[Rico]

For anyone using Aperture the obvious thing to try first is Apple's Photos app. No it's not as good as Aperture was, but it's free and will import your library without any fuss. No need to redo all your edits, recategorize, etc. Depending on how much work you've done curating your photos, switching to another program could mean a HUGE loss of work.

The Photos app is not that great but it does do raw support, non-destructive editing, basic cataloging like Albums and Keywords, etc. There are a bunch of improvements coming this fall in the next version of Mac OS ("High Sierra"), including more editing tools and better support for external editors if you want to tweak a photo more.

I would say start with Photos and see if it meets you needs.

ajack this is interesting as a Senior I have tried to help who first moved from Aperture to LR was having a hard time working in LR. I wasn't much help with LR as I don't use it myself.

A better route I could do for them might be to import there old Aperture archive into Photos which will be more familiar to them. Does this keep the basic keywords/albums etc from Aperture? Are Photos editing tools similar to what they were used to in Aperture like simple cropping etc?

They are ready to give up as they are having a hard time dealing with the switch.

[ajack]

If you work with curves, color channels, local adjustments etc. I think this would never be the obvious thing to do.

[...]

Apple's Photos app does support some of these adjustments. You can do white balance, exposure, and levels (per channel if you want) in the current version, and the upcoming High Sierra release adds a more traditional curves editor. There is also support for local editing if you want to retouch a blemish or something. No I am not claiming it is the same as Lightroom or Photoshop so depending on much editing you do it may not work. You can always edit a photo in an external editor like Pixelmator if you want to go in depth on a few of your photos. If you are a professional photographer and rely on retouching photos in bulk it will certainly not cut it.

I would never claim that Photos is a great app for professionals, but for anyone coming from Aperture I think it's worth at least looking at since it's free and will load your Aperture library without losing all your work.

[Rico]

Thanks ajack.

By no means are they professional. Just a senior citizen that had been using Aperture. They were told to move to LR which they where having a hard time understanding. It took me a while to convince them to stop using the Magic Mouse which was causing 90% of the problems with the touch sensitive nature to such devices.

If they contact me again I will suggest trying Photos. I don't think they were using Aperture in a way they can not do the same things in Photos.

[abruzzi]

I've downloaded a bunch of the recommended apps from this thread to try out as demo versions. I think I'll probably stay on Aperture for a little while longer, but I'm taking a week vacation, so I think I'll try them all out. So far Aperture and Lightroom are the only that seem to do what I want with mapping (maybe Photos does as well but at a short glance it didn't seem to. I'll have to give it a closer look). If I knew decent mapping was being added to Capture One, I'd probably jump on that since it does do DAM.

My issue with Lightroom is twofold. First, if you were the sort that did the paid upgrade the moment a new version came out then the subscription model may have matched what you paid already, but I tend to skip several versions before my next upgrade unless there was something in the new version I couldn't live without. So, in effect, Creative Cloud was a significant price increase because, in effect, I had to pay for every upgrade instead of skipping. Secondly, at my job it has been an absolute nightmare to manage from an IT standpoint. We've mostly got it working now, but it was not fun (like licenses getting assigned to emails of people who haven't worked for the organization in a decade), so I like to vote with my wallet and not support products that make my life hell (Oracle too..., though they don't make anything I would buy personally).

[acoufap]

Apple's Photos app does support some of these adjustments. You can do white balance, exposure, and levels (per channel if you want) in the current version, and the upcoming High Sierra release adds a more traditional curves editor. There is also support for local editing if you want to retouch a blemish or something. No I am not claiming it is the same as Lightroom or Photoshop so depending on much editing you do it may not work. You can always edit a photo in an external editor like Pixelmator if you want to go in depth on a few of your photos. If you are a professional photographer and rely on retouching photos in bulk it will certainly not cut it.

I would never claim that Photos is a great app for professionals, but for anyone coming from Aperture I think it's worth at least looking at since it's free and will load your Aperture library without losing all your work.

I only had a short look on the first version of Photos. Seems that Apple recognized that they should develop it substantially further. Thanks for the info!

At the moment I'm looking for something that adds functionality not available in Capture One Pro. I'm talking about features like creating collages, editing on pixel level, svg-support and HDR. Since I don't want to go the Photoshop route and read that Affinity Photo 1.5 gets a lot of praises I guess I'll have try with it.

[jatrax]

Secondly, at my job it has been an absolute nightmare to manage from an IT standpoint. We've mostly got it working now, but it was not fun (like licenses getting assigned to emails of people who haven't worked for the organization in a decade), so I like to vote with my wallet and not support products that make my life hell

For many of us Lightroom is the only game in town, so we put up with the aggravation and nonsense. But if someone came up with a replacement that did the same things without all the nonsense I suspect Adobe would have a lot fewer subscribers. Unlike many I have no issue with subscription model, it works fine for me as it is a business expense and having the new tools and profiles in a timely manner is worth it.
What drives me nuts is paying each month and having each release run slower and add more junk that I will never use with no way to turn it off. Adobe is currently on a mobile kick and everything is supposed to sync to your phone and tablet. Maybe someone can do a job processing images on their phone, I much prefer my 27" dual screens and a nice mouse and graphics tablet. So I don't use any of the mobile junk but it still makes my computer run slower.

[ajack]

I completely forgot to mention Adobe Bridge, which is FREE. You might want to check it out. It's really more of a file management tool than an editor, although you can do basic RAW editing like white balance and exposure. It's mainly centered around organizing photos, cataloging, metadata, etc. The nice thing about Bridge is that it works with the files as-is on your computer, it doesn't need to IMPORT them into some proprietary library.

You would probably want to use it in conjunction with a real photo editor (e.g. Acorn, Pixelmator, Affinity, GIMP, or of course Photoshop).

[Rico]

I completely forgot to mention Adobe Bridge, which is FREE. You might want to check it out. It's really more of a file management tool than an editor, although you can do basic RAW editing like white balance and exposure. It's mainly centered around organizing photos, cataloging, metadata, etc. The nice thing about Bridge is that it works with the files as-is on your computer, it doesn't need to IMPORT them into some proprietary library.

You would probably want to use it in conjunction with a real photo editor (e.g. Acorn, Pixelmator, Affinity, GIMP, or of course Photoshop).

I have only ever used Bridge to manage my files for at least 15 years. I still use Apple's Image Capture app to download my images to were and how I want them stored. Then use Bridge to navigate the archive.

The Bridge can handle the mapping tags too. I have customized the Bridge to have the Content and Filter panels to the right next to each other. In the middle I have the Preview panel taking up as much space as possible. The left side I have Folders on top with Metadata below.

When you do a right click on the Aperture app you get the option to Show Package Contents. This gives you access to the archive of images stored inside. It should just be a simple Chronological folders by Year with images stored by month and day inside. You can copy that archive from inside Aperture to another place then use Bridge to access all those files stored in Aperture without any exporting or importing.

[Oakland Rob]

I imagine anyone using Aperture seriously now (meaning for all their photos, as opposed to just working on some old stuff having transitioned to something new) is probably on old system software too, but the new High Sierra will introduce a new filesystem, which should go fine. Whether Aperture will be fine, I haven't heard. I don't think there are enough High Sierra beta users with Aperture to say definitively. But it will break someday. Non-standard metadata, like membership in albums, Aperture folders, projects, ratings, picks, etc can be replicated pretty easily with hierarchical keywords (Aperture uses all virtual containers, which are basically indistinguishable from keyword hierarchies).

If you've got old equipment that can still run it, and you can get your data out, great. Metadata is relatively easy: write it to files. All those keywords, captions, etc can be written into the files or sidecars and then would be usable by most any photo program, not to mention Spotlight, etc. Not so easy to do in Aperture as in Lr, but doable, and an excellent hedge against the future. More problematic are the adjustments to the image itself. For these, probably best to export TIFF. Aperture Exporter is quite good at this. I think Capture One now has an importer, but not sure if it's as good as export.

And do look at Photos. It's gonna be a learning curve for sure, since just organizationally it has nowhere near the batch, comparison or filtering chops of Aperture. And visually it's quite different. But there are increasingly larger numbers of extensions available. For example, look at RAW Power. Cheap, and made by the fellow that headed up Aperture, it's a slate of tools that is VERY Aperture-esque (lifted? hmm).

And note you can use Lr after the trial period without paying. All you lose is the Develop and Map modules. So if you have say Affinity or some other image editor, you're good. And you could use the excellent Houdah Geo for mapping and geocoding and reverse geocoding.

[Kerrowdown]

DAM on Mac

Another vote for Lightroom, I use the CC version and do most of my PP with it too, but heavy lifting still done with PS CC.

[Hyperfocal]

My two cents, in case you find them useful.

I know you are looking after an application that is more than just a photo editing SW, a sort of all-in-one. But anyway, I am going to share my current setup. I was in the same quest than you some years ago, when apple decided to retire Aperture, at the end I settled up with the following:

1) I use a plain old folder structure in which the folders are named "year-month-day_name of event". In Mac OS, I consider this is the most stable long-term organizing scheme, you don't rely in any third party sw or database that can be retired from market at any moment. Mac OS has fantastic preview capabilities. If you want a more dedicated preview SW, there are several good alternatives, I find Pixa a fair alternative in a budget.
2) DxO Optics. This is my digital darkroom of choice, and I am really happy with it, I consider it delivers superb results. It has modules for my all my Pentax lenses and I can browse all the photos in the folder structure nicely.
3) I usually don't process any further. But in those occasions that I need to have full control over the development process I open the TIFFs generated by DxO with Affinity.

There is one caveat, though, that I haven't solved satisfactorily yet. For archival purposes, all my photos are in JPEG2000, this format is very resilient to bit corruption, which is not easily prevented by backup techniques. Lightroom and Photoshop can save directly to JPEG2000, neither Affinity nor DxO save to this format; I have to use preview, automator or the terminal.

[abruzzi]

thanks. Unfortunately, my number one organizational tool is location. For example, I've visited the Very Large Array three or four times over the last decade. If I'm looking for photos of a radio telescope, I don't particularly care if the photo was taken in 2006, 2010, or 2015. I honestly don't even remember what years I visited. What Aperture gives me, and it seems Lightroom and DigiKam as well, is the ability to view photos taken, sorted by location, regardless of when, what camera, or location in the filesystem. This is the main reason I'm set on a full DAM, and in camera GPS is an absolute must have for me. I do find that Lightroom's map function doesn't seem to behave how I expect, which is problematic. DigiKam does, but has other issues. Capture One Pro's GPS functionality is limited to seeing locations of single images, but doesn't allow any grouping.

[Hyperfocal]

thanks. Unfortunately, my number one organizational tool is location. For example, I've visited the Very Large Array three or four times over the last decade. If I'm looking for photos of a radio telescope, I don't particularly care if the photo was taken in 2006, 2010, or 2015. I honestly don't even remember what years I visited. What Aperture gives me, and it seems Lightroom and DigiKam as well, is the ability to view photos taken, sorted by location, regardless of when, what camera, or location in the filesystem. This is the main reason I'm set on a full DAM, and in camera GPS is an absolute must have for me. I do find that Lightroom's map function doesn't seem to behave how I expect, which is problematic. DigiKam does, but has other issues. Capture One Pro's GPS functionality is limited to seeing locations of single images, but doesn't allow any grouping.

You have a very good organization scheme indeed!.

Aperture was a very good tool, it's a pity Apple retired it.

BTW, great photo! and fantastic subject.

[abruzzi]

You have a very good organization scheme indeed!.

Aperture was a very good tool, it's a pity Apple retired it.

BTW, great photo! and fantastic subject.

most of my photos center around my travels, mostly in the southwest (as you can see in the map) but also elsewhere which is why location is so useful. I'm giving digikam another look at the moment, but I'm still cranky that apple killed aperture (and neutering Final Cut, but I had just stopped working in video when that happened, so it affects me less. At least Logic Pro is still going.)

I got lucky with that VLA photo since the dishes were in their smallest arrangement, making them easier to photograph. Thanks for the comment.

[Oakland Rob]

Ah, abruzzi, thanks for the update on needs. I'm also rather fanatic about location. Indeed, I switched TO Aperture a bazillion years ago when it first got geolocation abilities, and didn't switch back to Lr until much later.

So lemme expound at (too much) length on what's worked for me, and maybe it will help.

A primary reason to use geolocation is to find stuff. One way is browsing a map, and both Aperture, Lr and Photos will do that. I find Photos kind of irritating to go back and forth, and it's organizational tools kinda lag for bulk geo work and stuff, so I'll ignore it. But it does some stuff. Both Aperture and Lr use only one map, a big limitation IMHO. But I do prefer Google maps in Lr over Apple Maps in Aperture. For just one reason, Google tends to show more trails in parks near me and I do a LOT of hiking; Apple maps doesn't show the trails at all. So if I want to see photos on X trail, tough in Photos or Aperture.

Lr however has that modular approach. So it doesn't have quite the tools immediately available in its map view as Aperture. And it can't make a smart album for proximity like Aperture does; instead it has the abiility to save map locations, and modify them more easily. Lr has reverse geocoding built in, Aperture doesn't do that as well if at all. And I find using location info (location, sub-location, city, state) quite useful for searching, as well as use externally. And I much prefer how Lr can write that metadata to files more easily.

I dunno how you get GPS coordinates in, but I mostly use either my camera, or Houdah Geo combined with gps4cam, the best iOS app for tracking and GPS coding of photos. While Lr can use synching via a GPS track, Houdah Geo/gps4cam are much easier. And Houdah Geo can also reverse geocode. It also can make use of several maps, like MapBox, which not only shows trails but their names in places. So I prefer it when there's some ambiguity in GPS data. BTW, Houdah Geo is also excellent for exporting to KML so you can send both pictures and route to say Dropbox and publish it to Google, or view the coordinates in say Google Maps or Google Earth in a browser, etc. As well as manipulate other data.

And while Lr does do reverse geocoding, sometimes I use Houdah Geo. It has ways to customize what info you use, like its own database, or Apple, etc. It can also do altitude lookups.

For images that I already have coordinates for, now I use a wonderful Lr plugin, Jeffrey Friedl's "Geoencoding support" plugin, Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Jeffrey’s “Geoencoding Support” Plugin for Lightroom. It not only does better geoencoding than Lr does, but also allows for customization. And better track synching. It can also show the images in a ton of other maps, from Apple's to say OpenStreetMap to Google Earth. I find it really helpful for fine tuning location and also using the coordinates for other work outside Lr. You can also copy incoordinates. And in reverse geoencoding, it allows you to mess more with the data, which is especially helpful with locations outside existing cities, like national parks and such. Like Houdah Geo, you can use it to fill altitude. You can even embed a map url in the image's metadata. Finally, it allows for customizable proximity searches in Lr. For people using GPS a lot, it's a must-have.

There are times though that I use Photo Mechanic for location data. I have a ton of stationary pads set up for various locales I visited a lot of times, and since PM is also great with keywords and templates, if it's a common location for me I just may use PM to fill in the location data aside from GPS coordinates. Like say the array you cited, since that would have some unique keywords as well.