Apple Kills Aperture Photo App

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jgherbert,
User Rank: Ninja
6/30/2014 | 10:01:18 AM

Arrested Development

It sounds like the writing was on the wall for a while, if there were no updates since 2011. I don't use Aperture, so I wasn't aware of that, but it surely wasn't a good sign so I have to assume that Aperture users cannot be as surprise as they're making out.

I happen to use Adobe Lightroom (because I only had a PC when I started out, so it was the only option). I don't like Adobe's move towards a subscription model for everything, and one conspiracy theory out there (which is sadly believable) is that without the competition of Apple selling Aperture as a standalone product still, Adobe may choose to shift Lightroom to a subscription-ONLY model, which would suck.

Adobe for their part are doing what you'd expect, which is to start making noises to appeal to disgruntled Aperture users. It's interesting though that in this story there's more inforation than in others I've read, especially regarding the move of those features new iLife app in OSX - but after a big gap. That would be a killer move against Lightroom - effectively making Aperture (or equivalent) free and standard - except if it's not being developed any more, then what's going on? I'm confused :)

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Michael Endler,
User Rank: Author
6/30/2014 | 10:09:06 AM

Re: Arrested Development

Aperture is pretty good. If I recall correctly, it added some really useful features, like using brushes to locally apply certain effects, before Lightroom did. I also like the default RAW conversion settings in Aperture better than the ones in Lightroom, and I think Aperture is, on the whole, a little cleaner and more intuitive. I think Lightroom handles noise and sharpening better, but I like how Aperture handles colors. But Lightroom is still fairly easy to use, and has slowly crept ahead on features. Some cool plug-ins (e.g. MagicBullet) aren't compatible with the newest version of Aperture either.

But the vibe I got from Apple wasn't necessarily that they're abandoning Pro photographers-- more like, photos have become such a big part of most users' digital experiences that Apple decided to bake photo features more directly into OS X. We'll see if they live up to that. Given the way Final Cut Pro X has evolved, I suspect the first version of the Photos app will fall in prosumer territory.

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jgherbert,
User Rank: Ninja
6/30/2014 | 10:12:49 AM

Re: Arrested Development

Good comments, thank you. The only thing is, if there's a gap between the official news that Aperture really is dead, and the creation of a replacement product, people may fill that gap with other products like Lightroom, after which chances are you won't get the back.

It's a little bit like Apple Maps on iOS - kill off the built-in product, but the replacement isn't up to the same level (so it's not really a replacement), and doesn't reach that level for another year, during which time people have got very used to Google Maps, thank you...

Still, if Apple integrates great photo management and editing into the OS, I guess even a long term LR user like myself will have to consider whether to shift to the integrated solution rather than running addition cost software. Hmm.

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Michael Endler,
User Rank: Author
6/30/2014 | 10:30:41 AM

Re: Arrested Development

Good points.

On the one hand, Apple might not see why it should bother competing with Lightroom. Lightroom comes free with the complete Creative Cloud packages, which are basically mandatory for a lot of art/film/design/photo professionals. Apple isn't going to try to compete head-to-head with everything Adobe makes, so to an extent, Lightroom is going to have a bult-in user base no matter what Apple does. Even if you want to use Final Cut Pro X instead of Premier, for example, it's hard to ditch Photoshop-- and if you're going to use Photoshop, you're gonna get Lightroom for free.

On the other hand, even if a lot of people are already using Lightroom, if Apple's new Photo tools are easy to use and fairly powerful, a lot of Mac users might switch over. Even if you already have Lightroom, if you have a Mac, the new Photos app will be free, so it's not like Apple has to convince you to buy a new piece of software. If the Photos app does 95% of what Lightroom does and is easier to use, that might tip the scales, at least for Mac users. I also wonder how much functionality Apple will leave open for third-party plug-ins. If they let the developer community fill in whatever functionality is missing from the core Photos app, that might help Apple compete.

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Thomas Claburn,
User Rank: Author
6/30/2014 | 5:55:02 PM

Re: Arrested Development

How do you like Lightroom? I'd consider it for its Lua-based scripting. But I don't want subscription-based software.

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jgherbert,
User Rank: Ninja
7/1/2014 | 12:38:47 PM

Re: Arrested Development

I have Lightroom as a standalone product, and I have been using it since version 2. For me it works great; I only need to catalog still images (tens of thousands of them), and it's very good at that. The workflow is pretty straightforward and the quality is good. As with all the third party tools, the biggest issue is the RAW conversion - Canon and Nikon both keep their RAW file formats secret, so any tools that read the have to effectively reverse engineer them and that means that each tool has its own little twist on the output. As mentioned by another commenter, Aperture was considered to have a marginally better RAW conversion than Lightroom, but as they also mentioned, I'd stand by Lightroom's excellent noise reduction algorithms very happily.

What I can't do is compare it in depth to Aperture though...

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Michael Endler,
User Rank: Author
7/2/2014 | 12:33:36 PM

Aperture Update

Apple reps have made a few more comments that make it sounds like a lot of Aperture's deep toolset will be preserved in the new OS X Photos app. Apple is also evidently going to let third party developers play.

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BogdanShumei,
User Rank: Apprentice
10/24/2014 | 1:56:45 PM

Update

I agree with the first comment - there are coming more 3d party developers to fill the lack in new OS Yosemite. Some of them can be macphun - photoediting software with many pro features - so, I believe the changes are positive!

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