Aperture app - what to do for the future?

[IWT]

My specs are shown under my Avatar. I'm currently running macOS High Sierra.

I have been using Apple's native photo editor & library, Aperture, for years; almost exclusively for professional purposes.

Although it is 64bit, I am well aware that its days as a useable app are limited and I want to future-proof it in some way.

I already have a "Photos" library for all my family & personal photographs.

Can I create a new Photos library and migrate the Aperture library into that? I'm not overly concerned about metadata as long as the Titles of my Folders and Albums are maintained. All the other metadata are not essential. And, obviously, I want the images to transfer intact.

So, I'm looking for advice on the best way to preserve the Aperture Library for the future.

In a worse-case scenario, I am prepared to keep my present iMac just for Aperture (and as a backup) and purchase a new one next year for the future and all it holds.

I'd be grateful for any advice.

Many thanks.

Ian

 

[nickyr]

Hi Ian

reading your post made me realise how glad I am that I never let iPhoto (then Photos) organise my images. I organised all mine through Finder as I did not like the way Apple stored my photo's, and then used Adobe LR to import and catalogue them.

To answer your question about a new library though, I would guess that yes you can migrate your images from Aperture into that, after first making a sound back-up of your existing Photos and Aperture libraries to fall back n should it all go "south"!

Good luck, Nick

 

[IWT]

Thank you for your interest and reply, Nick.

I have plenty of backups - as you might expect

One of my concerns was whether the Photos app would (a) permit a second Library to be created and (b) whether the import would bear much resemblance to the original Aperture structure - or whether it would just be a jumble of thousands of images.

Ian

 

[nickyr]

I think you can create another library - it's then a case of where you point Photos at to locate it? Sorry but I've only really limited knowledge of the app so not much use I know.

Whether it would bear any resemblance to your existing Aperture one - my guess would be yes, but nor with any great conviction. But at least with a solid back up you've little to lose by trying.

 

[badshoehabit]

Hi Ian

reading your post made me realise how glad I am that I never let iPhoto (then Photos) organise my images. I organised all mine through Finder as I did not like the way Apple stored my photo's, and then used Adobe LR to import and catalogue them.

Nick

I don't understand what you mean about 'letting' Photos organise your images. I've only used iPhoto and Photos but never felt I had anything other than full control. I drag new imports into named folders and then albums. I ignore Memories, Years etc.

 

[usagora]

I don't understand what you mean about 'letting' Photos organise your images. I've only used iPhoto and Photos but never felt I had anything other than full control. I drag new imports into named folders and then albums. I ignore Memories, Years etc.

I believe he's referring to the way it organizes the actual image files on your hard drive, not the organization within the application.

 

[ferrarr]

I believe he's referring to the way it organizes the actual image files on your hard drive, not the organization within the application.

Photos and iPhoto had a separate database for the images. It is up to the user together them onto their drive as files, first usually.

 

[MacInWin]

I believe he's referring to the way it organizes the actual image files on your hard drive, not the organization within the application.

Could be, but worrying about where files are is a Windows approach to using a computer. The beauty of using Photos is that you an organize your pictures in albums as you want, and not have to worry about where they are on the drive. It doesn't matter, they are in a database kept by Photos. And if you need to get to a file for some reason, just export it from Photos to wherever you want it. One technique I am trying to be more consistent is to export the file from Photos, do whatever I want to do with it (usually either email or post it somewhere) and then delete the exported copy. If I need it again, I can always export it again and there is no reason to have two copies of anything.

 

[ferrarr]

there is no reason to have two copies of anything.

Did you get rid of all your backups too then?

 

[MacInWin]

No, backups don't fall into the "two copies" category. I have backups of backups because I have had a main drive fail and the backup drive fail at the exact same time, with a permanent lost of files (mostly irreplaceable pictures). So now I have two backups and two additional storage locations for critical files I really don't want to lose.

That being said, I don't have two copies of any pictures on my main drive. Or two copies of anything that I am aware of either. In the context of the post, the idea was that if I need a file temporarily for some reason, I export from the Photos database, do whatever I need to do and then delete the export because the original is still in the database and I don't need two of the images on the main drive. Wasted space.

 

[usagora]

Could be, but worrying about where files are is a Windows approach to using a computer. The beauty of using Photos is that you an organize your pictures in albums as you want, and not have to worry about where they are on the drive. It doesn't matter, they are in a database kept by Photos. And if you need to get to a file for some reason, just export it from Photos to wherever you want it. One technique I am trying to be more consistent is to export the file from Photos, do whatever I want to do with it (usually either email or post it somewhere) and then delete the exported copy. If I need it again, I can always export it again and there is no reason to have two copies of anything.

Oh, I understand how it all works and have no problem with it. I was just hazarding a guess at what nickyr was referring to. I agree with you there's no real reason to worry about how the image files are structured on your hard drive.

 

[nickyr]

perhaps I can clarify?

I keep all my RAW images in the following structure:

- year taken folder
- camera sub folder
- date taken sub folder
- (I then keep a notebook with a record of what's in each folder - e.g. local beach, waterfalls, dog, etc.)
- and then my finished images sorted into landscapes, portraits, macro, etc

so I have something like:

>2018

>> Fujifilm X-T2
>>>November
>>>>30 November
>>>>> RAW files (cross referenced to my notebook)

>>DJI MAVIC
>>> etc....

as a LR and PS (and now capture one) user, this was the structure I wanted to import my images.

If I were to rely on iPhoto or Photos I would just have a mess of image files with no discernable structure or even a recognisable filename (I was finding that images shot on say 30/11/2018 would have a folder name like 2043_06_23). Yes the photos in the app could be sorted but as someone who takes 10,000 images plus a year it wasn't for me.

 

[MacInWin]

I understand the structure. Not sure why the change you mentioned here:

I was finding that images shot on say 30/11/2018 would have a folder name like 2043_06_23

but in Photos there is a view of the database by date of the image, arranged into years, then you can drill down to months. Or you can see the photos by location if the camera has GPS and geomakred the photo, or you can see by what they call Moments, which are pictures that seem to logically go together, like it did for a week's trip to London for me. All the pics from that trip are in one so-called "moment." Now I don't know how to sort camera, but there may be some way to do that if you flag the files on import.

All that said, your filing system doesn't have to change, either. When you import to Photos, you can opt NOT to import the files themselves, which means the files start where they are on the drive and Photos just keeps track of the edits/changes, etc, that you make with the Photos tools. You set this in Photos Preferences:

uncheck that and the files will NOT be imported but left wherever they are when you import them. Maybe that's how you can use Photos and keep your structure?

 

[IWT]

I want to thank all of you for your kind remarks and advice. My reticence so far has largely been because I realise that there aren't many members out there who still use, or possibly have used, Aperture.

I'm faced with either having a trial of creating a second Photos library into which I import Aperture and see what that renders in the way of useful organisation and retention of basic metadata

Or - for there is no rush - leave things as they are, working fine in macOS High Sierra and wait till later next year and get a new iMac with macOS Mojave pre-installed. Use it as my main computer and keep my current one as a BU with Aperture intact as is.

Over many years, when I have purchased a new iMac, I have always donated the old one to deserving folks who could never afford one themselves. It is a joyous thing to see how this changes the lives of young people and offers opportunities in their education and development.

Maybe, this one time, I'll retain my "old" iMac because Aperture holds nearly 30 years of work-related (medical) imaging which I don't want to lose and which I still require for teaching and scientific publications.

I'd like to keep this thread open just in case an Aperture user has found a way of integrating its contents into another application whilst retains the Album and Folder structure along with the metadata.

Thanks to all.

Ian

 

[nickyr]

I understand the structure. Not sure why the change you mentioned here:but in Photos there is a view of the database by date of the image, arranged into years, then you can drill down to months. Or you can see the photos by location if the camera has GPS and geomakred the photo, or you can see by what they call Moments, which are pictures that seem to logically go together, like it did for a week's trip to London for me. All the pics from that trip are in one so-called "moment." Now I don't know how to sort camera, but there may be some way to do that if you flag the files on import.

All that said, your filing system doesn't have to change, either. When you import to Photos, you can opt NOT to import the files themselves, which means the files start where they are on the drive and Photos just keeps track of the edits/changes, etc, that you make with the Photos tools. You set this in Photos Preferences:

View attachment 28876 uncheck that and the files will NOT be imported but left wherever they are when you import them. Maybe that's how you can use Photos and keep your structure?

Hi Jake

I've no desire to use Photos - I'm quite happy with LR.

When I first got my first iMac, I just used to plug my camera in and import the images to iPhoto (as ws back then).

After a while I got more into digital photography and got my first LR (after about 3 years or so) and wanted of course to import all my images into that. What I found when looking in the Pictures folder was a complete mess, with folder names bearing absolutely no relation to the dates the images were taken (hence my example). I thought there was something wrong with my camera but that was not the case. There'd be the odd folder with the correct date but most were just a mess. I had to go through each folder to find out when images were taken and rename them all before importing to LR.

That for me was the end of iPhoto, and I've no wish to start using it again!!

Nick

 

[MacInWin]

Nick, Photos will definitely make a hash of your organized structure. But then again, it's storing the images in a database, probably relational, so the order IT uses does not matter. It reads the metadata to organize the pictures and then allows you to assemble them into albums any way you want. But the unprocessed list of photos are, like a relational database, totally unordered. It's the indexing that you can set up that helps with the finding of the pictures you want. So, as I said, if one (not you, you are happy with LR) were to leave the photos in the organized folders and just use Photos as an editor, one could have both organization of files and tools to edit images. All that Photos would hold would be the edited versions, not the originals. And those edited versions could be exported back to files, if one were to want to do that.

If I were to criticize Photos, it's that the native view of the images is that random relational order of the database. When I imported my pictures into Photos I didn't realize that it was natively going to show them in the order it imported them, so they are a real hash. I have them sorted now into albums, moments, locations and people, so they are "organized" for viewing, but in the database, they are still all jumbled. I've learned not to care, as Photos will arrange them easily enough for me. But the programmers of Photos could have given options for that default view, including one that would be "as imported" for those who want that view. I suppose they think they did that with the Library views of Memories, People, Places, but the default seems to be the imported order, which for the average user is pretty much useless.

 

[IWT]

I want to thank all of you for your kind remarks and advice. My reticence so far has largely been because I realise that there aren't many members out there who still use, or possibly have used, Aperture.

I'm faced with either having a trial of creating a second Photos library into which I import Aperture and see what that renders in the way of useful organisation and retention of basic metadata

Or - for there is no rush - leave things as they are, working fine in macOS High Sierra and wait till later next year and get a new iMac with macOS Mojave pre-installed. Use it as my main computer and keep my current one as a BU with Aperture intact as is.

Over many years, when I have purchased a new iMac, I have always donated the old one to deserving folks who could never afford one themselves. It is a joyous thing to see how this changes the lives of young people and offers opportunities in their education and development.

Maybe, this one time, I'll retain my "old" iMac because Aperture holds nearly 30 years of work-related (medical) imaging which I don't want to lose and which I still require for teaching and scientific publications.

I'd like to keep this thread open just in case an Aperture user has found a way of integrating its contents into another application whilst retaining the Album and Folder structure along with the metadata.

Thanks to all.

Ian

 

[KennyC]

Nick, I am a hobby photographer with many photos (not at your level) sorted on what works for me using win folders. In process of moving to mac. I have been using photoshop elements, would lightroom do/be similar? I do also shoot in nikon raw too.

 

[nickyr]

Nick, I am a hobby photographer with many photos (not at your level) sorted on what works for me using win folders. In process of moving to mac. I have been using photoshop elements, would lightroom do/be similar? I do also shoot in nikon raw too.

Hi Kenny

I moved from PSE to LR and PS a few years back and yes, LR is a much more powerful tool for editing and cataloguing images.

Good luck with the switch

Nick

PS it's fine for Nikon. I use Fujifilm cameras now and LR is not so good with their files, so I started using Capture One for some raw editing.