Apple has began promoting the new Photos app to Aperture users in an email blast to past customers. Photos replaces iPhoto with new iCloud features built in, but the app does not carry over the same advanced editing features as Aperture.
Photos was first announced at WWDC last June with a release date targeted for sometime this year. The developer betas of OS X 10.10.3 included the new app for testers, and earlier this week the first public beta for non-developers was released.
Aperture, which is still being sold for $79.99, is no longer being updated and will be removed from the Mac App Store when the new Photos app is released with OS X 10.10.3 this spring. Adobe has developed an Aperture-to-Lightroom migration tool for professional photographers looking for software alternatives.
The email can be read in full below:
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
I loved, loved, loved Aperture, but a lack of advancement and support made me move to Lightroom, which has some awesome editing features but in my opinion, crappy file management.
One thing about the new Photos app that really makes crazy is the lack of a star/some kind of rating. Please put it in and let users decide if they want to use it or not.
Lack of star rating does, indeed, suck. However, you can add keywords such as “4 stars” or “5 Stars” and create a smart album for those favorites. Not great but it is a workaround. Let’s hope for a return of some key features in future versions of the Photos app.
While I own Aperture and Lightroom, I’ve never warmed to Aperture and have done almost all of my work in Lightroom. That said, any chance I get to dump Adobe and use an Apple product I’m all for so I’m hoping I can do at least some if not all of my work in Photos.
I can’t imagine that you’d be pleased with Photos if you never warmed to Aperture. The big difference between Lightroom and Aperture was that Lightroom was better at editing/processing while Aperture was better at file management and played well with Apple’s ecosystem.
Now imagine having both worse editing/processing than Aperture, and worse file management than Lightroom.
Time will tell. We’ll just have to see. I’ve not used it yet so can’t comment. I’m hopeful.
There were many aspects of Aperture I liked, but it was so sluggish compared with Lightroom that turned me off immediately.
@rwanderman – well you may be disappointed. I just downloaded the beta and can only say that i’m stunned at what’s missing. In fact I really can’t believe it – I think this is going to upset a lot of users. Even right down to the those who just use it to store an image.
I agree. I find it underwhelming. It’s just the IOS 8 app for your desktop.
We shall see. I’m not going to mess with the beta and I’m in no huge rush. I’m hopeful but will experiment with it and if it sucks, it sucks and I’ll stick with Lightroom.
I think the Photos app can become pretty advanced with its support for extensions. Not having to worry about syncing the photos from all your Apple devices (especially from iPhone to Mac) is huge. Additionally, the preview on Apple’s website as well as the demo in the keynote show more advanced features than the released beta version of the app has.
Then i’m looking forward to a boat load of hidden features being activated. Otherwise it’s easier to use dropbox (backwards compatible synching) and your other favorite editor.
The extensions aren’t going to make up for what’s really missing in Photos. I’m sure there will be bazillions of filters and effects, but that’s not the problem. The problem has to do with functionality that pros use in the management of the photos. None of that was shown in the demos nor is it in the beta.
Photos seems to be a mass market half way house between Aperture and iPhoto. More for those who don’t do much, less for those that do much more. I’ve spent a lot of time using aperture and any loss of retouch and effects would be very bad news.
The email hints clearly that the Photos App will have a totally different and incompatible library format. Let’s hope it is modern, fast and can manage GBs of photos. I hate having split libraries.
Also, the fact you can share photo changes and organisation of albums etc on all devices it is nice. Too bad that with upload link speeds you get typically in a home in Europe (I have 120MBit DL but only 6MBit UL), the whole thing is useless. Regardless of the only 5GB of free storage offered by Apple (which is ridiculous).
With those upload speeds, any Cloud service involving more than an email, is utterly unusable.
To upload 5GB worth of pics (and I have several tens of GBs), it would take about 2 hrs……
I used Aperture since it came out but no longer. Finally had to move to LR because Apple failed to provide a clear roadmap or show that the successor app was worthy for professional use. Sad day…
Used Aperture since v2 went thru the changes in v3 finally figured out how I wanted to manage my files and out came the carpet. About that time I had to make a decision about up dating my early 2009 iMac with the notorious NVIDIA GT 130 gpu so many crashes that my photo libraries may have been compromised. My fault for not paying the toll, buying a new iMac every 3 years, for a better GPU. Problem Solved!
Bought the Alienware Area-51 so I can replace the GPU and even have three of them. Now I have to move my photo life over to Lightroom I guess. But it will be interesting to see how the Photos app runs on the old iMac.
“Rosebud”
1. Contrary to what the email from Apple read, the import of files from Aperture to the new Photos app DELETED all of the photos from Aperture. Not cool.
2. This new app is not a suitable replacement for Aperture. Not sure what Apple is up to with this. Unless it is evading me a way to easily update file attributes(Info tab in Aperture) isn’t even close to being on par with Aperture. Batch update of file attributes, etc. is nowhere to be found. That functionality was a big deal to me with Aperture.
3. Custom exports? Renaming files on export (to version name, for example)? So many feature seem to be missing.
To say I’m underwhelmed is an understatement. So frustrated.
Thank you Apple for disappointing us.
I am still using Aperture until I can find an alternative. I am looking at Lightroom and Photoshop, but Photos doesn’t have the power. What’s next? Axing Final Cut Pro for something called Flicks?