have simple and easy ways for images to get where the user wants them to be seen. Last week it was Instagram, this week it was Snapchat, next week it’ll be something else.
The problem for the Japanese companies is that they’re not at all connected into what’s happening in that arena. Apple, Google, and to lesser degrees Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung are. You can’t wait for something to become popular and then try to support it, especially since APIs for these “services” can and do change rapidly, sometimes on a weekly basis. What Apple, Google, and to a lesser degree Microsoft, are all trying to do is ENABLE those constantly emerging and changing entities to develop into their platform. After all, they have billions of users, which should be enticing. The camera companies? If we assume that ALL digital cameras ever sold by Canon and Nikon went to unique users (which they almost certainly didn’t), we don’t even hit a half billion users. So those services will likely develop for iOS and Android first, Windows and OS-X second, and platforms for camera companies about 99th down the list.
This is not to say that they can’t succeed at doing something themselves, only that it will be incredibly difficult, and their software expertise to date shows that they don’t have the ability to do it. As I explained to Nikon executives five years ago, it would take a dedicated and “all in” approach probably centered in Silicon Valley (or at least one of the Internet savvy and connected tech areas in the US or Europe) to succeed.
But now the problem is that Apple (and Google and even smaller players such as Adobe) are moving WITHOUT the camera companies being even peripherally involved. I’m not sure Nikon had even one person at WWDC, so they’d be on the trailing edge of what’s happening, not leading.
Hi Thom,
thank you for the continuing discussion. I agree with your observations above. But unfortunately for the camera companies, I think they will have no choice but to find a way to integrate the cloud into their products within 5 years’ time.
Trending developments, events will unfold so as to make it compulsory for camera companies to bundle cloud storage with future products. In this respect I have been having more and more respect for the Leica T (which I initially dismissed rather harshly, mainly for its unergonomic, New-Apple form over function design).
I think two fundamental problems will make it even more challenging for mainstream camera companies than it was for recording labels previously: (1) how to make money out of their respective cloud services, and
(2) how to attract subscribers to that service.
The issues they face:
i. At least record labels can “sell” the content because they have copyright. Camera companies don’t own photos taken with their cameras.
ii. They would likely be compelled by the market to offer the service either for free initially (like what Apple did with .mac), before pulling the rug once the users are comfortable and charging a subscription (which Apple also tried to do later on with .mac). As Apple already experienced, this is likely to be ultimately unsustainable.
iii. Camera companies probably can’t attract users of other brands to their service. Even if they have compelling UI — because the main criteria for users would be seamless integration. This will drastically minimise the number of subscribers, similar to the situation with the games consoles — both PS3 and Xbox online communities are far smaller than just the number of iPad or Instagram users.
iv. Conversely, third party service providers can attract subscribers who are not users of a particular brand.
v. Third party providers also have a variety of business models to choose from. They can choose to function as a straightforward storage site like Dropbox. Or as a storage + gallery services site like Flickr. I think we will see more hybrid sites where you can store all your photos online and choose which ones you wish to make public (which is possible with Facebook albums at the moment).
vi. Plus, third party providers can depend on advertising as a revenue stream — similar to what we used to have for printed newspapers and magazines where the cover price is often just there to cover costs, while profits have to come from ads.
To meet this challenge, camera companies could still create spin-offs, of course. Or JVs with third party providers like Amazon or a dark horse that is still waiting to emerge. But I think like record company execs before them, they will find it tough going on their own, yes, I agree with you.
The mobile ecosystems will win because the MS, Google and Apple and perhaps Amazon clouds will be the biggest, so your Canon/Nikon version will not be a place used by non-photographers. Remember it’s about ecosystem.
Well,I’ll tell you what. It’s okay because the Aperture DOF equivalent to LR is 2 stops. 😉
This is a bad deal for us Aperture people. I hope the new Photos app will have strong library organization capabilities.
Anytime a popular piece of software is discontinued is raw deal. It’s a shame. I am LR user but I know a lot of folks use Aperture.
Hopefully, the organizational capabilities will be available to every application, so any editor can work with any group of photos easily.
Well, in the end it doesn’t matter to me. Aperture, Lightroom, whatever. In a way I am already ahead of the curve. Since last year all my photos are already split between Dropbox and Flickr. I edit them mainly using online tools (currently, that would be Pixlr.com). This is how most/all amateur photographers will work within 3 years.
I think eventually a software company will come up with the idea of working with virtual copies of photos offline, and having those edits appended to online stored assets. Like how you edit video streams virtually first, and then having the changes appended to the actual file only upon rendering.
10 years ago, when Oracle/Sun came out with their NC Net PC concept, everyone laughed. Microsoft laughed the hardest. Today I can’t even begin to imagine how I might do my work whenever there is no broadband — communication, collaboration, research and now file storage has become so integral to people’s life, that just now before the “Transformers 4” movie I was watching started, the people to my left and right were all busy on their smart phones or tablets.
No, they will plow Aperture into Yosemite and call it Photos. Even though it won’t be as powerful as Lightroom, it will be good enough and free, and that is incentive enough for those who don’t like Adobe’s rent an app business model.
Any gains Adobe sees will be short-lived.
Remember, Apple is a hardware company. The software serves to add value to that hardware.
“Plowing apps into the OS” was precisely why people complained about Microsoft at one time. Ironic that Apple or rather Steve Jobs was one of the loudest proponents of breaking up Microsoft into separate OS and app companies.
Microsoft put a lot of code into the operating system which made MS Office have a competitive advantage as far back as Windows 3.1 when neither was very good but it was helpful to scare customers away from the competition.
You haven’t understand the business then. Apple is getting increasingly a software company. Apps add more and more to the profit and most of the reason to buy a MacOS or IOS device is its software. Therefore Apple spends considerable efforts in user interface design. Aperture simply does not fit in this world and it needs to be redesigned. That is the reason that Apple discontinues it.
For the hardware, there are much better, more powerful, better designed, and more easier to integrate devices on the market than Apple products. Hardware becomes less and less a reason to buy Apple products and the non standard way of Apple designing products (proprietary plugs, no micro sd card slots, nano SIM cards and so forth) becomes more problematic than ever.
Well, Apple is not simply a hardware company, nor is it shifting to be a software company. What Apple is selling is a system, an way of doing things, a design of life style almost. Hardware and software are means to one end. Separating them and say one is more important than the other is missing the whole picture.
I never used Aperture and I only tried early versions of Lightroom. I moved to Capture One and haven’t looked at much else, except Silkypix. When Capture One Pro 7 added catalogs, I had no further need to look elsewhere.
It’s sad for Aperture users. It was an interesting application that required a lot of resources, but Apple has not been crazy about spending money on internal resources. This may have been a deal to quietly keep Adobe products on (Mac) OS X.
Same here 🙂 Even the cheaper non-pro version of Capture One with the basic importer/catalog is at least extremely capable regarding raw conversion, currently there is no better software for this in my opinion than Capture One.
I don’t want to store my photos in a cloud.
Might cause a loss of sharpness!