“With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture,” an Apple spokesperson told TechCrunch. “When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X.”
Apple says that it will provide compatibility updates to Aperture that allow it to run on OS X Yosemite, but will not continue to develop it. In addition, it is working with Adobe to work on a transitionary workflow for users moving to Lightroom.
If your workflow depends on Aperture, you might want to start planning for its demise.
…sad for those who relied on it.
What’s even more sad is Adobe now having a near complete monopoly on enthusiast/professional photo editing. The only reason Lightroom remained a standalone option exempt from Adobe’s Castrating Cloud subscription plan was probably because of competition* from Aperture.
*Yes, I realize there’s also Phase One’s Capture One, but I think that product, as great as it is, has an even smaller user base than Aperture.
Edited 2014-06-27 18:42 UTC
I still use Picasa, the photo thingy from google, it used to work on multiple platforms and doesn’t mess around with your photo’s like iPhoto does. And it’s pretty quick with large libraries (with face recognition off).
Unfortunately, options like this aren’t really a valid solution for the more hardcore photographers among us. The need for the RAW processing power and flexibility in sorting / organizing / exporting leave solutions like Picasa behind (though they, like iPhoto, are great for non-camera-heads).
Almost the only tool I use on my photo’s is crop and the JPEG output of the D700 is good. Bought a better flash (SB-700) for the lowlight situations. (Which got more expensive since I bought it, that’s a bit strange)
then you don’t do serious things with your photos. usually the simplest image needs more than just a crop.
Not if you know how to use your camera correctly.
if all you do with your pictures is post them on social networks for your friends and family, then yes, you can use pictures directly from the camera. for professional use, no camera can give the images perfect for final delivery.
I’ve seen very few pictures that wouldn’t benefit from even mild color levels tweaking, no matter how good the camera, the lighting, and the composition.
You’ve obviously never used any applications like Aperture, Lightroom or even DigiKam.
Taking a snapshot, yeah, you’re not so interested in specific details or effects… But if you’re actually trying to produce memorable photographs for artistic or documentation purposes, then there’s an entirely different level of photographic post-processing.
Picasa is one of several small programs that work well for quick and simple editing of snapshots. I use it because it runs well on the low-performance Eeepc laptop I travel with.
But for ‘real’ photography most free programs are lacking, to say the least. Working in layers and working with Canon and/or Nikon RAW image files are critical, for example. I’ve never used Aperture, but have always heard positive comments about it. My preferred software titles are Nikon’s Capture NX2 (Windows only) and Adobe Photoshop (Windows or Mac).
In the world of open source / freeware, Gimp is probably the closest thing to a full-featured photo editor. And it’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Paint.net is another possibility for Windows users.
The two open source tools I’ve found that best match the features of Aperture are: DarkTable and RawTherapee.
I used it until Google decided to marry it with Google+.
Aperture and iPhoto will be replaced by Photos for OSX next year.
And in my book that’s good news cause iPhoto and Aperture SUCK.
So let’s hope a company that made two different applications for managing and editing photos that *both suck* comes up with a successor that does not.
Would you care to explain why you think they suck?
Although such news is bad for users, at least it leads me to believe that the time I spend on trying to keep myself as free as possible from proprietary software where open source alternatives are viable and of reasonable quality is not completely wasted.
At least I am not at some company’s complete mercy.
I enjoy Digikam and RawTherapee on both Windows (though Digikam doesn’t really work there as of late) and OS X (where both work great) and they’re almost enough for my needs.
A much wanted improvement for Digikam would be the ability to synchronize libraries and edits between multiple computers/filesystems, but that’s not a simple feat to achieve.
I used it briefly and there were certain things I liked about it, but the fact remains that Adobe Lightroom has more functionality. The numbers of users for those applications reflect that. Almost every review comparing the two fell on the side of LR.
I really wasn’t crazy about the new subscription model from Adobe but I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and it really isn’t bad value for money to get both LR and PS for an affordable subscription.
I suspect the new Photos.app will aim to inject some of the features of Aperture into an iPhoto like application. Aside from it’s very impressive face recognition, there is nothing I like about iPhoto at the moment. Maybe they’ll turn into something more useful.
A couple of years back Aperture and Lightroom were evenly matched. Apple shifted priorities, and Adobe pushed forward. They were really going to have to work to keep up with Adobe if they wanted to stay in the game.
As a digital artist that works across the entire field of tools Adobe provides, I can say the price of Creative Cloud is not too high for a serious professional to afford, it is insanely powerful, and very well integrated. I don’t like that they are not facing strong competition, but they have been holding up their end and advancing innovation in their tools. But I do worry that they will turn the cost dial up much higher if they don’t have serious challengers. Adobe is the industry standard in print and it looks like they are wining video and motion graphics too. Avid and the new Final Cut is not doing well against Premiere, leaving Autodesk to give them some competition against After Effects (but only as it is used as it is used for VFX and compositing), and The Foundry’s suite of video and VFX tools.
Edited 2014-06-28 23:35 UTC
For someone making a living directly off Creative Cloud it’s very affordable. But for someone like me who do use the Adobe apps professionally but only every now and then it quickly becomes expensive. I do not make a living directly off it but I do need professional tools to work with.
I rarely update the Adobe suite. I jumped from CS2 to CS6, which I am very happy with and see no reason to upgrade from really. But who knows for how long it will continue to work with OS upgrades? I do not look forward to being forced to switch to CC in the future.
Capture One by PhaseOne
RawTherapee (OSS)
DarkTable (OSS)
pica