Software Recommendations (Aperture Replacement)

I have been using Apple's Aperture for a number of years, and found it to be the perfect software package for me.

- It can import only the RAW files or videos from my camera.
- It knows what it has already imported so I don't get duplicates when I reconnect my cameras.
- It has the perfect amount of adjustments.
- It has keywords and facial recognition.
- I can create smart albums by tags (aka keywords).
- None destructive editing as well as always have access to the original file for export to other software if needed.
- Lastly, it works on OS X.

Sadly Apple stopped support a couple years ago, and recently stated it will no long run on the next MacOS version. So I'm now in a pickle. What do I use? I am looking for recommendations of software that I can look to move to. I have years and years of photos already so this is going to be a painful process no matter what I do. I know my 1st option is to not upgrade my Mac (It is a 2010 Mac Pro tower, so it may not even support the newer MacOS.) but although they do last a long time, they don't last forever and I will have to replace it at some point. But I'd rather be more forward thinking. So I ask. Requirements:

- No subscription based software, period! I prefer free and open source in the hopes it lives a long time, but I am willing to pay for the right package, as long as I own it (With the recent issues with Adobe CC, there is no way I'll buy into that ever.). Also no web/cloud based packages.
- Able to run on OS X and Windows (Yes I did say OS X and not MacOS. I have not upgraded that far yet. Also am running Windows 7 as I do not have a Windows 10 supported PC yet. That probably won't change until I get the Surface Go I want for some other hobbies.).
- Able to have it's database and library on a remote drive. I want to store my photos on my NAS.
- Speaking of my NAS, it's a Synology, if the software can store and structure it's library in such a manner that I can put it in the NAS's Photo share so I can get to the photos from anywhere to view them, that'd be awesome.
- If you can't tell, I want the software to be photo management as well as editing and processing.

I have looked online, but there are so many options, so I am hoping there are some that you guys have used and can give me your take. So the short of it is I want software that run on at least OS X 10.10 and Windows 7, can manage my photo/video library and have editing, can process RAW, structures it's library in an normal folder hierarchy, and is either free and open source or can be bought without a subscription.

I'm still using Aperture on my Mac Pro trash can too. I'm also still using High Sierra instead of Mojave, I've become really jaded at upgrading to Apple's latest OS's and their ability to make my existing software work continuously worse. If I upgrade to Mojave now I'll have to replace Photoshop CS6 now too, and I have no reason to do that yet.

So I have quite a while to use Aperture at least, because I won't be switching to the next OS for prob. a full year ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Unless I have to upgrade for work.

Honestly the best thing out there for basic photo editing is probably Adobe Lightroom. Unless you really need complex masking you don't need Photoshop. I'm not sure what issues you are referring to with Adobe CC. I've been running it since it launched, and haven't had any problems.

There is GIMP, but honestly I found the interface to be unusable.

If you want an alternative to Adobe you could check on1 software. https://www.on1.com/products/photo-raw/?t=1

I haven't used their package for years, but their masking tool was considered one of the better add ons for Photoshop 5 or 6 years ago. It's a separate standalone editing suite, but it was capable of passing data back and forth between itself and Photoshop for masking. It probably needs a fairly modern OS, but I think you're going to be hard pressed to find something that doesn't. I would think Win 7 would still be ok for a lot of software, because a fair number of businesses haven't moved off of it yet.

Edit: One other you might check is Topaz Studio. It has a free version, and it's a well known maker of image editing software.

Edited May 21, 2019 by BeyondTime

If I'm not mistaken Lightroom is now subscription-only as well with the latest version, which sinclair said he didn't want. Topaz Studio has a free version but appears to be a primarily online application.

Luminar may be worth looking at if it supports the right version of Macintosh for you: https://skylum.com/luminar

Spec page: https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-5-tech-requirements

I don't know if it has all the functions you want, but I know it does non-destructive editing, and it's a product you'll own (costs $59), it's not a subscription and isn't cloud-based. It got a lot of good press a few years ago when it was new.

I don't know Macs and I don't know Aperture so I can't be more specific.

31 minutes ago, cfx said:

If I'm not mistaken Lightroom is now subscription-only as well with the latest version, which sinclair said he didn't want. Topaz Studio has a free version but appears to be a primarily online application.

Correct, and I was simply pointing out that Lightroom is probably the best basic editing package out there. Most professionals use it for the majority of their post.

I haven't used Topaz Studio, but as far as I know it's an application that you install on your computer as opposed to a cloud/web based app like Flickr.

Exposure X4 is another one you could look at. I haven't used it, but they are another top image editing company. DxO Photolab is another package from a well known company. I've used their Nik Collection, but not Photolab.

I downloaded a trial of DxO's FilmPack 5 to play around with, and it's pretty slick. From the film days I'm a big fan of Fuji's Velvia & Provia slide films as well as the Ilford Delta and Fuji Neopan B&W films, so I when I converted to digital the first thing I did was look for photoshop plug ins that recreated the saturation and grain of those films. That's basically how I ended up with Nik Collection.

I did a quick B&W conversion of one of my Takane photos using Filmpack 5 with a Fuji Neopan Acros 100 film effect, a red contrast filter, and some blur. I'm probably going to buy this when my wallet recovers from my recent SmD purchase. Anyways I'd definitely recomend giving their Photolab a spin, they make good stuff.

I actually think this it might be fun to try a grey wig on Takane and do some more B&W with her.

Here is the color photo. I had selectively darkened it a bit because I wanted Miss Moon Princess to be more of a light within the darkness in the image. I removed that in Lightroom before doing the B&W effect in Photoshop.

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by BeyondTime

On 5/20/2019 at 9:18 PM, BeyondTime said:

Correct, and I was simply pointing out that Lightroom is probably the best basic editing package out there. Most professionals use it for the majority of their post.

For the record, when Aperture announced dead I bought Lightroom and used it for a year. It was a truly horrible year. The photo editing functions are decent but irrelevant to me because I use Capture NX-D for my raw processing, then use Photoshop & Nik Collection for the rest. But the photo management aspect of the program is truly abysmal, I was really surprised how limited and unhelpful it was at organizing & finding your photos, and how bad it was at dealing with multiple file systems (it doesn't). I followed for a couple versions and they never addressed basic functionality I wanted from Aperture so I jumped back to photo management bliss, to use it while I can.

TBH I always ragged on Aperture because the performance was abysmal. They rushed the 1.0 product out the door for that Xmas season and ended up with some long standing architectural issues (it sucked at multithreading) that always shackled it. Then I went to Lightroom and found out that the performance wasn't greener on the other side, they have their own problems (ｰｰ')

Your second photo isn't showing up 🤔

On 5/21/2019 at 11:30 PM, foo said:

But the photo management aspect of the program is truly abysmal, I was really surprised how limited and unhelpful it was at organizing & finding your photos, and how bad it was at dealing with multiple file systems (it doesn't).

Your second photo isn't showing up 🤔

Their 'collections' aren't very intuitive, and have never been adequately developed imo, but the file system organization just uses the folder structure like Bridge does. Folders are all I ever really use, and I am really organized at the file system level. The metadata tagging tools are pretty good if you set the templates up, and you can sort / search with metadata tags quite easily.

I used to do all my organization in Bridge, but then I started using tethering to lightroom. My eyes just don't see well enough anymore, and tiny doll faces are really hard to judge the focus quality on in camera. I construct my folder organization as I capture. I'd prefer the nikon capture package due to the camera control features and ability to see through the lens, but I've found it hard to justify the cost since Lightroom was included with my photoshop sub. Well that and I collect dolls. XD

The simplified editing interface is the main reason I've seen cited for people moving their less complex post jobs to Lightroom, but the ability to use the star rating as a part of proofing, and then just sorting by 5 stars to exclude all the rejects seems like it's a pretty common image proofing workflow.

I've found the forum sometimes takes a long to to load photos.

Edited May 25, 2019 by BeyondTime

22 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

Folders are all I ever really use, and I am really organized at the file system level.

Yeah, the thing I found was that Lightroom was kind of worse than using the Finder directly (macOS file manager). With Aperture you deal with your photos and can move them around and organize them as needed and it can keep your file system organized. With Lightroom after you've imported and it creates the folder structure, you're stuck with it and have to manually maintain it by adding folders with similar names unless you run an actual import. 

The way Aperture let you work with referenced image files (not stored within the aperture library), it let you store stuff on external drives and share them with different computers (say you have a laptop and desktop computer). If the drive is offline because you unplugged from the laptop, it just considers those image files as 'disconnected.' If for some reason you had to move the location of those files while it was disconnected, or say you copy those files to your internal disk and you want Aperture to use that instead so you don't need the external drive anymore, you can just tell Aperture to reconnect those photos to files on your internal disk. It will recognize the same general folder structure and everything will still work as if it was always on your internal disk.

With Lightroom if you come home from vacation and want to share or transfer photos on an external drive, (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ 

Aperture really shines at ranking, tagging, labelling, and searching, but it's kind of a moot point anyway because the product is dead.

27 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

My eyes just don't see well enough anymore, and tiny doll faces are really hard to judge the focus quality on in camera. 

TBH when I'm doing studio stuff I run back and forth with the SD card to proof stuff. It really doesn't help that I often take photos of dolls on my desk which often means I've moved the monitor, put away the keyboard, put the tripod where my chair is supposed to be, or sometimes cover the area with a bunch of pillows for background effect. I'd love to have live view mirrored onto a tablet.

33 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

I've found the forum sometimes takes a long to to load photos

Ya, I can see it now. I originally went to the original link and Flickr said it was 404 😕 

20 hours ago, foo said:

Yeah, the thing I found was that Lightroom was kind of worse than using the Finder directly (macOS file manager). With Aperture you deal with your photos and can move them around and organize them as needed and it can keep your file system organized. With Lightroom after you've imported and it creates the folder structure, you're stuck with it and have to manually maintain it by adding folders with similar names unless you run an actual import.

Adobe photo downloader is better for camera import, which is why I used to use Bridge for importing and organizing. In photo downloader you could define a root folder, and create a naming convention for subfolders, create an automatic backup copy to a separate location, and convert one of the copies to dng with the original raw file embedded in it on the fly. In lightroom you can only do some of that if you convert to dng during import, and embedding the original raw file isn't an option.

You can import with Bridge, and then import to lightroom using convert to DNG. That opens up a bunch of options for file storage.

AFAIK there is nothing to prevent you from selecting an external drive as a path, but lightroom's database only has one path. You aren't stuck with the original structure, but you do have to move files from inside lightroom so it can keep the metadata linked.

When I first got CC back in 2013 I picked up a book that went in depth into setting up Bridge and Lightroom. Both are pretty powerful, but the file import / metadata / collections elements take a lot of pre-config. The import features aren't consistent between the two, which is a bit annoying. I can understand them differing where app features differ, but I don't understand why lightroom lacks a checkbox for embed original raw file in your dng. It's been 5 years and still no checkbox.

The cool thing about collections is that I could put a photo into multiple collections for organization. I can have an Iori Minase collection that has solo photos, but photos with Iori & Yayoi could be in a collection Iori Minase photos & one for Yayoi photos. I just find it so cumbersome to use I never bother.

20 hours ago, foo said:

TBH when I'm doing studio stuff I run back and forth with the SD card to proof stuff. It really doesn't help that I often take photos of dolls on my desk which often means I've moved the monitor, put away the keyboard, put the tripod where my chair is supposed to be, or sometimes cover the area with a bunch of pillows for background effect. I'd love to have live view mirrored onto a tablet.

IIRC someone is doing a kickstarter for a hardware device that does that. They raised like 3 million for development. We'll see if it ever materializes though.

One feature I found in lightroom that I really like is the virtual clone feature. A single raw file can be "cloned" with its develop settings intact and then you can change the develop settings to achieve a different result while still only having the single raw file on your drive. That's nice for systems with SSD drives.

Edited May 23, 2019 by BeyondTime