Apple Abandons Aperture

[TCampbell]

At the last Apple World Wide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled their new OS and made some plans that they were coming out with a significantly revamped program for photography.

Apple announced that they're coming out with a new app called simply "Photos" and that it will be cloud based so you access your photos from all of your i-devices as well as the Mac. That sounds great... until we got to the part where they decided NOT to continue any development of Aperture -- the "pro" photography application. Most people are having a VERY difficult time trying to understand how this new "Photos" app could possibly satisfy the needs of more serious photographers given that Apple would also have to cater to casual shooters (largely using iPhones) who want minimal controls.

I really like Aperture and am will be sad to see it go. Not to mention I had lots of plug-ins that I bought for it.

Adobe, on the other hand, posted an article saying they are "committed to assist" photographers with their migration to Lightroom.

I'm not sure how a migration could even be done. The base images are all in the library and getting those out is no problem. But there are no adjustments in those images. Apple maintains a list of adjustments in meta-data form (describing what you applied, how much, and where). When you view an image, Aperture grabs the original and then quickly applies all the adjustments. Unless Adobe decodes the schema of the Aperture library, photographers could copy their base images, but would have to completely re-apply all the adjustments.

While I ponder the reality of having to convert (fearful of how much processing will be lost) I'm checking the licensing prices of Lightroom.

I see Lightroom 5 can be purchased as a perpetual license. But when I go to the Adobe site, there is no Lightroom 5... there's only Lightroom in Creative Cloud which is $10/month (but includes Photoshop with Lightroom.)

Is Lightroom in Creative Cloud and Lightroom 5 the same version? E.g. if I go for a perpetual license am I really buying the "old" version and going to get left behind... or is this an alternate licensing model in which all the plug-ins for one also work for the other?

 

[SnappingShark]

Adobe - Lightroom : For Macintosh : Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.3

It's still available to download! v 5.3 for mac at least.

IDK though.

 

[Designer]

I "like" the fact that you are concerned, as am I.

 

[TCampbell]

I did check the Adobe marketing page... they list "Lightroom 5" as being effectively the same version as the Lightroom CC version except without all the cloud & mobile support features. They don't make this initially obvious (you have a dig a little before you find it). But it seems a valid option.