I miss Aperture dearly, too. It is a monument of a time when Apple still could do Software, instead of just Services that feel restrictive and patronizing. I cannot get myself to use that shitty Photos app and am still constantly on the lookout for something to recreate the Aperture of old.
Many of the "old-timers" on the Photos team (when I was on that team for a couple of years) also missed Aperture. Very much so.
Many kept Aperture running on a device at home—still used it for their own workflows (many passionate photographers on that team—surprise!). And in fact when it came time to discuss future Photos features there was always a contingent pushing to add back features that were lost in the transition away from Aperture.
While I was there, for example, they pushed (and got) Curves added to the editing pane. Levels had always been there but the purists missed the more laser-focused "curve" adjustments.
They wanted, did not get, the ability to "brush" a setting (the way you might dodge/burn an area of the image).
These days, who knows. Like me, perhaps the old guard have moved on…
(To clarify though, I was never the "old guard" with regard to the Photos team—had never worked on Aperture.)
It is so disappointing; I started getting into photography over the past few years, shooting rolls of film here and there and need some basic library management tools to track my shots and add EXIF data for film stock, camera, etc. Photos.app kind of does what I need, but there's baffling decisions like all photo data being uneditable, even through APIs. You can edit EXIF data on the original image but the app's internal database is completely immutable. I have a handful of photos with inconsistent metadata I'd love to fix and the only option appears to be removing them from the library and re-adding them.
I really don't need many features! I'm not a pro and while I wouldn't mind shelling out a one-time fee for good software I'm not paying a subscription for cloud storage I'm not going to use. The OSS options here are not awesome, either.
Just wanted to add that Nitro was built by Nik Bhatt, who was the Senior Director of Engineering at Apple leading the Aperture and Core Image teams. I believe he built Nitro specifically to fill the vacuum Apple left behind. Not sure how close it gets to the OG.
Aperture is dearly missed even today.
And to make matters worse: you cannot even import Aperture libraries into Photos any more. Essentially leaving you with picking out the raw images from the package. And don’t get me started on excellent support for tethered shooting in a studio setting.
And I could go on and on.
The only thing I really missed in Aperture was first level support for Nik tools which are cool for their adaptive and non destructive masks.
I'm not a photographer so pardon my ignorance: is there any reason these old tools can't be used nowadays? Like film photography tools haven't fundamentally changed since the heyday of film, why can't digital tools be treated the same?
Maybe there is a niche business rescuing old machines & software and offering them as a packaged tool - offline, air-gapped, with modern bridges where necessary (a Rpi/etc that exposes a modern & secure fileshare on one side, and a legacy fileshare on the machine side, doing file format conversions if necessary).
Since the market for modern tools (as opposed to Liquid (gl)ass-infused ad delivery machines) no longer exists, it seems like using and taking care of legacy tools is the best we're got.
I still mourn the loss of Aperture. IMO the best pro software Apple ever made. Lightroom was always a distant second for RAW photo workflows, and Photos is still a far cry.
I still keep all my digital photos and film scans, except those photos that originate from a Leaf or Phase One digital back, in Aperture. (the raw format of those digital backs pretty much requires Capture One.) The machine does not visit the internet because it needs 10.14 to run and there haven't been security updates in a while.
I haven't used it in a decade, but when I last did need this kind of software IdImager's Photo Supreme came out top of my research.
The photo editing capabilities were relatively weak (but it would integrate nicely with the editing software of your choice), but the cataloging capabilities were fantastic, and it had a lot of flexibility about how the files were stored on disk (have it organise that for you or not) and the option to store the metadata it created directly in the metadata of photo files themselves where much of it could be read by other software.
Sigh. After Apple suddenly discontinued Aperture, which left users like me with huge complex photo archives hanging, I will never trust any professional software tool from Apple again. It is a disaster that I still haven't fully recovered from.
I've learned my lesson — all my archives will now be maintained by me, in file structures, with metadata in text files.
And yes, I agree with the article, Aperture was a really good piece of software, with many design decisions that seemed controversial, but were driven by many hours spent with professional photographers, looking at their workflows and listening to them. The result was very good.
I've been having the same thought. Just move back to a file structure which is what I was doing from 1995 until 2007 before migrating to iPhoto.
The metadata in Apple Photos doesn't fully sync to iOS over a cable now. Did Apple intentionally make offline sync not work to force everyone on to iCloud? Also, even the local search inside of Apple Photos doesn't work correctly either. I thought it was hilarious when they tried add "AI" to this shitshow. Apple literally can't even make a local tag search.
Isn't it possible to put all the metadata in EXIF tags? People keep telling me to use Immich, but IDK.
I might be thinking of a different app (possibly iPhoto before Apple dramatically changed jt, but I don’t think so), but if it was Aperture, it was also excellent for photo organization.
They will soon add Photomator app to Apple Creator Studio. They have bought Pixelmator team last year and since Pixelmator is already in this bundle, I think the next app will be Photomator, a pretty close replacement for Aperture.
Neither provides a DAM though. Photomator's asset management features are basically what Photos provides, which is far inferior to Aperture's DAM features. Many who miss Aperture aren't just lamenting the editing tools, they miss library organisation features that Photos simply doesn't offer.
It's actually good. I use it as my main photo editing app, as it's does exactly what I need, does it good and fast. So my workflow is Photo Mechanic for culling, then importing RAWs into Apple Photos (not to the gallery, just as a separate folder/album) and then it gets picked up by Photomator automatically. It's not a perfect flow (Apple does some weird conversion from RAW in the background and it takes a lot of CPU time when importing a lot of photos), but it gives me pretty much all what I need (including face recognition, ML exposure/color, quick subject/background masking, HDR photos editing, etc).
I think you might be right. I've been using Pixelmator (and recently Pixelmator Pro) for years now. It's a great app and has the "paint an effect" (like blur, sharpen) that Aperture had. I suspect this app, now that Apple bought it, will be where we look for Aperture-like features going forward.
Darktable. It has a hell of a learning curve, but it's one hell of a powerful raw editor with some really cool masking features. It has a reputation for being difficult to learn, but the newest release bundles a new tone mapper (AgX) that requires a whole lot less massaging than the old Filmic (and, to a lesser extent, the later Sigmoid mapper). I'm back to managing my photo libraries using plain old files and folders, and syncing them to my NAS using Syncthing. I couldn't be happier, and it doesn't cost me a dime.
Aperture’s death coincided with my life getting less excitingly photogenic. The combination was enough to break my habit of shooting pictures altogether.
My old well-curated and edited and tagged libraries are still on S3 backups. No conversion has been satisfactory.
I switched to Capture One a couple years ago and like it - used Lightroom Classic for many years before that, and think I've tried most DAMs over the years.
This sounds like a great half-day project. Just use Gas Town and create a team of product managers, senior and junior developers, designers, and architects and have them get on it. (I recommend keeping Opus as the senior, and Sonnet as the juniors). Once you do this, you can release it and you'll be a (very financially successful) hero!
> AI for some reason, and amongst the complaining in the comments you’ll invariably find it: “I miss Aperture.”
and:
> Apple released macOS Tahoe, which has been pretty constantly raked over the coals for poor design and broken interactions from the day it was released (and even before, if we’re honest).
Of course this may not indicate causation, but I believe that the AI hype has also in part led to a decline in quality overall. Not necessarily everywhere, but there is almost definitely some influence that degraded things. I see this all the time on youtube videos or Google search. In fact, I recently also switched to other search engines; they have issues too, but Google search consistently yields worse results nowadays, even when the search string used excludes AI and other things. The quality declined overall. (And on youtube you can not even really search for much at all, Google tends to show some unrelated crap after some time. They are deliberately trying to waste time of humans.)
> It was powered by some of the most impressive technology around at the time, but you’d never even know it because you were too busy getting shit done.
If you're busy getting shit done you will not have time to engage with ads. That became a problem once technology switched from being a tool to an advertising delivery vehicle.
Until you have to do extra work to get them out of your way, wait for them to end, scroll more down/up and so on. They're also one more thing making UIs less deterministic which IMO is a lost art.
tempodox|1 month ago
JKCalhoun|1 month ago
Many kept Aperture running on a device at home—still used it for their own workflows (many passionate photographers on that team—surprise!). And in fact when it came time to discuss future Photos features there was always a contingent pushing to add back features that were lost in the transition away from Aperture.
While I was there, for example, they pushed (and got) Curves added to the editing pane. Levels had always been there but the purists missed the more laser-focused "curve" adjustments.
They wanted, did not get, the ability to "brush" a setting (the way you might dodge/burn an area of the image).
These days, who knows. Like me, perhaps the old guard have moved on…
(To clarify though, I was never the "old guard" with regard to the Photos team—had never worked on Aperture.)
ericwood|1 month ago
I really don't need many features! I'm not a pro and while I wouldn't mind shelling out a one-time fee for good software I'm not paying a subscription for cloud storage I'm not going to use. The OSS options here are not awesome, either.
petecooper|1 month ago
https://www.gentlemencoders.com/nitro-for-macos/
____________g|1 month ago
JKCalhoun|1 month ago
softinio|1 month ago
macshome|1 month ago
jjtheblunt|1 month ago
oger|1 month ago
Nextgrid|1 month ago
Maybe there is a niche business rescuing old machines & software and offering them as a packaged tool - offline, air-gapped, with modern bridges where necessary (a Rpi/etc that exposes a modern & secure fileshare on one side, and a legacy fileshare on the machine side, doing file format conversions if necessary).
Since the market for modern tools (as opposed to Liquid (gl)ass-infused ad delivery machines) no longer exists, it seems like using and taking care of legacy tools is the best we're got.
geerlingguy|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
abruzzi|1 month ago
nicoburns|1 month ago
The photo editing capabilities were relatively weak (but it would integrate nicely with the editing software of your choice), but the cataloging capabilities were fantastic, and it had a lot of flexibility about how the files were stored on disk (have it organise that for you or not) and the option to store the metadata it created directly in the metadata of photo files themselves where much of it could be read by other software.
https://www.idimager.com/
jwr|1 month ago
I've learned my lesson — all my archives will now be maintained by me, in file structures, with metadata in text files.
And yes, I agree with the article, Aperture was a really good piece of software, with many design decisions that seemed controversial, but were driven by many hours spent with professional photographers, looking at their workflows and listening to them. The result was very good.
hoyhoy|1 month ago
The metadata in Apple Photos doesn't fully sync to iOS over a cable now. Did Apple intentionally make offline sync not work to force everyone on to iCloud? Also, even the local search inside of Apple Photos doesn't work correctly either. I thought it was hilarious when they tried add "AI" to this shitshow. Apple literally can't even make a local tag search.
Isn't it possible to put all the metadata in EXIF tags? People keep telling me to use Immich, but IDK.
spiritplumber|1 month ago
paradox460|1 month ago
SanjayMehta|1 month ago
hshdhdhj4444|1 month ago
wiseowise|1 month ago
alextsayun|1 month ago
amir|1 month ago
divan|1 month ago
JKCalhoun|1 month ago
softinio|1 month ago
orefalo|1 month ago
bix6|1 month ago
_0xdd|1 month ago
Arubis|1 month ago
My old well-curated and edited and tagged libraries are still on S3 backups. No conversion has been satisfactory.
monocultured|1 month ago
hahn-kev|1 month ago
grey-area|1 month ago
irl_zebra|1 month ago
needSomeCoffee|1 month ago
...an ex-Arpeture user.
shevy-java|1 month ago
> AI for some reason, and amongst the complaining in the comments you’ll invariably find it: “I miss Aperture.”
and:
> Apple released macOS Tahoe, which has been pretty constantly raked over the coals for poor design and broken interactions from the day it was released (and even before, if we’re honest).
Of course this may not indicate causation, but I believe that the AI hype has also in part led to a decline in quality overall. Not necessarily everywhere, but there is almost definitely some influence that degraded things. I see this all the time on youtube videos or Google search. In fact, I recently also switched to other search engines; they have issues too, but Google search consistently yields worse results nowadays, even when the search string used excludes AI and other things. The quality declined overall. (And on youtube you can not even really search for much at all, Google tends to show some unrelated crap after some time. They are deliberately trying to waste time of humans.)
Nextgrid|1 month ago
Nextgrid|1 month ago
If you're busy getting shit done you will not have time to engage with ads. That became a problem once technology switched from being a tool to an advertising delivery vehicle.
dangus|1 month ago
trinix912|1 month ago