Apple Aperture is Not Dead (for now)

Last Update: May 25th, 2019

Before anything, let me state that I'm not a nostalgic guy when I talk about software, on the contrary, I'm a very practical guy, but I know when I have a good software in hands.

All Apple users may know by this time that Apple stopped to maintain its image editor and DAM software known as Aperture. Pure and simple, Apple decided that Aperture has reached the end-of-life cycle.

Officially, it's still working on MacOSX 10.14 Mojave and but it will NOT work on 10.15 (more information here.)

The good thing is that there is a workaround to keep it running on Catalina and possibly beyond. Please check here.

The bad thing is that Apple removed it from Application Store, but if you purchased it before, you'll be able to download it again. My advice is to make a backup copy of the application itself and keep it in a safe place while you can.

There are many rumors behind this decision, from a supposed deal with Adobe to more simple things like cutting costs. Personally, I don't believe the last option, but who knows? At this time their reasons don't really matter.

The problem is that there are no solutions at the present time to take Aperture's place with honor.

Most of the present day's DAM software are cloud-based, or subscription-based, or very expensive or just don't have the same features.

Let's see the main ones:

- Apple Photos is a bad joke. Period.

- Corel Aftershot Pro is lost in time and space.

- Phase One Media Pro can't handle very large libraries and was discontinued.

- Phase One Capture One is nice BUT... Extremely expensive for what it is. Has the same problem with large libraries.

- ON1 and Luminar aren't really DAM softwares, they're nice editors with some very basic DAM functions.

- Media Valet and other ones are cloud-based.

- Digikam and Darktable are promising but some basic features aren't still ready and Digikam is not the most stable program on a Mac.

- Adobe Bridge works, but not even close to Aperture. And has to do with Adobe Creative Cloud, so it's out of question for me.

Back to Aperture

The fact is that Aperture still rocks. And rocks well.

So, what's so great with it?

First of all, it's rock stable with Everything as tested to exhaustion. I can't remember about a single bug in it.

It's still probably the best DAM software for Mac. It can handle extremely large libraries and every possible feature you can imagine for image management, like projects, catalogs, albums, tags, ratings, keywords and more.

Its search engine is still unsurpassed even by modern programs like Phase One Media Pro, Photo Mechanic and any other ones I tested.

It's very fast and runs very well on any Mac, even on old ones.

Aperture has a very powerful backup system (the vaults) that can be done wherever you want, from a local folder to a network file server.

It has a very nice image editor that does everything for image adjustment and retouching. You can even call an external editor of your choice if necessary.

I tested it with libraries having more than 80K images without any problem. It's possible to use more than one library and to move images between them.

It's possible to consolidate all images inside the library itself or let them outside, just referencing them to the internal database.

Raw Engine

The raw engine is part of the operational system and it's updated according to Apple's policy to the OS you have installed. It includes literally hundreds of camera models and the updates come as an OS update.

The later versions of the RAW engine can handle fairly well the Fuji X-Trans raw files. Much better than Adobe Camera Raw. 

But there is a serious quirk here. Some of the cameras supported by the High Sierra raw engine aren't supported by Aperture. Surely Apple did this on purpose to force people to use Apple Photos.

Plug-ins

There are many interesting plug-ins compatible with Aperture. My favorites are:

The OLD Nik Collection:

Analog Efex Pro: Simulates film/vintage look

Color Efex Pro: Effects, retouching and correction tools

Silver Efex Pro: Simulates Black and White film

HDR Efex: Self-explanatory

DFine: Noise reduction tool

Viveza: Simple sharpening tool

Sharpener Pro: A more complete sharpening tool 

Note: Until mid-2018 the Nik Collection was owned by Google and available as freeware, but DxO acquired it and now it's paid (and expensive) and I'm not sure if the new version is still compatible with Aperture. If you have the old free version, keep it safe !

There are other cool plugins that deserve a look:

DxO Film Pack: Professional film look simulation

DxO View Point: Professional geometrical corrections

Noiseware Professional had an Aperture plug-in in the past, but it was discontinued. It was a wonderful professional noise reduction tool. If you have it, grab with both hands!

But honestly, read the manual. There are so many features that you can overlook. I know that reading manuals suck, but at least try.

There are other quite neat features like a fantastic degree of integration with Apple Automator and Applescript if you're a power user.

Apple's new path


I decided to test Mojave on my MacBook Pro and honestly I wasn't impressed. It's slower, has strange bugs with external USB hard drives and don't has anything else I consider a really useful new feature to justify the tedious upgrade process for all my other computers. Worse, I would have to pay for upgrades of lots of other software like Parallels Desktop, DxO, Silkypix Pro, and others.


My iMac and MacMinis will continue to run High Sierra until I can't work with it anymore.

Actually, with the advent of Affinity for Windows and all the important photography software being ported to Windows and the fact Apple is again making Mac user's life miserable again due to soldered memory and SSDs, making Macs not user upgradable or serviceable, I see no point to having a post-2018 Mac. I don't like Microsoft Windows, but I like even less the new approach from Apple.

Macs are becoming just too expensive, not upgradable, and a potential headache along time. That's why the Hackintosh community is growing so fast. Steve Jobs is probably rolling in his tomb.

Addendum:

My present option is to use Photo Supreme as a DAM and the following programs as external editors: DxO Photolab, Luminar and Affinity Photo.



Apple Photos, by the way, sucks!

Running Aperture on Catalina