[normhead]

These days I keep every file on a back up drive.... the files I lost were files that had been reduced in size for web use. I still had the originals, but reducing all those files in size represented hours of work. These days, every file I post from photobucket stays on a hard drive. over 200 GB so far of 150 MB files. This aperture thing means I have to get a drive big enough to dump all my Aperture libraries to, 25,000 files at 14MB to 24 MB a file. This is not a small thing.

As a 30 year user, at this point I'd have to say, with this last fiasco, first cancelling iWeb, then iDisk, now Aperture, everything that Apple did that made my life easier, they've taken away. And the new stuff they brought in to replace it, is stuff I could care less about. The guys who kept Apple in business through the tough years, hard core power users who needed to be able to do top quality work efficiently have been pretty much been dumped by Apple, so they can sell me an iPad that won't let me load some of the PDF books I was planning to read on it.

They've become what they thought they were rebelling against.

[nater]

Could you elaborate? Do you suspect they're moving towards entirely Cloud-based, or do you have some other concern(s)?

EDIT: I'm not trolling by asking this. I'm simply curious to hear your perspective as you've obviously put a lot of thought into why you're not going with Adobe products like LR.

While Lightroom is both reasonably priced and stand-alone at the moment, I think that was because Adobe had strong competition in that space. With Aperture getting retired, and Apple going to a cloud-based solution with Photos that may incorporate the Aperture functionality in some way, and Adobe already trying to put as much of their software in their cloud as well and pushing a rental model (which I think they will move to even more), I need a solution where my primary photo library is on my computer. I use cloud services to selectively publish certain photos, and I backup my data to CrashPlan in the cloud with an encrypted connection, but I have no need nor do I want to store all my photos in the cloud nor do I want to have my photos stuck in one platform/workflow that will make it hard for me to move to something else such that I am strong-armed into accepted price increases, like what we've all experienced with cable providers. In my opinion most of Adobe's products are overpriced and they are that way because there isn't enough competition in that space. Universities have come to a similar conclusion, like at the Department of Visual Studies University at Buffalo:

Recommendations to Students Regarding Adobe Creative Cloud | UB DEPT OF ART Facilities

"Adobe recently moved to a subscription-based product licensing model which they call Creative Cloud (CC). We and many other professional designers and educators find CC unacceptable. We want to let you know that Visual Studies no longer recommends that students purchase Adobe products, and unless Adobe offers an acceptable alternative to CC subscriptions, we will not be updating Adobe products within our labs. Instead, we will continue to use CS6 as we research suitable alternatives. CC effectively triples the cost of ownership over four years of college from what was $350 in 2013 to $960 and more once the introductory student price of $20 per month goes up. CC users are required to pay Adobe in perpetuity to be able to access the software needed to create and edit their work. If a designer ever stops paying the monthly fee to Adobe for whatever reason, after a 30 day grace period they will not be able to open or edit any previously created work. Can you imagine having a lifetime’s worth of work that you can no longer access once you stop paying? Software should not be priced as if it were cable television."

They also outline how Adobe has ratcheted up the prices already, something I would call licensing extortion:

Adobe Creative Cloud Licensing | UB DEPT OF ART Facilities

I'm also not a fan of their CC end user license agreement:

MPG blog - Adobe Creative Cloud: Lopsided Legal Agreement

The only way to make this stop is if there is a marketplace with a range of software products to choose from, so there is true marketplace competition. Where Adobe is going with their products is not where I want to go, and I very much want to support other companies offering products that match my needs better.

[reeftool]

That $20 student price was a bit of a rip off. The current price of Photoshop CC + Lightroom is $9.99 a month and there are some indications that the price will stay at that point for the time being. That's still going to be more than $350 after 4 years of college but colleges must have big balls saying Adobe's price is unacceptable. My daughter, who graduated in 2010, had required books that averaged $500 a semester. The colleges aren't getting a share of CC so that's why they don't recommend it. That also makes the course worthless because Photoshop is the professional industry standard and if they don't learn to use it, then what value does the class have? Microsoft Office is also going to a cloud based subscription. Are the same colleges going to teach something else? Good luck on finding a job after going to that school.

[nater]

They've become what they thought they were rebelling against.

In a sense that's true and perhaps inevitable for most companies that are publicly traded and successful. Our business environment is still such that publicly traded companies are judged on quarterly profits, which is a weak way to do things if you care about value in the bigger picture, or about the ability of a company to make good products for 10% of it's customer base - such as power users. The general public (and likely the 90% of the customer base now) is not that discriminating nor will pay a lot of attention to product details, so when a company produces products that will sell well to them, those same products are less likely to serve the power users as well. Also the general public has demonstrated a surprising indifference to market monopolies and erosion of consumer rights and demonstrated a significant willingness to give up or give away a tremendous amount for something they think will save them money (typically they look only at the short term, not unlike our stock markets...)

---------- Post added 06-28-14 at 01:51 PM ----------

That also makes the course worthless because Photoshop is the professional industry standard and if they don't learn to use it, then what value does the class have? Microsoft Office is also going to a cloud based subscription. Are the same colleges going to teach something else? Good luck on finding a job after going to that school.

Photoshop and Office are tools, not skills. A skilled person can adapt their skills to different tools. Using different tools better helps teach (and practice) underlying principles. Teaching only one tool can lead to students who only understand how to follow follow a sequence of steps. And getting a job in arts/design is about a portfolio of work, not about a list of tools you've used. Likewise writers will have a body of work, and a lot of them don't use Microsoft Word, they use tools better suited to writing like Scrivner, StoryMill, Mellel, or Ulysses.

---------- Post added 06-28-14 at 02:10 PM ----------

— For most people, RAW is cumbersome

— Pentax must solve the JPEG riddle once and for all

It is about about time and money equation, and RAW loses. JPEG wins.

Computers are much faster than they were with more cores, lower latency and higher throughput, and there's been a real I/O revolution with solid state drives. Processing RAW is trivial on a modern computer, and brings many benefits that JPEG will never have:

Raw image format - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

JPEG is a lossy format where detail is sacrificed to a variable degree and should never be used in an editing workflow except as the final output step, where it is suitable for a web page or email attachment where space matters. It should only be used when you have to use it. RAW is your digital negative. JPEG is at at best a print.

[wildman]

That also makes the course worthless because Photoshop is the professional industry standard and if they don't learn to use it, then what value does the class have? Microsoft Office is also going to a cloud based subscription. Are the same colleges going to teach something else? Good luck on finding a job after going to that school.

You are describing the market behavior and relationship not of an "industry standard" but of a monopoly.

[6BQ5]

After settling down from the initial shock that Aperture is essentially dead, I have settled to the following conclusions.

• Aperture is dead but not gone. Let's use it until it useless. At some point software will advance and the algorithms in Aperture may seem insufficient. No new plug-ins may be developed.
• Consider Aperture will to be one large album. OId shots are stored here. New shots may be stored somewhere else.
• Let's wait for the Photos App. There is a chance, however slim, that Photos may be the new Aperture engine with an iPhoto interface.

I would hesitate to convert my libraries because I am not sure how the adjustments to the original RAW will transfer.

[boriscleto]

[*]Let's wait for the Photos App. There is a chance, however slim, that Photos may be the new Aperture engine with an iPhoto interface.

iPhoto and Aperture share the same graphics engine now. iPhoto just has a dumbed down interface. Photos is likely to dumb it down even more, it will likely use the same engine that Aperture and iPhoto use anyway.

Core Image - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[RobA_Oz]

That $20 student price was a bit of a rip off. The current price of Photoshop CC + Lightroom is $9.99 a month and there are some indications that the price will stay at that point for the time being. That's still going to be more than $350 after 4 years of college but colleges must have big balls saying Adobe's price is unacceptable. My daughter, who graduated in 2010, had required books that averaged $500 a semester. The colleges aren't getting a share of CC so that's why they don't recommend it. That also makes the course worthless because Photoshop is the professional industry standard and if they don't learn to use it, then what value does the class have? Microsoft Office is also going to a cloud based subscription. Are the same colleges going to teach something else? Good luck on finding a job after going to that school.

There's no guarantee that the skillset associated with the software you learn in school is going to remain useful for very long. I still struggle to find bits of Excel and Word that got pushed into different places when Microsoft changed the user interface a couple of years ago. Good software allows an easy transition into it, but it's hard to find software with a truly "intuitive" user interface. Microsoft's "improvements" probably cost the world billions of dollars in lost productivity while users figured out what went where, let alone got used to it.

However, Apple's present Aperture customers are in no different a position to people like me who couldn't see a good reason to upgrade from CS5 to CS6, and who certainly can't see any sort of reason for moving to CC. In fact, if Thom Hogan's article is correct, they're probably better off, as at least when they change equipment, it's likely to be supported in their free replacement software.

[Aristophanes]

iPhoto and Aperture share the same graphics engine now. iPhoto just has a dumbed down interface. Photos is likely to dumb it down even more, it will likely use the same engine that Aperture and iPhoto use anyway.

Core Image - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I doubt it will be dumbed down. In fact, I think quite the opposite.

iPhoto is also going. Macs are increasingly being bought for a higher-end crowd, or a higher-end purpose and tablets are now occupying the lower-end consumer space.

iOS will get the dumbed down capabilities, and there will be an increasing step up for the free Photos app on OS X.

It's a way of selling Macs. It's like iLife (now gone) except better. Same Library structure, most of the metadata sets, non-destructive editing, and very likely a plug-in architecture.

[boriscleto]

iPhoto already had non-destructive editing, and the latest version used the Aperture library structure.

A plug-in architecture was hinted at, we'll see. Everyone who has actually used Photos is under a NDA.

[Uluru]

Future iCloud will offer 200 GB storage for $3.99 per month, I think. If the majority of apps — including Photo App, Pages, Numbers, and all OS X updates as well — come free with a Mac, and offer seamless syncing and sharing among devices, I can understand Apple's move. It is far le$$ than buying Microsoft's for documents, and Adobe's cloud solutions separately.

Apple introduces itself as a viable alternative for both. For many users, if the Photo App delivers plug-in architecture and good tools from Aperture (at least most crucial), then it is a no brainer for majority of users. As an Aperture user I am concerned about plugins I like, but I hope they will be available for the Photo App. If nothing else I believe Apple will negotiate with major plugin suppliers to support the Photo App platform.

But what is more interesting now is that Leica offers similar cloud-based services now for their users. And if I understood it properly from some recent PR blurb, it is not unlikely that Ricoh will not come with a similar offer of their own.

[normhead]

Why I went with Apple... seamless operation between my iWeb, iPhoto/APerture and the software I use to link to for images on sites like this. First we lot iWeb, then iDisk, no iPhoto/Aperture. Regardless of what people might think, if Aperture is no longer supported, the next upgrade of the OS could disable it. You could have to find an non-updated computer to even access you Aperture files, or as happened with my iWeb files, the libraries could become invisible to the finder, meaning you can't even move them to another computer.

I have almost a TB of files in Aperture, it will take me days to safely export all those files. I'm sorry, but just as it was with iWeb, this is in-excusable. And I have to ask, after my experience with iWeb, iDisk, iPhoto and Aperture, why would I ever pay for another Apple product? From where I sit right now, sticking it out with Apple instead of switching to Lightroom was a really big mistake. I stayed in part for the stability. But now I'm asking, "what stability?". This company is being run by a bunch of flakes.

[Winder]

Do you suspect they're moving towards entirely Cloud-based,

Yes. Adobe wants 100% cloud based. Very hard for people to pirate their software that way. I don't like the idea of having to have internet service to edit images. I often use downtime between projects or locations to catch up on editing and I don't have internet. The idea of using cellular internet like Verizon or AT&T to move upload 500 RAW files to the cloud would require an astronomically expensive data plan.

[Aristophanes]

Future iCloud will offer 200 GB storage for $3.99 per month, I think. If the majority of apps — including Photo App, Pages, Numbers, and all OS X updates as well — come free with a Mac, and offer seamless syncing and sharing among devices, I can understand Apple's move. It is far le$$ than buying Microsoft's for documents, and Adobe's cloud solutions separately.

Apple introduces itself as a viable alternative for both. For many users, if the Photo App delivers plug-in architecture and good tools from Aperture (at least most crucial), then it is a no brainer for majority of users. As an Aperture user I am concerned about plugins I like, but I hope they will be available for the Photo App. If nothing else I believe Apple will negotiate with major plugin suppliers to support the Photo App platform.

But what is more interesting now is that Leica offers similar cloud-based services now for their users. And if I understood it properly from some recent PR blurb, it is not unlikely that Ricoh will not come with a similar offer of their own.

Apple has made little mention of OS X Yosemite's upcoming Photos app being tied to iCloud as the pain storage medium.

They said it for iOS 8:

https://www.apple.com/ca/ios/ios8/photos/

"With iPhone..."
"Now you can search thousands of your photos right from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch."
"Whatever your skill level, you’ll be able to create photo masterpieces right in the Photos app. You don’t have to wait to get back to your Mac to do it. "
"Once you’ve enabled it on your iOS devices, iCloud Photo Library automatically keeps all your photos and videos in iCloud, at full resolution in their original formats, including RAW files. You can access and download them anytime from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or the web."
"Fill your library, not your device."
"Organized here, there and everywhere.
iCloud Photo Library keeps your photos and videos organized into Moments, Collections and Years across all your devices — and even on the web. You can mark favourites, create albums or drag photos into a custom order, whether you’re on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch."

---------- Post added 06-28-14 at 10:31 PM ----------

Yes. Adobe wants 100% cloud based. Very hard for people to pirate their software that way. I don't like the idea of having to have internet service to edit images. I often use downtime between projects or locations to catch up on editing and I don't have internet. The idea of using cellular internet like Verizon or AT&T to move upload 500 RAW files to the cloud would require an astronomically expensive data plan.

Adobe's subscription service only phones home to verify the software license and payment update every 90 days.

Massive cloud storage isn't even offered by Adobe.

[NicoleC]

Yes, Adobe is the industry standard... now. I recall very clearly when Quark blew it and Adobe ate their lunch. Adobe isn't necessarily king forever.


Cloud licensing does not prevent piracy in any way; an online license check is pitifully easy to crack, and Adobe knows it. What CC gives Adobe is a steady revenue stream instead of the feast/famine cycle of new releases, plus alternate development management options because they can push interim fixes at low cost versus expensive large updates.


For some businesses, a steady budget line item each month instead of justifying a major expense on upgrades periodically is also positive. Not for me; I won't be buying a subscription to be able to continue to access my file edits. I'd rather undergo the pain of migrating to a different tool.