Hacker News Reader

Comment by cpcallen | Hacker News Reader

Aperture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software)

I would happily pay for an update that fixed outstanding bugs and ensured compatibility with future versions of macOS. It would be nice to have some new features, too, but it is basically "good enough" as it is and I dread the day I can no longer run it. I'm really not sure what I will do.

The claim that Photos was going to be a meaningful replacement for Aperture was obviously a lie at the time it was released and even nearly five years later it is still not true.

I'd have moved to Lightroom had Adobe not moved to a subscription model.

View on HN

Oh man, so much this.

When Photos just came out and Apple was making the claims about how they've taken everything good from Aperture and stuck it into Photos I was pretty optimistic considering how solid of an app Aperture became over the years.

Now, few days down the road, pretty clear that Photos is just a marginally better iPhoto with the vast majority of features that were useful for professionals such as Stacks, never coming back.

The dumbification of professional apps to the lowest common denominator continues ...

Stacks, 2-up and 4-up comparison, the Loupe, star ratings, fast browsing of raw files... so much missing functionality. Lightroom IMO was never as good as Aperture, I really wish Apple would’ve spun it off instead of just letting it wither.

I'm not a pro and loved Aperture. It made my workflow so easy and it was such a fast program. I haven't found anything that lets me cruise through photos so fast and pare them down. Left/Right arrows, Z to look at details, X to flag as a reject made running through hundreds of photos a breeze.

I'm trying to find an alternative and, quite frankly, everything I've tried is not great. I ended up buying AfterShot Pro, but I'm not terribly satisfied with it. It runs on the Mac, but it's really hurt by the fact that it's not actually a Mac application.

Adobe is out because of the subscription model. I'm willing to buy the software, and I'm even willing to periodically buy new versions when it makes sense, but $10/month forever is hard to stomach.

Fast Raw Viewer. It has very few frills, but it lets me do selects way faster than even Aperture. Whether processing in Lightroom, photoshop, or Photos, I always run larger batches through this app so I can quickly toss rejects and pick a few selects.

Many years ago, when I was first getting into digital photography, I was faced with the Aperture-vs-Lightroom decision. Both seemed promising, with Aperture even having some advantages. What ultimately made me choose Lightroom, however, was the multi-platform support (I've always liked MacOSX laptops, but prefer to use Windows and/or Linux on the desktop).

Several months later, something happened that basically reaffirmed my decision. Nikon released a new camera, which I bought at launch. Lightroom added support for its RAW format in a minor patch almost immediately. Meanwhile, Aperture couldn't be bothered to add support until 6 months later and a major version update.

Flash-forward, I really wish Adobe didn't become so obsessed with their subscription models. While cloud storage/backup definitely has its advantages, I'd much rather simply own my software and use my own servers. (But since the "run it yourself" options are always grossly inferior, I just put up with their new approach and make sure I have a local copy.)

On the flip side, for some camera models Apple has added support more quickly. And while Photos is no Aperture, it does have pretty good RAw profiles and lens correction for almost all popular DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, and all the 1st-party lenses I’ve ever owned.

You could try Luminar 2018. Library management is coming, and it's developing tools are (IMO) better than lightroom. It's also very reasonably priced. That plus an Ubuntu vm for importing via shotwell is what I use.

> Library management is coming

Specifically, the date is December 18. There's also a (small) discount if you buy in the next 8 days: https://skylum.com/luminar

Not involved at all, just discovered this while looking around.

Iirc, you can buy Lightroom 6 perpetually, no creative cloud needed. Might be worth looking into.

That's what I still use but it's getting long in tooth and you're starting to notice lack of support for new formats and the like. I wouldn't really recommend someone who isn't already using it to switch. I don't really mind the subscription because it's software I use frequently but I need to get around to cleaning out my catalog before I switch over.

You can use Adobe DNG converter (free) or other 3rd party tools to convert new raw files to DNGs understood by Lightroom 6.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com