photoman43

Not crazy talk at all. Just talk to some Adobe users who do not user LR. There many of us.

J.H.Carvajal

I use Aperture and continue using it because it works fine. They do not support it, but after several years I have not required support. I use Apple Time Machine, have changed computers and with Time Machine it will pass it with the rest of applications. Time Machine will install all your stuff to the new computer, Of course I have an external drive with more memory than my computer. Today the cost of capacity is low. I just purchased a 4 tb drive for this purpose.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The reality is that different folks use what they know. Adobe has made Lightroom Classic and Photoshop in a way that they work seamlessly with each other.

Over 80% of what MOST professional photographers need to do with their images can be done in Lightroom Classic. The rest require Photoshop, and perhaps various third party apps and plug-ins.

Photoshop is three decades old, has been reworked many times, and is very powerful and very mature. In some ways, it is bloatware. Almost no one needs everything it does, as it was built to serve several different user bases. Lightroom originally was designed specifically for small business photo studio owners to manage their workflow. It was meant as an efficient workflow hub. Everything else is intended to connect to it, but does not have to connect to it.

EAM Loc: Milwaukee W

I am in the same boat.
I hesitate to try any new program as I simply don't know the steps:
1. I have 80K images on 2 hard drives.
2. I have 15K on Aperture on my desktop
3. How do I transfer these images to a new system
4. How to categorize them in a new system?
5. If I think of the images on my HD as a catalogues of images, will they transfer without losing resolution
or quality?

I don't understand how this works.
6. Then how to delete the aperture icon etc without losing photos?

I need to hire someone or is there a step by step manual on how to do this?

Thanks to anyone who can guide me.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

tennis2618

I find it interesting that with all the hype around Luminar recently (it is very popular in a wonderful photography club I belong to) it was only mentioned once, and just in passing, in this long dialogue.

Secondly I would say that burkphoto has the most comprehensive and relevant answer to the original question and the personal source of software for a new entrant into the field of organizing and developing photos. I agree 100% with his comments.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

I went thru the same exact process as you are facing. Pissed at Apple for dropping support, moved to Lightroom all the way to Lightroom 6 when Adobe pulled the rug out from me. I will not pay subscription pricing especially for products I do not want like PS. So I looked at and purchased a lot of software including Luminar, On 1, Capture One, Topaz Studio... Many had big issues especially around DAM with either no catalog or really unreliable ones. I finally went to On1 Raw 2020 and love it. It has most if not all of the things Lightroom has without the problematic catalog. It is a full RAW processor with layers and non-destructive. It has built-in HDR, Pano, Focus, Print, Resize. It is a perpetual license which if you want you can buy the latest version as an update without a subscription. It is the best product I know of in this space as far as doing software updates correctly unlike Topaz which is the exact opposite. It under promises and over provides. Great support. A great set of photographers that provide wonderfully videos and if you are a plus member wonderful photography classes. Oh, and its flow is very similar to Aperature and there is a program they have which will convert your Aperature catalogs to On1 Raw 2020 (not all features will come over but that would be impossible anyway). I am retired from being an enterprise software guy for almost 40 years selling data analytics etc. I understand catalogs which are databases very well. I retired when we went to subscription-based pricing. Lightroom, Luminar, and others have catalogs that force your behavior. If I moved an image out of a folder from within MacOs, Lightroom loses the image. Lightroom gets corrupted easily. On1 Raw 2020 gives you a choice. It is based on your OS file and folder structure. If you want to catalog a folder, disk, etc it will do that but unlike others, you can use a browser structure. It is faster and can not get corrupted. You can move, delete, etc from either On1 Raw 2020 or your os file structure. I only catalog my favorites and edited folders. Get a trial and try it.. I think it fits your needs best. Good Luck and Stay Safe.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

Try Elements (latest), Anthropics, and Nik 3. That will cover almost anything you want to do. And you pay once for each.

John from gpwmi Loc: Michigan

You can get the Photos App free from Apple and with that you can get extensions with selected Affinity modules for free plus some others like Mark Up for adding text. This will do basic adjustments, plus cloning, dodge and burn, blur, etc. Nothing for replacing the sky or anything that complex. I got this several years ago and it works fine and it was all free. Call Apple Tech Support 800-275-2273 to see it the extensions are still available.

Rick Garside

Sorry for the long response, but it's really a big question. I think the key word here for you is that you are trying to replace what Aperture does for you on a Mac. That basically means an excellent DAM program that also can do some minor editing on your photos. Most DAM programs do much more than minor editing these days. But as a Mac guy myself, who has been looking to replace Aperture for YEARS (nothing has been as good), I would say take a close look at ACDSee. It has some awesome DAM capabilities. I just purchased the program for only $45 because I had an online chat with one of their sales people and he gave me a break.

ACDSee has been around over 20+ years, so I don't think they're going away any time soon. Their program can easily manage your photos in place, which means you can keep them on your hard drives and it doesn't copy everything over (massive storage savings if you have as many photos as I do). You can Keword, color code, mark by location, but the two things I want most are not quite working on their Mac version: Facial recognition and virtual folders. That's the bad news. The good news is that they only introduced their Mac version a few years ago, and it is playing catch up. They are committed to making their Mac version as good as their PC software, and are working on the Facial Recognition and Virtual Folders for their Mac app. I bought it on the hope that they come through on that commitment and deliver sooner rather than later. Otherwise, I still have a good way to organize my photos and do some minor editing with this software, and it cost less than fifty bucks one time. Good luck settling on a solution that works for you. (PS - if you do talk with them, the more Mac people asking for those features the more likely they'll add them in the next update. Hint, hint.)

JohnR Loc: The Gates of Hell

Same problem exactly - solution (for me) is don't upgrade OS. High Sierra runs perfectly on my iMac and MacBooks, Aperture runs perfectly nothing else needed on the Macs so why change. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Ralanco19

At least with a monthly-fee product, you never have to face this dilemma again. The software is constantly updated for you automatically and you are never obsoleted. After paying $650 “one-time fee” years ago for Photoshop, then $100 two times more to keep that updated within just a couple of years, doing the math having a monthly fee product that is always latest upgrade is actually the cheaper and better approach in the end. Plus, when I moved from a Mac to a PC, I didn’t have another $650 to have to pay for a new software program, starting over from scratch. Consider paying the monthly Fee option and enjoy the many benefits that’ll give you.

dearroz

Look into DarkTable. It is excellent software, is Opensource and FREE. Some believe it to be better than Lightroom in that it has a larger number of modules to work with. Suggest that you view Bruce Williams on YouTube for many user documents on how to use it. Yes, it takes a lot of work to learn everything that it can do, but once mastered you will do well.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

I would never say "better" in this crowd....lol. It does allow for finer control over all aspects of post processing and the parametric masking is absolutely amazing.


And yes, it is Free and Opensource, but before someone says "you get what you pay for", there are 60+ active developers working on all aspects of the software and it gets better with every major/minor release. All the reviews that say darktable VS. (insert your editor of choice) don't give themselves proper time to understand the complexity of the application and how to use it efficiently.

It is not intended to be an "alternative" to any editor. It is intended to be a post processing application with fantastic asset management, keywording, inport/export, etc.....

JD750 Loc: SoCal

They announced the end of support in 2014. This is 2020. I am glad you were able to use Aperture for so long!

I switched in June of 2020 after Apple announced the end of support. It was difficult and required a lot of time.

You will have to export all your versions or else lose the editing work. Best to do that while Aperture still works. If you have a managed library you need to convert it to a referenced library. Best to do that while Aperture still works.

After you do that you can start to evaluate options.

Most companies today offer trial versions of their software. My advice is over the next few weeks, to try several of softwares you think you might like. Make a folder called "test" with copies of your exported files, the ones with keywords etc. Then using the trial versions, try importing the test Test folder and then do some work. This will allow you to judge the best software replacement for Aperture.

Please post your results here!