6 ms·

Aperture could have been amazing, but it was slow, buggy and suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to

by vr46 2y ago

Aperture could have been amazing, but it was slow, buggy and suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to - just as Lightroom appeared. FCP was outstanding in its time, but was neglected. I went all in on Logic, however, and that has proved a great buy, no subscription model, fantastic extras and works super well. If they can rebuild a enthusiast-targeted set of apps again, but stick with it, the future looks bright. I cannot imagine Apple ever competing with Capture One or most of the other circle of RAW image processors, which have some rather niche features, but they might be able to take on Lightroom.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jwells89 2y ago
The no-subscription aspect is a huge differentiator IMO, and depending on situation is even worth trading off features. Losing access to your work because you stopped your Adobe subscription sucks, as does the eventual premium over single-purchase.
hggigg 2y ago
Yeah this. Aperture was a mess. Some of the "full" edit tools from Aperture are actually lurking in Photos which is a fairly competent photo editor on macOS surprisingly. I think they have a chance. I know a couple of professional photographers. One uses Capture One and only for tethering support. The other an ancient copy of Lightroom that was a one time purchase and use that for persistent contract work for one of the larger advertising companies in London. If the price is right and it's good enough, they are probably going to do fine. I'm an amateur and I want to get off LR because I hate giving Adobe money every month and the damn thing is a fat pig compared to Photomator. Photomator is missing decent dehaze and because I have a shitty little DX mirrorless, I need the denoise and it's not as good as LR is.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I was quite surprised (pleasantly) with the editing features available in Photos. I rarely use it on the desktop, and primarily only use it on the device I took the image, but to see how much more in depth the editing was on desktop was one of those that I thought for a second might make me switch to using it for device captured image editing. For non-device camera images, I still use full tilt apps as that's just my workflow and I do not ever see Photos working its way into that workflow
  - hggigg 2y ago
    Yeah I’m currently using lightroom for my mirrorless. I export that to photos then share / keep the flattened images in there.
tigeroil 2y ago
Logic is a weird one. It has really truly excellent included instruments (such as Alchemy) and effects, but the app itself feels rather outdated. The mixer, whilst having had some nice features added since Logic 9, is in dire need of an update.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Wouldn't that be a sign of a product that was purchased by Apple and then left to languish as is with just enough effort to not let it rot?
  - selectodude 2y ago
    Apple bought Logic over 20 years ago. I’d be surprised if it shared any code with the pre-acquisition version.
    - srockets 2y ago
      Why not? Current macOS ships code older than that.
  - cesaref 2y ago
    I believe the Logic team are still based in Germany, where the original Emagic team that produced Logic were based, so it's not that they are languishing, but an intentional decision has been made (either by them or Apple) to keep this structure. Logic has such a long history, it's not surprising that it shows it's age, and has 'weird' behaviour that you wouldn't choose today. It's got stuff in there from the early 90s, as it started out as a midi sequencer before pulling audio into the product.
- butterknife 2y ago
  All the AI hubris but Logic still does not do fades or zero crossings when cutting audio clips. And don't get me started on the audio zoom. This is basic stuff! It feels like the audio code was not touched since emagic days.
AlanYx 2y ago
One of the senior Aperture team members went off to use the underlying OS RAW infrastructure in product called Gentleman Coders Nitro. It's a decent but little known Lightroom alternative with no subscription, albeit without all the recent Lightroom AI-infused features. It does have AI masking though.
- grahamj 2y ago
  omg thanks for the tip! It seems to support iCloud-synched smart albums which is a key feature I've wanted for years since Aperture.
- jitl 2y ago
  Amazing, this looks like just what I've been wanting
- vr46 2y ago
  A fantastic product but the colour science does not look great from a first play, and I don't know if seven days is long enough to figure it out. If I had a job I'd pull the trigger anyway, but too much of a luxury right now. I can't believe I did not know about this application. Shocking marketing! :D
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Wow, can’t believe I didn’t find this while looking for Lightroom alternatives several months ago. Looks great!
- hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
  I bought their previous software "RAW Power", because it was a one-time perpetual license. Then they rewrote the app (it's worse now BTW), rebranded as Nitro, and stopped updating the previous one to be able to charge again. The Pixelmator team did the same thing with "Pixelmator Classic".
holman 2y ago
> FCP was outstanding in its time, but was neglected. I'm more of a casual when it comes to Final Cut Pro rather than a daily driver, but it does seem like the last year or two they've started to get back into the fight again. Some of the 360 VR/AI/multi-iOS camera changes seem to go more hand-in-hand with "Apple gives a shit about content creation again", buttressed by Apple Vision Pro and spatial photography. As someone who's still eagerly awaiting like... any reasonable prosumer device to shoot for Apple Vision Pro, I think all of this industry is going to really ramp up in the next few short years very quickly. Gonna be interesting.
- gannonburgett 2y ago
  Yea, if Apple is going to want their VR products to succeed they're going to have to rely heavily on some vertical integration on video capture/editing software, and FCPX (and now Pixelmator for the spatial photography efforts) seems like the natural place to put those efforts.
- radicality 2y ago
  It feels a bit strange though that they made FCP for iPhone/iPad a subscription, and completely separate one from the Mac App. Like, Apple probably doesn’t even need to make money from any of FCP? IMO should be used for driving people to buy more hardware. It’s a little bit offensive for them to charge $5/month on top of a $300 Mac app. On my Mac I have Davinci, and was considering perhaps trying FCP, but not at those prices / subscriptions.
  - spectre3d 2y ago
    Fair enough. I don’t use the iPad version of FCP or Resolve, but I’ve paid for both Mac apps and have enjoyed free updates from Apple and Blackmagic for close to 10 years.
grogenaut 2y ago
At this point for video I'm just using DaVinci Resolve which is free except for 8k work and works on windows/mac/linux.
segasaturn 2y ago
>suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to How does that happen? Forgetting to periodically save their work and have the app crash, or was it saving incorrectly and producing corrupted files?
- vr46 2y ago
  Going back to 2007, so can't remember super clearly, but IIRC the db was a sqlite like thing and all info about everything was stored in this, and it was vulnerable to corruption, plus all versions and thumbnails were mixed together with original image files - a total mess. The digital photo management landscape wasn't so mature then, and some people trusted Aperture with their original images whereas later versions allowed or encouraged people to keep their "masters" elsewhere. Because the whole thing was as slow as a slug dragging a ball-and-chain, pre-SSD, issues with that filesystem or master database were sometimes mistaken for just general slowness. I jumped to Lightroom faster than you could say Gordon Parks.
  - spacedcowboy 2y ago
    Aperture 1.0 was very slow. The stories I could tell about its genesis... I came on board just before 1.0 release, and for 1.5 we cleaned things up a bit. For 2.0 we (mainly I) completely rewrote the database code, and got between 10x and 100x improvements by using SQLite directly rather than going through CoreData. CoreData has since improved, but it was a nascent technology itself back then, and not suited to the sort of database use we needed. The SQLite database wasn't "vulnerable to corruption", SQLite has several articles about its excellent ACID nature. The design of the application was flawed at the beginning though, with bindings used frequently in the UI to managed objects persisted in the database, which meant (amongst other things) that: - User changes a slider - Change is propagated through bindings - CoreData picks up the binding and syncs it to disk - But the database is on another thread, which invalidates the ManagedObjectContext - Which means the context has to re-read everything from the database - Which takes time - By now the user has moved the slider again. So: slow. I fixed that - see the other post I made.

by vr46 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jwells89 2y ago

The no-subscription aspect is a huge differentiator IMO, and depending on situation is even worth trading off features. Losing access to your work because you stopped your Adobe subscription sucks, as does the eventual premium over single-purchase.

hggigg 2y ago

Yeah this. Aperture was a mess. Some of the "full" edit tools from Aperture are actually lurking in Photos which is a fairly competent photo editor on macOS surprisingly. I think they have a chance. I know a couple of professional photographers. One uses Capture One and only for tethering support. The other an ancient copy of Lightroom that was a one time purchase and use that for persistent contract work for one of the larger advertising companies in London. If the price is right and it's good enough, they are probably going to do fine. I'm an amateur and I want to get off LR because I hate giving Adobe money every month and the damn thing is a fat pig compared to Photomator. Photomator is missing decent dehaze and because I have a shitty little DX mirrorless, I need the denoise and it's not as good as LR is.

dylan604 2y ago
I was quite surprised (pleasantly) with the editing features available in Photos. I rarely use it on the desktop, and primarily only use it on the device I took the image, but to see how much more in depth the editing was on desktop was one of those that I thought for a second might make me switch to using it for device captured image editing. For non-device camera images, I still use full tilt apps as that's just my workflow and I do not ever see Photos working its way into that workflow
- hggigg 2y ago
  Yeah I’m currently using lightroom for my mirrorless. I export that to photos then share / keep the flattened images in there.

tigeroil 2y ago

Logic is a weird one. It has really truly excellent included instruments (such as Alchemy) and effects, but the app itself feels rather outdated. The mixer, whilst having had some nice features added since Logic 9, is in dire need of an update.

dylan604 2y ago
Wouldn't that be a sign of a product that was purchased by Apple and then left to languish as is with just enough effort to not let it rot?
- selectodude 2y ago
  Apple bought Logic over 20 years ago. I’d be surprised if it shared any code with the pre-acquisition version.
  - srockets 2y ago
    Why not? Current macOS ships code older than that.
- cesaref 2y ago
  I believe the Logic team are still based in Germany, where the original Emagic team that produced Logic were based, so it's not that they are languishing, but an intentional decision has been made (either by them or Apple) to keep this structure. Logic has such a long history, it's not surprising that it shows it's age, and has 'weird' behaviour that you wouldn't choose today. It's got stuff in there from the early 90s, as it started out as a midi sequencer before pulling audio into the product.
butterknife 2y ago
All the AI hubris but Logic still does not do fades or zero crossings when cutting audio clips. And don't get me started on the audio zoom. This is basic stuff! It feels like the audio code was not touched since emagic days.

AlanYx 2y ago

One of the senior Aperture team members went off to use the underlying OS RAW infrastructure in product called Gentleman Coders Nitro. It's a decent but little known Lightroom alternative with no subscription, albeit without all the recent Lightroom AI-infused features. It does have AI masking though.

grahamj 2y ago
omg thanks for the tip! It seems to support iCloud-synched smart albums which is a key feature I've wanted for years since Aperture.
jitl 2y ago
Amazing, this looks like just what I've been wanting
vr46 2y ago
A fantastic product but the colour science does not look great from a first play, and I don't know if seven days is long enough to figure it out. If I had a job I'd pull the trigger anyway, but too much of a luxury right now. I can't believe I did not know about this application. Shocking marketing! :D
Vegenoid 2y ago
Wow, can’t believe I didn’t find this while looking for Lightroom alternatives several months ago. Looks great!
hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
I bought their previous software "RAW Power", because it was a one-time perpetual license. Then they rewrote the app (it's worse now BTW), rebranded as Nitro, and stopped updating the previous one to be able to charge again. The Pixelmator team did the same thing with "Pixelmator Classic".

holman 2y ago

> FCP was outstanding in its time, but was neglected. I'm more of a casual when it comes to Final Cut Pro rather than a daily driver, but it does seem like the last year or two they've started to get back into the fight again. Some of the 360 VR/AI/multi-iOS camera changes seem to go more hand-in-hand with "Apple gives a shit about content creation again", buttressed by Apple Vision Pro and spatial photography. As someone who's still eagerly awaiting like... any reasonable prosumer device to shoot for Apple Vision Pro, I think all of this industry is going to really ramp up in the next few short years very quickly. Gonna be interesting.

gannonburgett 2y ago
Yea, if Apple is going to want their VR products to succeed they're going to have to rely heavily on some vertical integration on video capture/editing software, and FCPX (and now Pixelmator for the spatial photography efforts) seems like the natural place to put those efforts.
radicality 2y ago
It feels a bit strange though that they made FCP for iPhone/iPad a subscription, and completely separate one from the Mac App. Like, Apple probably doesn’t even need to make money from any of FCP? IMO should be used for driving people to buy more hardware. It’s a little bit offensive for them to charge $5/month on top of a $300 Mac app. On my Mac I have Davinci, and was considering perhaps trying FCP, but not at those prices / subscriptions.
- spectre3d 2y ago
  Fair enough. I don’t use the iPad version of FCP or Resolve, but I’ve paid for both Mac apps and have enjoyed free updates from Apple and Blackmagic for close to 10 years.

grogenaut 2y ago

At this point for video I'm just using DaVinci Resolve which is free except for 8k work and works on windows/mac/linux.

segasaturn 2y ago

>suffered from a catastrophic data loss that several of my Photojournalism classmates fell victim to How does that happen? Forgetting to periodically save their work and have the app crash, or was it saving incorrectly and producing corrupted files?

vr46 2y ago
Going back to 2007, so can't remember super clearly, but IIRC the db was a sqlite like thing and all info about everything was stored in this, and it was vulnerable to corruption, plus all versions and thumbnails were mixed together with original image files - a total mess. The digital photo management landscape wasn't so mature then, and some people trusted Aperture with their original images whereas later versions allowed or encouraged people to keep their "masters" elsewhere. Because the whole thing was as slow as a slug dragging a ball-and-chain, pre-SSD, issues with that filesystem or master database were sometimes mistaken for just general slowness. I jumped to Lightroom faster than you could say Gordon Parks.
- spacedcowboy 2y ago
  Aperture 1.0 was very slow. The stories I could tell about its genesis... I came on board just before 1.0 release, and for 1.5 we cleaned things up a bit. For 2.0 we (mainly I) completely rewrote the database code, and got between 10x and 100x improvements by using SQLite directly rather than going through CoreData. CoreData has since improved, but it was a nascent technology itself back then, and not suited to the sort of database use we needed. The SQLite database wasn't "vulnerable to corruption", SQLite has several articles about its excellent ACID nature. The design of the application was flawed at the beginning though, with bindings used frequently in the UI to managed objects persisted in the database, which meant (amongst other things) that: - User changes a slider - Change is propagated through bindings - CoreData picks up the binding and syncs it to disk - But the database is on another thread, which invalidates the ManagedObjectContext - Which means the context has to re-read everything from the database - Which takes time - By now the user has moved the slider again. So: slow. I fixed that - see the other post I made.