I have Aperture on Yosemite and It takes a long time to open up, but then seems to operate OK. I have tried one small library in Photos and I don’t like it at all. I preferred to be able to organize. 

I am about to take my chances and go to El Capitan. I tried it on my laptop with a small library and it seems to work.

If you liked Aperture and outgrew iPhoto then Lightroom is the way to go. Photos is in any event rubbish as far as I am concerned, unless you are just a happy snapper who wants to share your selfies etc!

Well, after a year of hemming and hawing, it seems I’m back to square-f’ing-one as far as my own Aperture EOL conundrum goes …

I’ve tried the new Capture One Pro 9, and although it’s more similar to Aperture than the rest of the available options (and, yes, both its RAW conversion and developer tools are excellent), it’s frustrating that I can’t simply switch from the viewer to the browser using a single keystroke (instead of a custom-programmed key, plus a three-key combination). I mean how fucking hard is that to manage on the coding side?

Gesturing my zoom magnification in C1 isn’t hard, but just hitting the ‘Z’ key was so much easier back in good ‘ole Aperture. And, yeah, C1’s unique focus-mask feature is a helpful aid, but I do miss being able to see my camera’s actual focus points (of course, there’s only two apps in the entire world which are capable of this: Aperture, and Nikon’s Capture NX-2/NX-D).

But alas, since Aperture seems to run just dandy in El Capitan 10.11.1 (so far, at least, and, no, I haven’t tried printing yet), maybe I’ll just stay with it until it reaches its real EOL date. I guess then, they can just pry Aperture 3.6 from my cold dead hands when it’s no longer compatible with the next OS. Who knows? Perhaps Apple will unofficially support its compatibility indefinitely, as they seem to have done with El Capitan.

I’ve also considered the hybrid ingest/develop approach, as some others here have: e.g., Photo Mechanic + your RAW developer of choice, but that seems a bit kludgey for me (although I do own a Photo Mechanic license, and consider it best-in-class for what it’s designed to do), since I actually prefer to deal with app-managed libraries, rather than referenced ones (which I’d have to manage on my own).

I’ve even considered throwing in the towel, and just switching to Photos. It’s really not that bad; some of it, pretty good, in fact.

Michael, if you’re a casual user, you may still want to give Photos a good working-through, first. Once in Photos, click the “edit” button in the upper-right, then click “adjust.” Click “add” to include more bricks in your adjustment pane, and click the ‘v’ symbols to also expand every adjustment brick to reveal more controls. The built-in adjustment tools are actually quite good, especially for novice users. Plus, there’s now a handful of new Photos-specific extensions available in the AppStore, which is also encouraging. DxO and Pixelmator will soon be releasing their own Photos-extensions offerings as well. Now, a few extensions won’t likely turn Photos into Lightroom 6, but they offer the promise of perhaps significantly improving what’s already there.

El Capitan 10.11.1; Photos 1.2

However, if you decide that Photos is simply too limiting, I would say that I find Phase One’s newest release of Capture One Pro, version 9, to be my least-hated alternative to Aperture (in fact, many say C1 does quite a few things better than Aperture does). If I can get through a few nit-picky UI quirks in C1, I may actually end up switching to C1 at some point.

Edit: I’ve seen the light and drunk the Kool-Aid. Recent tests I performed on my own NEF RAW files have shown Capture One to produce the best-looking skin tones around, while also showing that Aperture/Photos’ RAW converter (built-in to OS X) to be the worst in precise skin-tone rendition (though it’s fine for most applications). C1 certainly also has the most extensive color control. For serious work, I’ll be switching over to C1.

I’m reluctant to leave Aperture too. I’ve been using MacPhun’s Creative Kit software for a while and find them quite good. What opinions do others have using the MacPhun Pro extensions with Photos as a transition from Aperture, or continuing to use Aperture with MacPhun extensions until Aperture is no longer supported ? 

At this point I will stick with Aperture, but will give photos another look. I previously bought the Nik suite and perfect photos, and upgraded to on1 photo 10. I like what it can do for my photos, and can work with layers and masks. I also bought Affinity photo, so I can stay away from a subscription model for now. 

As an amateur I would like to keep my software costs under control, but I have spent a fair amount on the above…