Posts tagged with "aperture"

Adobe Releases Aperture Import Tool for Lightroom

MacRumors:

The free plugin, which can be downloaded from Adobe’s site, will make it simple for Aperture users to migrate their libraries into Lightroom, a task that takes quite a bit of time to do manually. It is available only for Mac users and requires Lightroom 5.6 or later.

Using the plugin, Aperture users can import the following data into Lightroom: Flags, Star Ratings, Keywords, GPS Data, Rejects, Hidden Files, Color Labels, Stacks, and Face Tags. Color Labels, Stacks, and Face Tags are imported as Lightroom keywords, and because adjustments to photos made in Aperture can’t be read into Lightroom, the tool will import both original images and copies of images with adjustments applied.

This plugin should make life considerably easier for those wanting to migrate from Aperture (which has been discontinued by Apple) to Adobe’s Lightroom. Keep in mind that this plugin does require a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which starts at $9.99.

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Making the Switch from Aperture to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe yesterday published a six-page document outlining a workflow for those users who want to transition from Aperture to Lightroom. Its an interim measure for those users who want to switch to Lightroom now, but Adobe also affirmed their commitment to develop a proper migration tool for Aperture and Adobe Lightroom.

At Adobe, we’re working on a migration tool to help you bring your photos into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom from Aperture, but if you’re eager to switch before the tool is ready, this guide can help ease your transition. We recognize that this migration may be a challenging process and offer the following resources and methodology to help get you up to speed with Lightroom and provide a road map for successfully migrating your photos.

This all comes after Apple announced in late June that it was ending development of Aperture. Apple is instead focusing its development efforts on the new Photos app, launching on Yosemite early next year.

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Long Live Photos

Joseph Linaschke, who runs ApertureExpert, has a great take on Apple’s decision to discontinue Aperture and focus on a single Photos app:

Before we can look to the future, let’s look at the past. Aperture itself has been around since 2005; nearly a decade. And of course it started being written well before that, so we are talking about 10+ year old code. The cloud, the iPhone, and pocket sized digital cameras that surpass the quality of film not only didn’t exist, but were barely a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ or any technologist’s eye. Aperture is a photo editing and management tool written for users used to an old school workflow. Go on a shoot. Sit down to edit. Share when you’re done. But that’s not the world we live in anymore. Today we want to shoot, share immediately with a cool effect, edit on an iPad, sit down at your 4k display and get serious, pick up the iPad and show off what you’ve done, mix, repeat. We want our devices, our libraries, our experience integrated and seamless. This simply can not happen with Aperture as it is today.

Also, don’t miss his comment follow-up and analysis of the Photos.app screenshot shared by Apple. In short, Joseph argues, Photos 1.0 may not ship with all the features of Aperture as you know it today, but he is confident that Apple will continue to iterate on the product.

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Adobe “Doubling Down” on Lightroom

Adobe, following Apple’s Aperture announcement earlier today:

Put simply we’re doubling down on our investments in Lightroom and the new Creative Cloud Photography plan and you can expect to see a rich roadmap of rapid innovation for desktop, web and device workflows in the coming weeks, months and years. We also continue to invest actively on the iOS and OSX platforms, and are committed to helping interested iPhoto and Aperture customers migrate to our rich solution across desktop, device and web workflows.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan (which includes Photoshop CC and Lightroom) is a $9.99/month subscription, but the app is also available as a standalone purchase.

I personally never needed Aperture or Lightroom, but I know a lot of people who have been using Adobe’s app for several years now. According to Apple, functionalities from Aperture will be integrated with the new Photos app for OS X – the screenshot chosen for the announcement today is interesting.

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Apple Ending Development of Aperture, New Photos App Will Also Replace iPhoto for Mac

Jim Dalrymple, reporting at The Loop, received confirmation from Apple that the company will stop development of Aperture, replacing it with the Photos app introduced at WWDC:

Apple introduced a new Photos app during its Worldwide Developers Conference that will become the new platform for the company. As part of the transition, Apple told me today that they will no longer be developing its professional photography application, Aperture.

The new Photos app is on track to be released next year for OS X Yosemite, and it will also replace iPhoto for Mac, integrating photo editing and organization features into a single interface with iCloud support.

As reported by Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, Apple will provide compatibility updates for OS X Yosemite users and the company is working with Adobe to create a “transitionary workflow” to move to Lightroom.

According to Apple, the discontinuation of Aperture doesn’t indicate a shift away from “pro” apps, as both Logic and Final Cut will continue development. At this point, it’s not clear whether iPhoto for iOS will also be discontinued with the release of iOS 8 and the new features in Photos for iOS.

Aperture came out in 2005. In 2011, Apple started offering Aperture 3.0 at a discounted price on the Mac App Store.

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Aperture, iPhoto, and iMovie Receive Small Updates Alongside Launch of Mountain Lion

While Apple’s iWork updates for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers include support for iCloud and the MacBook Pro with Retina display, today’s updates for professional and creative applications such as Aperture (already updated to take advantage of the Retina display), iPhoto, and iMovie consist of stability improvements and further integration with this morning’s release of OS X Mountain Lion.

Aperture 3.3.2

The latest version of Aperture includes updates for added compatibility with Mountain Lion, addresses stability issues that can occur when the app is in Full Screen mode, tweaks auto white balance when using Skin Tone mode, and now lets users sort projects and albums in the Library Inspector by date, name, and kind.

iPhoto 9.3.2

Today’s iPhoto update is about bringing sharing options to Messages and Twitter, whilst fixing some stability issues and improving compatibility with Mountain Lion. Last month, iPhoto and Aperture were updated with the release of the MacBook Pro with Retina display. Among other things, this update unified the two apps’ libraries, enabling them to access each others’ stored photos natively.

iMovie 9.0.7

While iMovie’s release notes don’t specifically mention Mountain Lion on the Mac App Store, it does call for fixes with third-party Quicktime components, improved stability when viewing MPEG-2 clips in the Camera Import window, and brings sound back to MPEG-2 clips important from a camera (where it may have been absent before).

You can download Aperture, iPhoto, and iMovie from the Mac App Store.


Apple Removes iWork, Aperture Trials From Its Website

The trial version of iWork ‘09, Apple’s productivity suite that includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, is no longer available on the company’s website for download. The company has replaced the former iWork trial webpage with a message informing customers that iWork is available on the Mac App Store.

The trial version of iWork is no longer supported. But you can easily purchase Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the Mac App Store to start creating beautiful presentations, documents, and spreadsheets today.

On the Mac App Store, the iWork apps are available as standalone purchases priced at $19.99 each. The iWork trial webpage is still available on some international Apple.com websites, such as the Italian one, although we are hearing reports that the download returns an error, reloading the webpage and displaying the same message about the Mac App Store. The iWork trial briefly disappeared last year, but came back shortly after. In March, Apple also announced the beta of iWork.com (which iWork ‘09 supported) will be discontinued in July.

Similarly, the company has removed the trial of Aperture 3 from its website, with users on Apple Support Communities noticing the change at least more than two weeks ago (recent Apple support documents still instruct users on how to remove the Aperture trial). Aperture is available on the Mac App Store at $79.99.

The trial version of Aperture is no longer available. If you currently have a copy of the Aperture 3 Trial installed on your Mac, you must delete it from your Applications folder before downloading Aperture 3 from the Mac App Store.

The removal of trials from Apple.com shouldn’t come as a surprise. The company has been gradually shifting all its software releases to the App Store, including major releases of OS X and Final Cut Pro. In July 2011, Apple also shut down the Mac OS X Downloads webpage, redirecting customers to the Mac App Store. Apple, however, still has a trial of Final Cut Pro (which is sold at $299.99 on the Mac App Store) available on its website, suggesting that more expensive software may still receive support for trials in the future.

Apple has been rumored for over a year to be on the verge of releasing a new version of iWork, although such rumors never materialized in a finished product with substantial new features. Apple released compatibility updates to introduce Lion support and bug fixes, but avoided implementing direct iCloud integration back in October, requiring users to manually upload and download documents to sync through iCloud.com. According to more recent speculation, Apple may release an updated version of iWork with Mountain Lion, which is on track to become available sometime this summer. [Thanks, Luca]


The Case for an iOS Aperture

 

I’m not usually one for making baseless predictions about what Apple’s going to do next. There are plenty of people who already do that, and I’m generally more interested in their current affairs than in unconfirmed rumors. But there are exceptions to every “usually”, and today I want to try my hand at speculating.

Though we tend to forget about them after the fact, iPads have always debuted with iPad versions of some of Apple’s biggest apps. The original was released alongside iWork, to show that the iPad could do real work from day one (never mind how many people derided it as a consumption device for months). The iPad 2 brought an iPad-optimized version of iMovie and GarageBand, which expanded the boundaries of what everyone thought could be created with a touch screen.

Now Apple is on a photography kick in a big way. Not only have they been relentlessly improving the iPhone’s camera since the 3GS, they have also added important and useful features in iOS 5 in the form of basic photo edits, built-in HDR and composition grids, the ability to organize albums, and Photo Stream, which near everyone agrees is their favorite feature of iCloud.

Given all that, I think that the next big Apple app to make its iOS debut will be Aperture, alongside the iPad 3’s inevitable announcement. Our own Cody Fink has written about the possibility of Aperture for iOS before, but there are a number of reasons why the timing for it makes sense now.

Retina Display
The one thing everyone expects about the iPad 3 is that it will finally get its long-awaited Retina display. It’s also the feature that everyone is most looking forward to (and for good reason, seeing what a huge difference it made when we first saw it on the iPhone 4). Of course this display will be great for reading and writing text, but what better way to really show it off than with photography, where the crispness and clarity of the display will be readily apparent?

A6
Another all-but-certain feature everyone agrees the iPad 3 will have is a quad-core A6, the next evolution of Apple’s A-series mobile processors. Like the A5, this chip will surely include vastly improved CPU and graphics performance over its predecessor, and in addition to games a great way to demonstrate it would be an iOS version of Aperture that shows how fast and fluidly the iPad 3 can manage tons of photos and perform complex image edits.

Photo Stream
Given Apple’s current photography kick the iPad 3 is likely to have better cameras than the iPad 2, but even if they’re not as good as the ones on the 4S —which, given how poor the ones on the 2 are compared to even the iPhone 4, seems likely— the brilliant thing with Photo Stream is that they don’t have to be. With Photo Stream, every photo you take on your 4S, your iPad 3, or even on a DSLR (once it’s been imported into iPhoto or OS X Aperture) would be available on your iOS Aperture library without you having to lift a finger.

iCloud Metadata Sync
We know iCloud is a big part of Apple’s strategy, and is only going to get bigger as time goes on. I can see iCloud playing a big part in Aperture on both iOS and the Mac. Any photo tagged, edited, or organized in one version of Aperture could be automatically mirrored with those same changes on another. Naturally this won’t make sense for current large Aperture libraries, but perhaps there will be a special iCloud section on the Mac version (like how there’s already a section for Photo Stream) specifically for photos that have been edited in this way.

Another Desktop Need Eliminated
iOS 5 may have given us “true” post-PC devices that could finally be used independently of our old-fashioned mice and window-based systems, but many people still need traditional PCs to store and manage digital photo collections. Aperture for iOS (along with iCloud and higher-capacity iPads) could be the next natural step in the iPad’s evolution towards being the only computer that 90% of people need.

Like I said, I don’t usually care to make baseless predictions, and everything here is certainly that. I have no idea if Apple will do any of this or not; for all we know they could be readying iOS versions of Logic and Final Cut Pro instead. But when you consider what the combination of Aperture for iOS with a retina-enabled iPad 3 could do, I think we may very well be seeing this alongside its announcement.


One More Thing: Open photos in any iOS image editor
This is more of a wish than a guess, but just like Aperture on the Mac I would love to see Aperture on iOS have the ability to open any image in any of the great image editing apps that already exist for iOS (with the ability to roundtrip them back into Aperture, of course). I have even less of an idea as to whether Apple will do this than I do my above speculations. Perhaps we will have to wait for a future version of iOS that better lets us share data between apps. But when and whether it happens or not, I think it would be a great way to let Aperture for iOS coexist happily among the many photo apps that iOS users already know and enjoy.


Aperture 3.2 Gets iCloud Integration with Photo Stream

Following the release of iOS 5, OS X Lion 10.7.2 and iPhoto 9.2, Apple has also released Aperture 9.2, an update to the desktop photo editing software that adds iCloud capabilities and a number of new features. As Apple details in iCloud’s Help section, the new Aperture allows users to drag photos into the app’s library to upload them to Photo Stream. You can drag one or more photos from your library (Events, Photos, Places, or Faces) to your Photo Stream. Users can enable Photo Stream in Aperture’s Preferences -> Photo Stream and, similarly to iPhoto 9.2, choose whether they want to enable Automatic Upload and Import.

Other new features and fixes from the changelog:

  • Resolves an issue that could cause the “Loading” indicator to reappear in the Viewer when cropping a photo
  • Aperture now automatically relaunches into Full Screen mode if the application was in Full Screen mode when last quit
  • Pinch-to-zoom gesture now automatically activates Zoom mode in the Viewer
  • Left and right swipe gestures can now be used to navigate between photos in the Viewer
  • Microsoft Outlook can now be chosen in Preferences as the application used by Aperture for emailing photos
  • Fixes a problem that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to quit unexpectedly when using brushes to apply adjustments
  • Loupe now correctly displays magnification levels between 50-100%.
  • Fixes an issue that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to display the incorrect color profile on externally edited images
  • Import window now includes an option to delete photos from iPhone and iPad after they have been imported into Aperture
  • The Lift & Stamp tool now displays the correct cursor icons when being used in Split View and Viewer only modes

You can find Aperture at $79.99 on the Mac App Store.