Apple Aperture, how I miss thee - is Apple still listening?

[Analog Kid]

I still haven't found anything close to Aperture. It was so fast and easy to work with.

I've moved to Capture One and Photo Mechanic. They're passable, but I still feel like I'm spending too much time aware of the tools in a way I never was with Aperture. Capture One doesn't handle large libraries as well as Aperture did, and Photo Mechanic's interface feels really dated. Neither have a good Faces/Places tool that made browsing and searching so easy.

Is there a good, privacy preserving, face recognition tool?

If Aperture came back, would I trust it? It's been so painful having to move from Aperture to another tool, and I'm still not really comfortable that my old libraries are exported with the edits intact, I'm not sure I'd take that gamble again.

 

[Eric Idle]

Hoping for the return of the glory days of Apple is time wasted. Tim Cook doesn't have the heart or passion for incredible products and software like Steve Jobs did. Yes Steve made his mistakes along the way but the passion was there. Tim is a money man. That's it. Keep in mind he was the Chief Financial Officer before becoming CEO. As long as Apple rakes in the dough he doesn't care. I grew up in the Steve Jobs era of Apple and it was such a great and different Apple than we have now. Pretty much night and day. I miss the old Apple a lot. It was a great time to be a user and fan.

Cook was the COP, chief operating officer.

 

[leifp]

For those complaining about the pricing at the time ($500 USD v1, $200 v2, $80 v3), allow me to contextualize:

1. It was a pro app and a separate purchase. Every Mac user had access to iPhoto for free.
2. It was in there with Photoshop (about the same price) and was inarguably behind Adobe’s creation of Lightroom.
3. It did things no other app of the time did, and lead to all the competition we see today.

Unfortunately it was victim to its success at changing the industry and, like with routers, the market is worse for its disappearance. Apple kept competitors honest and hungry…

 

[Eric Idle]

For those complaining about the pricing at the time ($500 USD v1, $200 v2, $80 v3), allow me to contextualize:

1. It was a pro app and a separate purchase. Every Mac user had access to iPhoto for free.
2. It was in there with Photoshop (about the same price) and was inarguably behind Adobe’s creation of Lightroom.
3. It did things no other app of the time did, and lead to all the competition we see today.

Unfortunately it was victim to its success at changing the industry and, like with routers, the market is worse for its disappearance. Apple kept competitors honest and hungry…

Like another poster said, Aperture was back during peak Apple. Tim Cook's Apple is a shell of its former self.

 

[jaw04005]

It's as if Apple, in their iWork suite, decided just to stop making Numbers and let people buy Excel instead, but still keep Keynote and Pages around. Sigh.

Don't give them any ideas. It's also telling that Numbers and Pages have not yet been released for the Apple Vision Pro.

What upsets me is that Apple had consumer and pro apps for the 3 main multimedia fields: music, video, photo. They still have music and video - pro apps - but for photo - it is just the consumer app. And when Photos replaced iPhoto, it was *not* good. It has gotten better, but nowhere near pro level, IMO.

You're right, it's not. I personally don't think it's as good as iPhoto either. They moved that entire team to Photos for efficiency purposes, but it hasn't translated into better products even if iOS and macOS share a common application code base.

It's happening with Final Cut too. It's just slower. But Adobe Premiere has the dominant marketshare in that area too.

As those applications increasingly move to the cloud, how many more years will they keep working on Final Cut or Motion?

 

[page3]

I miss Aperture. Over the years I’ve tried all the alternatives, but none measure up.

Ultimately I now just take fewer photos and edit them less.

 

[vjl323]

I'm glad I'm not alone in how I feel about Aperture. I honestly felt like Apple designed that app just for me [I know, stilly]. But that's how comfortable I felt with it. I'm old enough I've developed and printed in real darkrooms, and have used Photoshop since it was 1.0 and Mac only. Aperture felt like the most natural app a photographer could ever use. I have far too many replacement apps, but none have made the process feel as smooth. I also have huge photo libraries in Aperture, and migrating them, making sure metadata is preserved, and all the things that could go wrong in that process - it's a huge task and I don't want to start it with an app I won't like [which is why I have been trying to migrate Projects into their own Libraries in Aperture, and then migrating the libraries into the other apps]. I highly miss the simple Vault feature. I have terabytes of data, and where I live, a very, very slow Internet connection [Backblaze will take at least 9 more months to finish a backup if I don't add more photos/videos to my drives - thinking about a stay in Erwin, TN as they have Google Fiber and while I'm not a fan of Google, I will gladly use their fiber to quickly upload this backlog!].

I know most in the industry have moved to Lightroom. I gave it tries multiple times [this was before Adobe went subscription] and being someone who has used Photoshop since the dawn of time, I was not against using an Adobe product like I am these days. It just didn't feel right though. And that's not something one can easily express to a developer - "your app doesn't feel right" is a lot harder to debug then giving specific bug reports or UI issues, etc. It did run on Windows so Windows folks got to use an app similar to Aperture - and Lightroom didn't require a monster machine to run on. But it never felt right. And now I've stopped using all Adobe products [not happy that Premier has overtaken FCP as I was an FCP v7 user who actually *loved* FCP X when it came out, though a few missing features were showstoppers on a few projects, but they eventually fixed that; I still like FCP X and worry about a day when it goes the way of Aperture. Since they have invested time in the iPad version, I am hoping it will stick around].

Aperture was ahead of its time, and very reasonably priced [even v1] at the time. It was truly a pro app and was deserving of the $499 initial version price, IMO. I would gladly spend that again on "Aperture: Reborn" if Apple decided to change direction. Phil was a big fan of the app, and he still works for Apple; too bad the App Store eats 80+ hours of his week. He probably doesn't shoot photos any more due to lack of time and lack of a good app to put them in!

 

[Tagbert]

I’ve recently heard good things about Nitro. Supposedly the developer used to work on Aperture.
https://www.gentlemencoders.com/nitro-for-macos/index.html

 

[oakrrl]

I’ve recently heard good things about Nitro. Supposedly the developer used to work on Aperture.
https://www.gentlemencoders.com/nitro-for-macos/index.html

I've started playing around with Nitro. It's very promising, but encountered some frustrations. When it comes out for iOS as well as Mac, I'll re-visit it. .

 

[oakrrl]

One of the developers of Aperture made a Mac/ipadOS/iOS app called Raw Power. Just a week or so ago, another app from the developer came out which does give me Aperture vibes - Nitro Photo. Looks/feels interesting. 7-day trial. Can subscribe or pay a one time fee. It is a universal app, though iOS/iPadOS version is still coming [but will be free if one buys the Mac "version"].

Capture 1 has some good Aperture feels - but honestly I still prefer Aperture to C1.

And as was recently posted here, yes, Aperture v1 was a very, very demanding app. Thankfully they improved performance a lot in later versions, and lowered the price quite a bit too.

What upsets me is that Apple had consumer and pro apps for the 3 main multimedia fields: music, video, photo. They still have music and video - pro apps - but for photo - it is just the consumer app. And when Photos replaced iPhoto, it was *not* good. It has gotten better, but nowhere near pro level, IMO.

It's as if Apple, in their iWork suite, decided just to stop making Numbers and let people buy Excel instead, but still keep Keynote and Pages around. Sigh.

I've been playing with Nitro, the new app from Gentlemencoders (maker of RAW Power). I like it a lot - closest thing I've found to Aperture. So far, I'm liking it better than Photomator. Developer is very responsive - I encourage you to give it a try. (BTW, I use Capture One as my main desktop photo processing, and second your opinion that it's best alternative, having also tried DxO, On1, Adobe).

 

[turbineseaplane]

I also miss Aperture

Photos is so clunky to use
It's more of a photo "viewer" that lets you edit if you really want to

All of this has just led me to care less about photography than ever before, which is so sad to me

 

[Tagbert]

I also miss Aperture

Photos is so clunky to use
It's more of a photo "viewer" that lets you edit if you really want to

All of this has just led me to care less about photography than ever before, which is so sad to me

You can use Photos as the DAM and then use other apps for most edits

 

[vjl323]

I also miss Aperture

Photos is so clunky to use
It's more of a photo "viewer" that lets you edit if you really want to

All of this has just led me to care less about photography than ever before, which is so sad to me

Photography has always been a passion of mine since I was a kid. I dipped my toes into digital photography in 2004 with an Epson [yes, the printer company] point and shoot digital camera as I loved my film SLRs. Eventually I did migrate to digital [though I do still shoot some film these days] with a Canon 20D. I scanned thousands of negatives and slides into my computers - when Aperture came out - it just made the world of digital photography come alive for me. So I really feel that last sentence in your comment - I still love taking photos - but after I have done so, the process is not something I love any more - so often I just dump my RAW files to my computer and never look at them or edit them or anything.

 

[vjl323]

I've been playing with Nitro, the new app from Gentlemencoders (maker of RAW Power). I like it a lot - closest thing I've found to Aperture. So far, I'm liking it better than Photomator. Developer is very responsive - I encourage you to give it a try. (BTW, I use Capture One as my main desktop photo processing, and second your opinion that it's best alternative, having also tried DxO, On1, Adobe).

I've already paid the one time fee for Nitro as I do enjoy Raw Power and liked Nitro when I tried it. I just really gotta commit to something soon. The amount of photos I have is enormous. I need to commit to C1 ...or now Nitro? Sigh...aaaah.

 

[steve123]

I really liked the face matching, making calendars and slideshows in Aperture. The calendar service Apple provided was excellent. I had to move to Mixbook but I do not like their web based app ... it is terrible. Apple was the first to automatically "sync" photos with music to create a slideshow. They had an excellent beat matching algorithm that was the best. I can use FCPX but until AI came along, you had to manually create the beat track. Aperture with all the advancements that AI could bring would be a killer.

 

[dotnet]

Nitro sounds interesting. How does it compare to Aperture in a) the image processing, and b) the DAM stakes?

I’m not a great “photoshopper”, I’m mostly missing the DAM capabilities of Aperture. The other day, in Photos, I tried to make an album of (or select all) photos taken at a particular focal length. I couldn’t figure it out, it seems impossible.

 

[Ctrlos]

So while grabbing a link to the Maps feedback for another thread, I found that Apple still has a feedback page setup for Apple Aperture, which has several options for contacting the Aperture team [or so the page says!]

Feedback - Aperture - Apple

As a huge fan of Aperture since before v1.0, I still miss the app tremendously and run it on my macOS 14 system using Retroactive. But I wish a modern update was available. Raw Power, developed by one of the ex-Aperture team members, is amazing, but isn't a full on replacement for Aperture.

Wait, there is a way to run Aperture on 64bit machines?! Why am I only just finding out this now??

 

[James_C]

Count me in as one of those that miss Aperture. I used it for a long time until it was no longer compatible with 64bit Macs. I really did not want a subscription app for my photo Library. I now use Photo's for my photo Library and have a number of tools On1 and Affinity to edit with. Such a shame that Apple did not continue to develop Aperture.

 

[vjl323]

Wait, there is a way to run Aperture on 64bit machines?! Why am I only just finding out this now??

Count me in as one of those that miss Aperture. I used it for a long time until it was no longer compatible with 64bit Macs. I really did not want a subscription app for my photo Library. I now use Photo's for my photo Library and have a number of tools On1 and Affinity to edit with. Such a shame that Apple did not continue to develop Aperture.

For those who didn't know, yes, it is possible to run Aperture on modern Macs without doing anything crazy. As long as you own a legit copy of Aperture, it is quite simple. The open source software, Retroactive, allows this, and has a nice step by step to get things running [it also allows you run old copies of iTunes, iPhoto, and more].

For more info: https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive

 

[AlmightyKang]

I'm using Photos.app as the library and for most of the edits. You can have more than one library. It's pretty good for the price (free / cloud sub)

90% of the edits I do are fine in photos.app. You can turn on all the advanced edit controls and it's fairly competent. Anything more you can use it with Pixelmator Pro which seems good enough for me

Just hit the (...) at the top right and Select Pixelmator Pro.

If I'm out I'll have my iPad pro with me so I can do basic edits there and dump my mirrorless into it. And of course the iPhone feeds into it too.

I have few complaints really.

 

[dasmb]

As a huge fan of Aperture since before v1.0, I still miss the app tremendously and run it on my macOS 14 system using Retroactive. But I wish a modern update was available. Raw Power, developed by one of the ex-Aperture team members, is amazing, but isn't a full on replacement for Aperture.

RIP Aperture. I was doing some editing in Photos last week and reminded just how garbage it is compared to Aperture. Despite both systems sharing essentially the same APIs (for things like exporting photos, dealing with RAWs and bulk operations), the UX of Photos is just not optimal for processing photos the way photographers take them.

I miss the loupe most of all. Photos doesn't let you zoom in past pixel resolution which at 254 ppi is insane. I use the OS zoom shortcut which helps, but not when I'm trying to pick which is the sharpest out of a half dozen photos, all taken at 30 MP raw.

Apple's embrace of computational photography represented a massive leap forward in image quality and management for the average user and photo, but the price paid was the loss an ally in the optimization of traditional workflow.

 

[hendratam]

Don't give them any ideas. It's also telling that Numbers and Pages have not yet been released for the Apple Vision Pro.



You're right, it's not. I personally don't think it's as good as iPhoto either. They moved that entire team to Photos for efficiency purposes, but it hasn't translated into better products even if iOS and macOS share a common application code base.

It's happening with Final Cut too. It's just slower. But Adobe Premiere has the dominant marketshare in that area too.

As those applications increasingly move to the cloud, how many more years will they keep working on Final Cut or Motion?

Hello Jaw04005, i read your post before long time ago that you have Miles Davis ipod classic. I was wondering if u still have that collection and thinking of selling it? If you happen to read this and have free time, please let me know. Thank you

 

[jaw04005]

Hello Jaw04005, i read your post before long time ago that you have Miles Davis ipod classic. I was wondering if u still have that collection and thinking of selling it? If you happen to read this and have free time, please let me know. Thank you

I wish I still had it. I stupidly didn't keep the box and gave the iPod to my brother back in the day. It was my first iPod. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 

[hendratam]

I wish I still had it. I stupidly didn't keep the box and gave the iPod to my brother back in the day. It was my first iPod. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Oh heyy thanks for responding. Aww so u gave the whole ipod and box to your brother? Do u think your brother still keep it?
So do you happen to have any of your old collection in your place? I am just curious if you get rid of everything

 

[smirking]

On the plus side, when Apple dropped Aperture it forced me to learn more about photo editing. I’ve experimented with DxO, On1, Photoshop but have settled on Capture One

+1 for Capture One Pro.

I tried all of those programs you mentioned and a few others. The one that came closest to the Aperture UI was Aftershot Pro from Corel. Unfortunately, the RAW processing in it was garbage. Photos exported from it looked pretty bad.

Capture One Pro was what I ended up with as well. With a few tweaks to the configuration, it comes pretty close to the Aperture experience for me. For me, the additional features weren't overkill though. I use them and love everything that Capture One Pro brings.

It is expensive though, but worth it for me.