Aperture Choices

[carbon_dragon]

<p>I'm currently using Aperture 3 and have a bunch of edited photographs (imported scans with non destructive edits created in Aperture). Aperture is, of course, a dead program. It's only a matter of time till I will have to move to something else, presumably Lightroom.</p>

<p>Presumably I could export all the images from the library to external form, but the edits would be gone right? Would I have to rebuild everything in Lightroom all over again? Anyone have some guidance on what I'm eventually going to have to do? It occurs to me that if all those edits will be gone, I might as well do this sooner rather than later right?</p>

[JosvanEekelen]

<p>I have no hands on experience with Aperture but according to the DAM Book (Krogh) Aperture will not let you export edits but you can export TIFFs. Of course this will not let you go back and change the edits. You can also have a look at Lightroom. LR has a Aperture import module that lets you import Aperture settings. I assume that this also won't let you change previously made edits.</p>

<p>Perhaps it is a good idea to read the first 3 or 4 chapters of the DAM Book first before making final decisions; one day you may want to stop using whatever software you're going to use instead of Aperture and then you'll want a smooth transition.</p>

<p>Apart from that changing to LR seems the best option as far as I can see. You can have Aperture and LR running at the same system for some (long) time.</p>

[marc_rochkind]

<p>I agree with Jos.</p>

<p>To say it another way, Aperture and Lightroom are parameterized editors, and their parameterizations are not interchangeable, so you lose the parameters, but not the results, when you export. TIFF is a good format to use because it's lossless.</p>

<p>If you are happy with what you've done in Aperture, the TIFF will capture it. If not, you'll have to re-edit the raw (or original JPEG) in Lightroom. You might get away with editing the TIFF, but only if the edits are very minor.</p>

[anthony_carlsberg]

<p>Regardless, it is a good idea to reedit the RAWs anyways, because the newest editing software (Lightroom) can do a lot more for you. Also I am sure you got better at editing. Every time I revisit an image I can make it better than the previous version.</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>The subject of this thread is completely counter to what I'd expected from the title, lol. Guess I'm about 20 years behind the times.</p>

[carbon_dragon]

That's a good point, I am probably better at editing, though I haven't worked too hard to increase my skills. I tend to

emphasize the image capture part. I'm a retired software engineer though so there's no reason I couldn't develop those

skills a little so maybe that's a silver lining. I'm still pretty annoyed at Apple.

 

 

I switched to Aperture because I didn't like Adobe's "rent our software for life" model. I had been a regular buyer/upgrader

for Photoshop. I liked buying the new version even if I didn't use all the features. Now I may be forced to go back to

Lightroom (Adobe) and who knows how long it will be before Lightroom has the same model and then where will I be?

 

 

I don't do THAT much sophisticated editing so a program like Lightroom or Aperture was about right.

 

Sorry about the title, I can see how that might be misinterpreted.

[stevenseelig]

<p>Hi Dave,<br>

I am in a similar position as you. 320,000 images processed through Aperture. <br>

I have evaluated Capture One Pro 8 and Lightroom CC. <br>

In terms of going forward, I will likely chose Lightroom CC. I find Capture One Pro 8 a bit more complicated to use and I find Lightroom CC to have the capabilities I need, although not as clean as Aperture in terms of DAM.<br>

In terms of legacy issues, I still don't have solution. Capture One did a pretty good job of importing your images as you might have seen them, but much more problematic is it would not import PSD files and only some TIFF files (not quite sure why). Lightroom basically give you your RAW files (the recommendation is to make your previews as large as possible..but I honestly don't know the advantage of doing that). My hope is that Photos in El Capitan will be viable, but will know in the next month or so. If you want to preserve your edits for anything other than an Apple solution, the only choice is to export your images as TIFF (very costly in terms of memory space) or JPG, if you really don't want to do extensive editing or don't care about your layers.</p>

<p> </p>

[JosvanEekelen]

<p>@Steven: you may consider converting the files to DNG, these files are compressed loslessly so they ought to be quite small, in fact smaller than the original RAW files. Added bonus is that the RAW file rendering information can be stored in the DNG file although I don't know whether Apple supports this option.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>CaptureOne is probably a bit more daunting to get started with - its user interface is more austere than Lightroom, though it allows for more personalisation (to group functions together the way you see fit). Its learning curve is probably a bit steeper. But I would sure try it. I'm glad I did anyway - I never cared for Lightroom's modules-approach and some other user interface choices; highly personal opinion, but it's good to realise there is choice. Lightroom certainly is a highly capable program and a sound choice, just not the right choice for all of us.<br>

<em>(True that C1 does not see all TIFF files - it seems only RGB, 8 or 16 bits, TIFF works - so not CMYK, greyscale etc.)</em></p>