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Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

156 points by apress 12y ago

jmduke 12y ago
A weird thing to think about: Instagram is, by most metrics, the world's most successful photo editing software.
- untog 12y ago
  Not really that weird. Fast food is, by most metrics, far more popular than Michelin star restaurants. Doesn't mean it replaces them.
  - jrockway 12y ago
    McDonalds is probably making more money for its shareholders than The French Laundry, however.
    - abruzzi 12y ago
      And when I'm looking for a nice dinner, I'm definitely considering the value the restaurant provide to its shareholders in my decision.
      - jrockway 12y ago
        I'm just talking about the incentives as to which type of restaurant to open, or more generally, which set of tastes to cater to. Do labors of love scale? No. Does it make sense to start a business that doesn't scale? I have no idea.
    - bluthru 12y ago
      http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-origin-of-the-worlds-dumbest-idea-milton-friedman/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-orig...
- RyJones 12y ago
  When I worked in that area, the number we heard was Facebook got 3 or 4 flickrs worth of photos a month. I'm sure with Instagram the numbers are more impressive.
- hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
  It's not really about editing.
innonate 12y ago
It's clear they are putting everything into Photos and so this makes sense. Big question is what they do with all the edits/metadata/etc that people have invested in Aperture.
- pat2man 12y ago
  Aperture and iPhone seem to share a lot of data even if that data is not accessible from iPhoto. I would assume everything would still be available in Photos even if the UI isn't as advances.
- arrrg 12y ago
  That’s not clear. They obviously won’t do that. It will be much, much simpler. I mean, Apple is working on a transition tool to Lightroom together with Adobe. That should tell you everything you need to know. Apple no longer wants to compete in that space. I think photos will be even simpler than iPhoto. Or maybe simpler in many ways, more features in others. Hopefully it will be nice and lightweight. OS X needs that. Both iPhoto and Aperture were sluggish and their whole interface was just so heavy handed and complex.
nicholassmith 12y ago
Makes sense really, I know people who do use Aperture but they're out numbered by Lightroom users by a fair margin. It'll be nice to see more advanced features being provide in Photos as well, to fit the gap between the advanced (Lightroom/Photoshop user) and the keen amateurs.
danso 12y ago
Someone help an Adobe-acolyte out: about how far behind/apart was Aperture from either Photoshop or Lightroom in feature set? My impression (from reading Wikipedia and past announcements) was that it was closer to Lightroom in intended use? I've recently seen a few articles about startups/business ideas in the mobile/consumer photo space pointing at the problem of users not having enough storage space for photos. I guess? My perception and personal experience has been that users don't have enough ability to sort/filter the photos they already take. Digital/phone photography has allowed users to be voracious photographers...without a corresponding increase in being able to handle the information overload...it's already hard enough to pick the best photo among 5 - 10 takes, but a cognitive-chore to search through a flat-folder collection of thousands of photos with nothing more than a vague recollection of the photo's date...a wedding photographer once told me that by far, the best marketing tool he has is to produce a physical album of 50-100 photos, rather than just a PhotoDVD of thousands of photos. Theoretically, that DVD can be reproduced and sent around, and many more photos included for the client's enjoyment...but realistically, clients (and their relatives) don't find browsing through photo volumes on their OS default viewer to be engaging. Brevity in editing is important, but also, visitors to a client's living room can directly see and touch the physical photo album (and see who produced it), and that in itself is an effective marketing tool. I guess this is a long way of saying that whatever the state of Aperture was, I hope Apple makes some innovations in photo sorting/filtering, rather than just trying to provide tools to beautify photos. I'd argue that Instagram's killer feature is how it limits the user's ability to hoard photos...once you take a photo, you are pushed into publishing it...the photo filter is a way to make you feel less self-conscious about it. After taking 100 photos with Instagram, you have 100 photos to show off in a nice web album. If you take 100 photos with just your standard phone camera app, you have 100 photos waiting to be uploaded/downloaded to iCloud into a standard file system.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Aperture is a Photo Management tool, with minimal touch-up/editing features. It is a direct (though inferior) comparison to Lightroom for the commercial/event photographer. Not related to Photoshop at all.
- ghaff 12y ago
0x0 12y ago
I really hope thet will allow for (optional) manual control of where jpeg files are stored regarding the file system. The opaque "photo library" thing was really inflexible especially as the size eventually outgrows the internal SSD drives.
- jakejake 12y ago
  Aperture has a pretty nice method where you can save photos in the library or in a separate location. You can also have multiple libraries (which are basically just packages and you can go in and access the jpg and raw files as well) I'm kinda bummed, I have been a pretty happy Aperture user for a while even though I know most people use Lightroom. Not exactly sure what I'm going to do now.
  - 0x0 12y ago
    I tried it once and it was pretty horrible, the folder structure on disk didn't stay in sync with the aperture library. Moving or renaming photos or folders in one stop didn't update the other spot, so when you thought you had organized stuff physically, only the aperture library links updated or vice versa.
kingnight 12y ago
I have to imagine they'll do three things: - Feature/Adjustments parity with Aperture - Migration of 100% edits/metadata from Aperture/iPhoto - Photos Extensions on Mac The third will be really exciting. It's already going to be awesome to have VSCOcam connected to the Photos library without having to create duplicate images; this on Mac will be terrific as well. I am looking forward to moving off Lightroom! Seems very far out for Apple though.
- ploxiln 12y ago
  just like Final Cut Pro X, right? (can't tell if you're sarcastic, thought maybe not)
  - kingnight 12y ago
    I wasn't being sarcastic, but with FCP's history I can see the skepticism. I do think/hope it will be different. I feel like there are more signs pointing to "Photos" app as being superior to Aperture/iPhoto (which, yes, are totally the same thing really now) and Lightroom.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  When you use apeture, you realize it's a branch of iPhoto anyway. They use similar library formats / directory structure and probably shared a lot of code. Many people have DSLRs now a days, so raw management should be a given.
- josephlord 12y ago
  Based on Pages, Numbers, FCP it seems likely that the first version may lose some features but many will be added back in subsequent updates.
netcraft 12y ago
Years ago we had the choice of Aperture or Lightroom - we have been happy with that decision so far and this just confirms it. But lightroom still leaves a lot to be desired from a photo management perspective - and I wish there were more alternatives. I'm afraid that the one main competitor going away will cause improvements to languish in lightroom. Even though we didn't use Aperture, I will be sorry to see it go.
- saidajigumi 12y ago
  On the other hand, I will give credit to Adobe: since the transition to Creative Cloud and the new incremental release model I've felt that they've been much more responsive to actual customer needs. From an outsider's perspective, getting to this point seems to have been a cultural shift that took a lot of work to get to -- and they've been getting a ton of positive response to it. So I'm hopeful that Lightroom and the rest of the CC apps will continue to improve considerably because of culture rather than purely the goad of competition.
  - netcraft 12y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with you - they released Lightroom 5 around the same time as the CC transition, and as far as I can tell they haven't updated it since beyond support for new cameras and bug fixes, which I would have expected for lightroom 5 anyway. The last major update I can find is over a year ago now. They have released Lightroom Mobile but thats all I am aware of. I hope you are right though and that they do improve based on culture - but if lightroom is the only major option for a digital darkroom and photo management, and most of their customers are paying monthly anyway, I don't see them pushing new innovations.
    - calinet6 12y ago
      I think Lightroom was already a bit of a cultural separation from Creative Suite. It's more like Creative Cloud is playing catchup with Lightroom's model, which was already fairly modern and nice. I don't think the monthly model discourages innovation -- as a product person, more people using the new product is more motivating for the organization, not less.
psychometry 12y ago
I don't use Aperture, but I think it's really unfortunate that the standard practice for companies like Apple is to simply drop a product entirely rather than open-sourcing it.
- sp332 12y ago
  It probably uses a lot of proprietary Apple libraries anyway, so even if you had the code for this app you probably couldn't build it.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  I do use Aperture every day, and I'm happy Apple isn't open sourcing it. I want all energy/attention/testing/use to go against their next platform, and not be fractured.
  - psychometry 12y ago
    And what if their next platform is insufficient for your needs? Then perhaps you'll wish you still had Aperture as an option, but it'll be an obsolete application with no chance of revival.
    - alphapapa 12y ago
      Why are people downvoting your comments? Is there a pro-Apple, anti-FOSS element here? The more time I spend on web sites with voting, the more I think upvoting should be the only option.
      - psychometry 12y ago
        Honestly, I have no idea. Once you've spent a bit of time on HN, you realize it's no better than reddit when it comes to voting.
matwood 12y ago
I used Aperture for a long time, and last year moved to Lightroom. Aperture has been effectively dead for awhile and this news is just confirmation.
- jakejake 12y ago
  I'm a fairly happy aperture user but have been thinking about moving for a while since practically everybody uses Lightroom. How did you find the transition?
  - matwood 12y ago
    Not too bad. I spent a weekend figuring out the different workflow and then some time learning the LR adjustments. The part that took the most time was unlearning/relearning the different hot keys for basic operations.
lvillani 12y ago
I wonder how I would have felt had I bought Aperture a couple of weeks ago. Sure, 69€ isn't much, but knowing that those were basically thrown away would have been bad nonetheless. Thankfully, I resisted the urge.
whence 12y ago
Man, this just sucks. iPhoto (okay, they're killing that too, but "Photos" will be similar if not more limited) is weak, and Lightroom feels like a bad Java app. Aperture was fantastic, a true Mac app.
potatolicious 12y ago
I really wish the Pixelmator guys will do a product in this category. They've already got the core engine, and they have a perfect 100% intersection with the Aperture userbase (Mac-only). I for one would like to see a OSX-only photo editing suite. If it's anything like Pixelmator (no UI/UX compromises for the sake of cross-platform, insanely fast hardware-accelerated-everything) it'd be a real treat.
- oddevan 12y ago
  I'll second that with some hope: if this is a standard system library like it is on iOS, then they should be able to at least have an "edit in Pixelmator" extension for the system photo library.
- macwarlock 12y ago
  Agreed, building on Pixelmator seems like a great fit. If nothing else, another great product from the team that's already creating some Photoshop converts would hopefully be a shot across Adobe's bow to keep them active in development of Lightroom.
- hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
  Photo editing (non-destructive) is nothing like bitmap editing, I don't see how they are well positioned for coming up with a product.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    The same way Adobe was well positioned to coming up with a product in the same category. Photo editing is bitmap editing, and Pixelmator is well positioned to implement the non-destructive property. By virtue of being OSX-only, they can abstract out the trickiness of RAW conversion (something Adobe must heavily invest in by virtue of being cross-platform), and rely on Apple's very good implementations instead. (side note: Apple is sometimes faster to implement RAW demosaicing support than Adobe itself). This simplifies the problem to purely that of bitmap editing. It's important to note that unlike Lightroom, Pixelmator is already hardware accelerated from top to bottom, this allows real-time rendering of the entire edit stack on top of the unaltered original data, potentially giving us much more responsive feedback as users (sliding a slider and having it respond with much less lag than Lightroom, for example).
pdabbadabba 12y ago
It seems to have been confirmed (as Techcrunch reasonably speculated) that development will cease on iPhoto as well. http://www.loopinsight.com/2014/06/27/apple-stops-development-of-aperture/ http://www.loopinsight.com/2014/06/27/apple-stops-developmen...
- al2o3cr 12y ago
  The Photos app looks like they are rebranding iPhoto, not "ceasing" anything.
  - GrantS 12y ago
    This seems logical, especially in light of the Aperture news, but I'm not so sure -- all references to the new Photos app, including the demo at WWDC, refer to it as a viewer for your iCloud-stored photos. It's possible that instead of cloud storage being an option added to iPhoto, it is being re-designed as the primary use case, with your Mac as just another iPad-like device that may occasionally cache some local copies of photos as needed. I understand that from a practical point of view in 2014, but I think I'm philosophically against it.
djloche 12y ago
This is unfortunate. I hope someone is working on a competitive software offering.
- dublinben 12y ago
  I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned DarkTable yet. I guess more HNers just use the default Apple programs than I thought. I didn't realize anyone would even miss Aperture.
  - jdboyd 12y ago
    I didn't know that they had finally gotten an OSX native (meaning not requiring X11) version out. Now I will try Darktable on OSX.
robbyking 12y ago
I had to read this headline 3 or 4 times before I realized Transition wasn't an additional product being phased out.
- DINKDINK 12y ago
  Apple to Cease Development of Aperture, Transition Users to Photos for OS X
ghshephard 12y ago
As a multiple-times-a-day Aperture user for the last several years - I'm really glad to hear this. Apple has made it abundantly clear, that they were longer going to invest any effort into Aperture, and so we're going to get the best of all worlds. The application is absolutely rock solid for me - most of the database crashes, and corruptions have stopped occurring for over a year - so in the interim, I have a product that works for me and will keep me satisfied for the next couple years. Meanwhile, Apple is going to put all their energy into a single photo system, instead of trying to do some schizophrenic split between iPhoto/Aperture - I expect to see a pretty excellent system out of it. Perhaps it's because I don't work commercial or event photography, but the reality is that most of what I use Aperture for these days could probably be done with a slightly beefier iPhoto - which is pretty much what Photos is going to become. Photostream, as of about 3-4 months ago, has also gotten reliable enough that I never have to worry about any picture that I've taken being on my Laptop. Unlike the early days (months, year?) when it was pretty much a crapshoot as to whether your pictures would move from your iPhone to PhotoStream and then to your laptop - It Just Works now. So, good news all around.
- nnnnni 12y ago
  Yeah, I'm really hoping that "Photos" will have all of the features of Aperture. It sounds like that's what they're doing. If it does, that will be great.
  - lostlogin 12y ago
    I would bet that it won't initially but will long term. Apple has a track record of releasing things with key features missing, but putting them in down the track. The most recent example being iWork.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - robterrell 12y ago
    As long as they continue to allow plugins, whatever they do will be fine.
a2tech 12y ago
Apple needs to allow iPhoto (Photo.app now) to import Aperture libraries then-I have a huge collection of photos in an Aperture library (I no longer have access to Aperture so I can't export the library).
- adamcw 12y ago
  In one of their public statements, they've indicated that the new app will be able to import/open Aperture/iPhoto libraries. Hopefully the implementation is fairly seamless.
- lh7777 12y ago
  My understanding is that iPhoto and Aperture now share the same library format in the latest versions, so you should be able to open your Aperture library in iPhoto right now.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
Unifying the integration with iCloud is okay, but that's really unfortunate. Apple kills a "pro" app while the "basic" apps lose features every new release. If you compare iMovie and iPhoto '09 to the latest ones it's a downgrade from every angle. Even GarageBand lost features, you could use plugins before. I'm afraid they will "transition" users to Photos in the sense they will let you import your Aperture library, and that's it. The app will have 50% of the editing features, because that's what happens everytime a company promises a new version written from the ground-up.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Look at what happened with FCP, though. They released a new version, missing lots of features, and then future releases restored functionality. When you're doing a ground-up rewrite, it makes sense to get the basics working first.
  - abruzzi 12y ago
    However they radically changed the way the workflow works in ways that some (many?) users cant adapt to. I don't do much any more since I shuttered my production side business, but I can't use the current FCP. It's still (and will always be) missing some do-or-die features for me. The Apple Pro App that I really use though is Logic, and, please Apple--do not "improve" it.
    - modfodder 12y ago
      What do-or-die features are missing for you?
      - abruzzi 12y ago
        For me, batch log and capture from tape. FCPX no longer has any tape support.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      I was wondering if they ever brought it back to parity with the original.. guess not. It is odd, though, in that releasing a gimped product to be improved later seems counter to Apple's whole design ethos. (The "back of a dresser" parable of Steve's comes to mind).
lips 12y ago
Sometimes I feel as though I'm in a minuscule minority, as an avowed Mac user who gives a wide berth to any of their software. From the saga of FCP/X, to mail.app changing archive formats, to the auto-save/save-as clusterquack - I've long preferred finding niche vendors for my niche needs. I chose Lightroom at version 1 for exactly this reason.
- jayvanguard 12y ago
  I agree... I love the OS and like my iDevices but their commitment to application software over the years has been abysmal.
- nickm12 12y ago
  +1 In the modern Apple era their applications, particularly the consumer or pro-sumer oriented ones, have tended to (1) not live up to their demos (2) and get constantly redesigned and yanked around. What made using a Mac a joy was the culture of quality espoused by third-party software vendors.
plg 12y ago
I guess I'm installing Lightroom now
s800 12y ago
Alternatives: Capture One Pro Various ACDSee apps DxO Paint Shop Pro
lutorm 12y ago
Do pros really want to store their photos "in the cloud"? I'm just an amateur and have ~500GB of photos. Uploading that much is almost impossible over a normal asymmetric home internet connection, and I imagine professional photographers must have multi-terabytes of data easily.
- abruzzi 12y ago
  I would love to have better peer to peer syncing, so my home desktop could hold all my images, but my laptop could connect and sync a subset for mobile editing. However, you I'm not at 500gb, but I'm large enough (230gb) that I doubt it would be terribly useful. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but we'll see.
- OmarIsmail 12y ago
  500GB would take about a week to upload? Maybe a couple of weeks? Having the security and knowledge that 500GB of your precious photos are stored off-site multi-redundancy, blah blah, vs your own hard drives definitely seems worth it to me. I mean, one flood and kiss 500GB of photos gone. That would be a very sad thing indeed.
- rbritton 12y ago
  Not at all. We have about 4 TB of photos. I signed up for Backblaze last August to get an online backup of just the past few years and it's still ~400 GB from finishing.
- pling 12y ago
  Not a chance. Takes too long to upload and download and the 'cloud' data usage and rights assignment stuff is pretty unclear. My father (a pro) has about 3TiB on a NAS and AIT backup.
  - nimish 12y ago
    Offsite backups are critical. What happens when wherever you're storing those nas drives / tapes gets flooded or destroyed?
vondur 12y ago
I think most people kind of knew that Aperture was not going to be updated, it's been on life support for a while now. I prefer the editing tools of Lightroom, but I prefer the Aperture way of organizing photos. Oh well, can't have everything I suppose.
alphapapa 12y ago
People who are about to have the rug pulled out from under them might want to check out Digikam. Version 4 was released in May.

156 points by apress 12y ago

jmduke 12y ago

A weird thing to think about: Instagram is, by most metrics, the world's most successful photo editing software.

untog 12y ago
Not really that weird. Fast food is, by most metrics, far more popular than Michelin star restaurants. Doesn't mean it replaces them.
- jrockway 12y ago
  McDonalds is probably making more money for its shareholders than The French Laundry, however.
  - abruzzi 12y ago
    And when I'm looking for a nice dinner, I'm definitely considering the value the restaurant provide to its shareholders in my decision.
    - jrockway 12y ago
      I'm just talking about the incentives as to which type of restaurant to open, or more generally, which set of tastes to cater to. Do labors of love scale? No. Does it make sense to start a business that doesn't scale? I have no idea.
  - bluthru 12y ago
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-origin-of-the-worlds-dumbest-idea-milton-friedman/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-orig...
RyJones 12y ago
When I worked in that area, the number we heard was Facebook got 3 or 4 flickrs worth of photos a month. I'm sure with Instagram the numbers are more impressive.
hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
It's not really about editing.

innonate 12y ago

It's clear they are putting everything into Photos and so this makes sense. Big question is what they do with all the edits/metadata/etc that people have invested in Aperture.

pat2man 12y ago
Aperture and iPhone seem to share a lot of data even if that data is not accessible from iPhoto. I would assume everything would still be available in Photos even if the UI isn't as advances.
arrrg 12y ago
That’s not clear. They obviously won’t do that. It will be much, much simpler. I mean, Apple is working on a transition tool to Lightroom together with Adobe. That should tell you everything you need to know. Apple no longer wants to compete in that space. I think photos will be even simpler than iPhoto. Or maybe simpler in many ways, more features in others. Hopefully it will be nice and lightweight. OS X needs that. Both iPhoto and Aperture were sluggish and their whole interface was just so heavy handed and complex.

nicholassmith 12y ago

Makes sense really, I know people who do use Aperture but they're out numbered by Lightroom users by a fair margin. It'll be nice to see more advanced features being provide in Photos as well, to fit the gap between the advanced (Lightroom/Photoshop user) and the keen amateurs.

danso 12y ago

Someone help an Adobe-acolyte out: about how far behind/apart was Aperture from either Photoshop or Lightroom in feature set? My impression (from reading Wikipedia and past announcements) was that it was closer to Lightroom in intended use? I've recently seen a few articles about startups/business ideas in the mobile/consumer photo space pointing at the problem of users not having enough storage space for photos. I guess? My perception and personal experience has been that users don't have enough ability to sort/filter the photos they already take. Digital/phone photography has allowed users to be voracious photographers...without a corresponding increase in being able to handle the information overload...it's already hard enough to pick the best photo among 5 - 10 takes, but a cognitive-chore to search through a flat-folder collection of thousands of photos with nothing more than a vague recollection of the photo's date...a wedding photographer once told me that by far, the best marketing tool he has is to produce a physical album of 50-100 photos, rather than just a PhotoDVD of thousands of photos. Theoretically, that DVD can be reproduced and sent around, and many more photos included for the client's enjoyment...but realistically, clients (and their relatives) don't find browsing through photo volumes on their OS default viewer to be engaging. Brevity in editing is important, but also, visitors to a client's living room can directly see and touch the physical photo album (and see who produced it), and that in itself is an effective marketing tool. I guess this is a long way of saying that whatever the state of Aperture was, I hope Apple makes some innovations in photo sorting/filtering, rather than just trying to provide tools to beautify photos. I'd argue that Instagram's killer feature is how it limits the user's ability to hoard photos...once you take a photo, you are pushed into publishing it...the photo filter is a way to make you feel less self-conscious about it. After taking 100 photos with Instagram, you have 100 photos to show off in a nice web album. If you take 100 photos with just your standard phone camera app, you have 100 photos waiting to be uploaded/downloaded to iCloud into a standard file system.

ghshephard 12y ago
Aperture is a Photo Management tool, with minimal touch-up/editing features. It is a direct (though inferior) comparison to Lightroom for the commercial/event photographer. Not related to Photoshop at all.
ghaff 12y ago

0x0 12y ago

I really hope thet will allow for (optional) manual control of where jpeg files are stored regarding the file system. The opaque "photo library" thing was really inflexible especially as the size eventually outgrows the internal SSD drives.

jakejake 12y ago
Aperture has a pretty nice method where you can save photos in the library or in a separate location. You can also have multiple libraries (which are basically just packages and you can go in and access the jpg and raw files as well) I'm kinda bummed, I have been a pretty happy Aperture user for a while even though I know most people use Lightroom. Not exactly sure what I'm going to do now.
- 0x0 12y ago
  I tried it once and it was pretty horrible, the folder structure on disk didn't stay in sync with the aperture library. Moving or renaming photos or folders in one stop didn't update the other spot, so when you thought you had organized stuff physically, only the aperture library links updated or vice versa.

kingnight 12y ago

I have to imagine they'll do three things: - Feature/Adjustments parity with Aperture - Migration of 100% edits/metadata from Aperture/iPhoto - Photos Extensions on Mac The third will be really exciting. It's already going to be awesome to have VSCOcam connected to the Photos library without having to create duplicate images; this on Mac will be terrific as well. I am looking forward to moving off Lightroom! Seems very far out for Apple though.

ploxiln 12y ago
just like Final Cut Pro X, right? (can't tell if you're sarcastic, thought maybe not)
- kingnight 12y ago
  I wasn't being sarcastic, but with FCP's history I can see the skepticism. I do think/hope it will be different. I feel like there are more signs pointing to "Photos" app as being superior to Aperture/iPhoto (which, yes, are totally the same thing really now) and Lightroom.
mahyarm 12y ago
When you use apeture, you realize it's a branch of iPhoto anyway. They use similar library formats / directory structure and probably shared a lot of code. Many people have DSLRs now a days, so raw management should be a given.
josephlord 12y ago
Based on Pages, Numbers, FCP it seems likely that the first version may lose some features but many will be added back in subsequent updates.

netcraft 12y ago

Years ago we had the choice of Aperture or Lightroom - we have been happy with that decision so far and this just confirms it. But lightroom still leaves a lot to be desired from a photo management perspective - and I wish there were more alternatives. I'm afraid that the one main competitor going away will cause improvements to languish in lightroom. Even though we didn't use Aperture, I will be sorry to see it go.

saidajigumi 12y ago
On the other hand, I will give credit to Adobe: since the transition to Creative Cloud and the new incremental release model I've felt that they've been much more responsive to actual customer needs. From an outsider's perspective, getting to this point seems to have been a cultural shift that took a lot of work to get to -- and they've been getting a ton of positive response to it. So I'm hopeful that Lightroom and the rest of the CC apps will continue to improve considerably because of culture rather than purely the goad of competition.
- netcraft 12y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with you - they released Lightroom 5 around the same time as the CC transition, and as far as I can tell they haven't updated it since beyond support for new cameras and bug fixes, which I would have expected for lightroom 5 anyway. The last major update I can find is over a year ago now. They have released Lightroom Mobile but thats all I am aware of. I hope you are right though and that they do improve based on culture - but if lightroom is the only major option for a digital darkroom and photo management, and most of their customers are paying monthly anyway, I don't see them pushing new innovations.
  - calinet6 12y ago
    I think Lightroom was already a bit of a cultural separation from Creative Suite. It's more like Creative Cloud is playing catchup with Lightroom's model, which was already fairly modern and nice. I don't think the monthly model discourages innovation -- as a product person, more people using the new product is more motivating for the organization, not less.

psychometry 12y ago

I don't use Aperture, but I think it's really unfortunate that the standard practice for companies like Apple is to simply drop a product entirely rather than open-sourcing it.

sp332 12y ago
It probably uses a lot of proprietary Apple libraries anyway, so even if you had the code for this app you probably couldn't build it.
ghshephard 12y ago
I do use Aperture every day, and I'm happy Apple isn't open sourcing it. I want all energy/attention/testing/use to go against their next platform, and not be fractured.
- psychometry 12y ago
  And what if their next platform is insufficient for your needs? Then perhaps you'll wish you still had Aperture as an option, but it'll be an obsolete application with no chance of revival.
  - alphapapa 12y ago
    Why are people downvoting your comments? Is there a pro-Apple, anti-FOSS element here? The more time I spend on web sites with voting, the more I think upvoting should be the only option.
    - psychometry 12y ago
      Honestly, I have no idea. Once you've spent a bit of time on HN, you realize it's no better than reddit when it comes to voting.

matwood 12y ago

I used Aperture for a long time, and last year moved to Lightroom. Aperture has been effectively dead for awhile and this news is just confirmation.

jakejake 12y ago
I'm a fairly happy aperture user but have been thinking about moving for a while since practically everybody uses Lightroom. How did you find the transition?
- matwood 12y ago
  Not too bad. I spent a weekend figuring out the different workflow and then some time learning the LR adjustments. The part that took the most time was unlearning/relearning the different hot keys for basic operations.

lvillani 12y ago

I wonder how I would have felt had I bought Aperture a couple of weeks ago. Sure, 69€ isn't much, but knowing that those were basically thrown away would have been bad nonetheless. Thankfully, I resisted the urge.

whence 12y ago

Man, this just sucks. iPhoto (okay, they're killing that too, but "Photos" will be similar if not more limited) is weak, and Lightroom feels like a bad Java app. Aperture was fantastic, a true Mac app.

potatolicious 12y ago

I really wish the Pixelmator guys will do a product in this category. They've already got the core engine, and they have a perfect 100% intersection with the Aperture userbase (Mac-only). I for one would like to see a OSX-only photo editing suite. If it's anything like Pixelmator (no UI/UX compromises for the sake of cross-platform, insanely fast hardware-accelerated-everything) it'd be a real treat.

oddevan 12y ago
I'll second that with some hope: if this is a standard system library like it is on iOS, then they should be able to at least have an "edit in Pixelmator" extension for the system photo library.
macwarlock 12y ago
Agreed, building on Pixelmator seems like a great fit. If nothing else, another great product from the team that's already creating some Photoshop converts would hopefully be a shot across Adobe's bow to keep them active in development of Lightroom.
hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
Photo editing (non-destructive) is nothing like bitmap editing, I don't see how they are well positioned for coming up with a product.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  The same way Adobe was well positioned to coming up with a product in the same category. Photo editing is bitmap editing, and Pixelmator is well positioned to implement the non-destructive property. By virtue of being OSX-only, they can abstract out the trickiness of RAW conversion (something Adobe must heavily invest in by virtue of being cross-platform), and rely on Apple's very good implementations instead. (side note: Apple is sometimes faster to implement RAW demosaicing support than Adobe itself). This simplifies the problem to purely that of bitmap editing. It's important to note that unlike Lightroom, Pixelmator is already hardware accelerated from top to bottom, this allows real-time rendering of the entire edit stack on top of the unaltered original data, potentially giving us much more responsive feedback as users (sliding a slider and having it respond with much less lag than Lightroom, for example).

pdabbadabba 12y ago

It seems to have been confirmed (as Techcrunch reasonably speculated) that development will cease on iPhoto as well. http://www.loopinsight.com/2014/06/27/apple-stops-development-of-aperture/ http://www.loopinsight.com/2014/06/27/apple-stops-developmen...

al2o3cr 12y ago
The Photos app looks like they are rebranding iPhoto, not "ceasing" anything.
- GrantS 12y ago
  This seems logical, especially in light of the Aperture news, but I'm not so sure -- all references to the new Photos app, including the demo at WWDC, refer to it as a viewer for your iCloud-stored photos. It's possible that instead of cloud storage being an option added to iPhoto, it is being re-designed as the primary use case, with your Mac as just another iPad-like device that may occasionally cache some local copies of photos as needed. I understand that from a practical point of view in 2014, but I think I'm philosophically against it.

djloche 12y ago

This is unfortunate. I hope someone is working on a competitive software offering.

dublinben 12y ago
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned DarkTable yet. I guess more HNers just use the default Apple programs than I thought. I didn't realize anyone would even miss Aperture.
- jdboyd 12y ago
  I didn't know that they had finally gotten an OSX native (meaning not requiring X11) version out. Now I will try Darktable on OSX.

robbyking 12y ago

I had to read this headline 3 or 4 times before I realized Transition wasn't an additional product being phased out.

DINKDINK 12y ago
Apple to Cease Development of Aperture, Transition Users to Photos for OS X

ghshephard 12y ago

As a multiple-times-a-day Aperture user for the last several years - I'm really glad to hear this. Apple has made it abundantly clear, that they were longer going to invest any effort into Aperture, and so we're going to get the best of all worlds. The application is absolutely rock solid for me - most of the database crashes, and corruptions have stopped occurring for over a year - so in the interim, I have a product that works for me and will keep me satisfied for the next couple years. Meanwhile, Apple is going to put all their energy into a single photo system, instead of trying to do some schizophrenic split between iPhoto/Aperture - I expect to see a pretty excellent system out of it. Perhaps it's because I don't work commercial or event photography, but the reality is that most of what I use Aperture for these days could probably be done with a slightly beefier iPhoto - which is pretty much what Photos is going to become. Photostream, as of about 3-4 months ago, has also gotten reliable enough that I never have to worry about any picture that I've taken being on my Laptop. Unlike the early days (months, year?) when it was pretty much a crapshoot as to whether your pictures would move from your iPhone to PhotoStream and then to your laptop - It Just Works now. So, good news all around.

nnnnni 12y ago
Yeah, I'm really hoping that "Photos" will have all of the features of Aperture. It sounds like that's what they're doing. If it does, that will be great.
- lostlogin 12y ago
  I would bet that it won't initially but will long term. Apple has a track record of releasing things with key features missing, but putting them in down the track. The most recent example being iWork.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- robterrell 12y ago
  As long as they continue to allow plugins, whatever they do will be fine.

a2tech 12y ago

Apple needs to allow iPhoto (Photo.app now) to import Aperture libraries then-I have a huge collection of photos in an Aperture library (I no longer have access to Aperture so I can't export the library).

adamcw 12y ago
In one of their public statements, they've indicated that the new app will be able to import/open Aperture/iPhoto libraries. Hopefully the implementation is fairly seamless.
lh7777 12y ago
My understanding is that iPhoto and Aperture now share the same library format in the latest versions, so you should be able to open your Aperture library in iPhoto right now.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

hcarvalhoalves 12y ago

Unifying the integration with iCloud is okay, but that's really unfortunate. Apple kills a "pro" app while the "basic" apps lose features every new release. If you compare iMovie and iPhoto '09 to the latest ones it's a downgrade from every angle. Even GarageBand lost features, you could use plugins before. I'm afraid they will "transition" users to Photos in the sense they will let you import your Aperture library, and that's it. The app will have 50% of the editing features, because that's what happens everytime a company promises a new version written from the ground-up.

Karunamon 12y ago
Look at what happened with FCP, though. They released a new version, missing lots of features, and then future releases restored functionality. When you're doing a ground-up rewrite, it makes sense to get the basics working first.
- abruzzi 12y ago
  However they radically changed the way the workflow works in ways that some (many?) users cant adapt to. I don't do much any more since I shuttered my production side business, but I can't use the current FCP. It's still (and will always be) missing some do-or-die features for me. The Apple Pro App that I really use though is Logic, and, please Apple--do not "improve" it.
  - modfodder 12y ago
    What do-or-die features are missing for you?
    - abruzzi 12y ago
      For me, batch log and capture from tape. FCPX no longer has any tape support.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    I was wondering if they ever brought it back to parity with the original.. guess not. It is odd, though, in that releasing a gimped product to be improved later seems counter to Apple's whole design ethos. (The "back of a dresser" parable of Steve's comes to mind).

lips 12y ago

Sometimes I feel as though I'm in a minuscule minority, as an avowed Mac user who gives a wide berth to any of their software. From the saga of FCP/X, to mail.app changing archive formats, to the auto-save/save-as clusterquack - I've long preferred finding niche vendors for my niche needs. I chose Lightroom at version 1 for exactly this reason.

jayvanguard 12y ago
I agree... I love the OS and like my iDevices but their commitment to application software over the years has been abysmal.
nickm12 12y ago
+1 In the modern Apple era their applications, particularly the consumer or pro-sumer oriented ones, have tended to (1) not live up to their demos (2) and get constantly redesigned and yanked around. What made using a Mac a joy was the culture of quality espoused by third-party software vendors.

plg 12y ago

I guess I'm installing Lightroom now

s800 12y ago

Alternatives: Capture One Pro Various ACDSee apps DxO Paint Shop Pro

lutorm 12y ago

Do pros really want to store their photos "in the cloud"? I'm just an amateur and have ~500GB of photos. Uploading that much is almost impossible over a normal asymmetric home internet connection, and I imagine professional photographers must have multi-terabytes of data easily.

abruzzi 12y ago
I would love to have better peer to peer syncing, so my home desktop could hold all my images, but my laptop could connect and sync a subset for mobile editing. However, you I'm not at 500gb, but I'm large enough (230gb) that I doubt it would be terribly useful. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but we'll see.
OmarIsmail 12y ago
500GB would take about a week to upload? Maybe a couple of weeks? Having the security and knowledge that 500GB of your precious photos are stored off-site multi-redundancy, blah blah, vs your own hard drives definitely seems worth it to me. I mean, one flood and kiss 500GB of photos gone. That would be a very sad thing indeed.
rbritton 12y ago
Not at all. We have about 4 TB of photos. I signed up for Backblaze last August to get an online backup of just the past few years and it's still ~400 GB from finishing.
pling 12y ago
Not a chance. Takes too long to upload and download and the 'cloud' data usage and rights assignment stuff is pretty unclear. My father (a pro) has about 3TiB on a NAS and AIT backup.
- nimish 12y ago
  Offsite backups are critical. What happens when wherever you're storing those nas drives / tapes gets flooded or destroyed?

vondur 12y ago

I think most people kind of knew that Aperture was not going to be updated, it's been on life support for a while now. I prefer the editing tools of Lightroom, but I prefer the Aperture way of organizing photos. Oh well, can't have everything I suppose.

alphapapa 12y ago

People who are about to have the rug pulled out from under them might want to check out Digikam. Version 4 was released in May.