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Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

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Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#51

Post by [deleted] »

Osmium wrote: post #48
georgemcbay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of work required for software of this type that can reasonably compete with Lightroom is really massive. Beyond the obvious editing features you've got colorspace handling issues that most image editors don't bother with (Pixelmator actually handles this fairly well already), the need for a very robust plugin system, non-destructive editing, cataloging features (including image stacks), and a huge amount o…

> a huge amount of largely unnoticed work that goes into simply keeping up with RAW formats for new cameras Could this be largely mitigated by only working with DNG files and letting Adobe handle the conversion? Their RAW->DNG converter is free after all.

[deleted]

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#52

Post by berkut »

Osmium wrote: post #48
georgemcbay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of work required for software of this type that can reasonably compete with Lightroom is really massive. Beyond the obvious editing features you've got colorspace handling issues that most image editors don't bother with (Pixelmator actually handles this fairly well already), the need for a very robust plugin system, non-destructive editing, cataloging features (including image stacks), and a huge amount o…

> a huge amount of largely unnoticed work that goes into simply keeping up with RAW formats for new cameras Could this be largely mitigated by only working with DNG files and letting Adobe handle the conversion? Their RAW->DNG converter is free after all.

At a speed cost penalty of converting to an intermediate format first - yes.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#53

Post by caycep »

ghshephard wrote: post #33

As a multiple-times-a-day Aperture user for the last several years - I'm really glad to hear this. Apple has made it abundantly clear, that they were longer going to invest any effort into Aperture, and so we're going to get the best of all worlds. The application is absolutely rock solid for me - most of the database crashes, and corruptions have stopped occurring for over a year - so in the interim, I have a produc…

The one worry, and this is more of an ancillary one, is that now without the Aperture competition, Adobe will let lightroom development slack off. Lightroom is (was) one of the adobe apps that don't totally suck, and I always credited this w/ them getting taken off guard by Aperture (competitions is a great thing, etc etc). That being said, I suppose the writing is on the wall and whatever changes in direction were in store for lightroom is probably already in motion.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#54

Post by dublinben »

djloche wrote: post #26

This is unfortunate. I hope someone is working on a competitive software offering.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned DarkTable yet. I guess more HNers just use the default Apple programs than I thought. I didn't realize anyone would even miss Aperture.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#55

Post by georgemcbay »

Osmium wrote: post #48
georgemcbay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of work required for software of this type that can reasonably compete with Lightroom is really massive. Beyond the obvious editing features you've got colorspace handling issues that most image editors don't bother with (Pixelmator actually handles this fairly well already), the need for a very robust plugin system, non-destructive editing, cataloging features (including image stacks), and a huge amount o…

> a huge amount of largely unnoticed work that goes into simply keeping up with RAW formats for new cameras Could this be largely mitigated by only working with DNG files and letting Adobe handle the conversion? Their RAW->DNG converter is free after all.

You could go that way but it introduces an extra step and overall extra complexity in file handling and a big part of the value proposition of something like Lightroom is making the photo editing workflow as painless as possible.

It is hard to describe how valuable that workflow simplicity is but it is a real thing; if I had to RAW process and edit all my photos using DPP (Canon's RAW editor, for my 70D), or Sony's RAW editor (for my A7) or even RawTherapee (an open source RAW processor that actually does a good job of supporting lots of RAW formats), I could do so, but yet I pay Adobe $10 a month to give me a really nice workflow for all of this.

It certainly wouldn't be impossible for a Pixelmator-like competitor to emerge for Lightroom, it'd just be a lot of work for a small team; perhaps more work than it would seem at first blush since there's a lot of complexity hiding behind a relatively simple UI there.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#56

Post by al2o3cr »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #24

It seems to have been confirmed (as Techcrunch reasonably speculated) that development will cease on iPhoto as well. http://www.loopinsight.com/2014/06/27/apple-stops-developmen...

The Photos app looks like they are rebranding iPhoto, not "ceasing" anything.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#58

Post by Karunamon »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #38

Unifying the integration with iCloud is okay, but that's really unfortunate. Apple kills a "pro" app while the "basic" apps lose features every new release. If you compare iMovie and iPhoto '09 to the latest ones it's a downgrade from every angle. Even GarageBand lost features, you could use plugins before. I'm afraid they will "transition" users to Photos in the sense they will let you import your Aperture library,…

Look at what happened with FCP, though. They released a new version, missing lots of features, and then future releases restored functionality.

When you're doing a ground-up rewrite, it makes sense to get the basics working first.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#59

Post by jipumarino »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #38

Unifying the integration with iCloud is okay, but that's really unfortunate. Apple kills a "pro" app while the "basic" apps lose features every new release. If you compare iMovie and iPhoto '09 to the latest ones it's a downgrade from every angle. Even GarageBand lost features, you could use plugins before. I'm afraid they will "transition" users to Photos in the sense they will let you import your Aperture library,…

> Even GarageBand lost features, you could use plugins before.

Just to clarify, this is not the case: you can still use Audio Units as always.

Re: Apple to Cease Development of Aperture and Transition Users to Photos for OS X

#60

Post by jayvanguard »

lips wrote: post #39

Sometimes I feel as though I'm in a minuscule minority, as an avowed Mac user who gives a wide berth to any of their software. From the saga of FCP/X, to mail.app changing archive formats, to the auto-save/save-as clusterquack - I've long preferred finding niche vendors for my niche needs. I chose Lightroom at version 1 for exactly this reason.

I agree... I love the OS and like my iDevices but their commitment to application software over the years has been abysmal.
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