Photos for Mac will really shine and show it’s strenghts when third party extensions will start releasing. Maybe developers of extensions will bring star ratings and flagging to Photos app.

Christopher Breen also has a first look on Macworld. 

Question of the day: Why didn’t The Photos Expert get early access from Apple? What were they thinking?

Should have it soon once 10.10.3 gets to Public Beta.

Walter,

I migrated a 27Gb library without problems.  (Slow though and once complete it goes on to do lots of ‘stuff’, so high cpu usage for a while longer).

I would suggest that you first open your library in iPhoto, which I believe will do some ‘updating’ then open in Photos, which will do its own updating.

I can confirm that I can open the library with Aperture again, after having ‘updated’ it to Photos.

My thoughts :

This is a ‘fun’ photos app, like iPhoto.  It’s a marked improvement on iPhoto in some ways.  The big thing is iCloud integration, which will be nice for iPhone photographers and jpeg photographers (is that an oxymoron?).

This is a BIG RED FLAG for anyone using any of Apple’s professional software.  For example, FCP-X.  What this says is that Apple will drop you at any time if they no longer have a use for your market.  I don’t believe Apple have any understanding of exactly how much time (money) professionals have to invest in using any given toolset.  If I used any of those other apps, then this morning I would be looking at what’s involved in moving away from all of Apple’s ‘Pro’ software (is that an oxymoron?).

The reason that it’s a big red flag, is because Photos is simply not a professional app.  It is so far away, you can’t even consider it.  I installed it and then spent about an hour looking through it, because after an hour you’ve totally exhausted the discovery of the app.  There’s nothing left to find.

I hold a flickering candle of hope, that the considerable amount of imaging tools that Apple have built into the MacOS in the last couple of years, combined with an open plug-in architecture in Photos might, just might, mean that it could be brought back up to pro-level … but I’m not holding my breath.

Personally, I shall continue to use Aperture 3.x because it works well and will do so with Yosemite.  I will submit bug reports when something breaks.  Once Yosemite is replaced, it becomes a lottery.  It may continue to work well going forward and it may not.  Certainly, now is not the time to switch to anything else in my view, because on the upside, thanks to Adobe’s shenanigans and to the recent developments in the core imaging tools in MacOS, photo management is a space where things are likely to be happening.  Well … let’s hope so.

Adobe use the ‘acquire and kill’ tactic to reduce competition.  They brought out Photoshop in 1989 (I have a copy of 1.0) and they still sell it today.  It’s their bread and butter.

They didn’t kill flash, probably because they thought it was going to give them a monopoly on web creation software.  There was considerable belief a number of years ago, that the web would be running on flash.  If only it hadn’t turned out to have as many holes in it as a swiss-cheese.

It’s not clear to me. Can aperture and photos co-exist on a Yosemite Mac? If you choose not to use cloud syncing, can you choose to edit with photos in its library and at another time choose to edit an aperture library with aperture? If this is possible I assume you would have to open each library separately.

In other words, once you move to the photos app, would that BUST APERTURE? Or would aperture work until a new OS Doesn’t let it work?

It’s not clear to me. Can aperture and photos co-exist on a Yosemite Mac? If you choose not to use cloud syncing, can you choose to edit with photos in its library and at another time choose to edit an aperture library with aperture? If this is possible I assume you would have to open each library separately.

In other words, once you move to the photos app, would that BUST APERTURE? Or would aperture work until a new OS Doesn’t let it work?

I’ve had a look at Photos, as a long time Aperture user, and frankly it’s a step back for me, but a step forward for an iPhoto user. 

Clearly Aperture is very dead, and we won’t get back to the sophistication of Aperture any time soon - no plug-in is going to provide the clever tagging, ranking and sorting, or keywords (I believe), nor the integrated range of adjustments, soon.

I now face the facts that for a pro-user I have to leave Apple and consider Lightroom, I’m not going to wait for Photo to slowly morph into something stronger. 

It’s a sad day, I like Aperture, but I’ll get used to something new.

And also much like the email server MSexChange from Microsoft, this site has become PhotoSexPert, which is kinda funny.

My opinion is also that Photos is an upgrade to iPhoto and a (big) downgrade to Aperture. No stars ratings - what were they thinking? No folders/smart folders? Even if you shoot iPhone only for years, you probably have at least 30 projects/folders. Now with photos, every project is displayed as a thumbnail in a window and you have to scroll… No list, no putting into folders. 

I like the fast paced edit workflow. Just imagine if Apple just added this into Aperture along with iCloud support (the current one is rubbish).

I’ve noticed a lot of problems with my library on Yosemite and the very tough choice for me is - downgrade to Mavericks or switch to Lightroom. Sticking up with Aperture is just delaying the inevitable. 

I’ve just checked Capture one, which many people are suggesting. Maybe it has better RAW engine and a lot more features, but is not as intuitive as Aperture. There’s no freakin’ way to compare before and after shot?! You have to manually create a new version from original and THEN compare it with the adjusted image. Not to mention the lack of gestures for browsing photos and increasing brush size. 

I’ve also tried DXO and the story is almost similar (apart from the exist of the before-after option woohoo!). Next up is Lightroom. I hate Adobe products for their lack of user-friendliness. If there’s no one around to show you some trick, you have to spend hours watching youtube videos. For Aperture I think I’ve watched only the quick start videos on Apple’s site… Photoshop is great, I use it for work (prepress design) almost every day. But I still hate it.. Took me years and counting to learn some kinda basic stuff (and I’m a very techy person, a software must be very complex in order to be a problem for me).

I can’t say thank you enough to all of you ‘beta’ photogs. While I will not download the beta, I am following this dialog. A few questions and some observations from other sites. 

Photos creates another library alongside the Aperture library….if this is the case then the size of the Photos library is the same as Aperture’s and will take up the additional disk space on your computer.  Working with a MacBook Air with only 250gb is a problem. My referenced Aperture library is about 60gb. I don’t have that additional space on my HD.  All of my originals are offline and take up 270gb. 

Is it true that when you migrate your library, referenced or managed;  you can define the location to the same folder as the originals and reference the same files?  If so does this mean that the files are not replicated and do not increase the disk usage?

Are changes to raw Photos files permanent or non destructive?

Can changes be ‘rolled back’ individually?

At this time I understand the frustration that I am hearing here, but I see that I still lose nothing by continuing with Aperture and wait to see the final release of Photos before I make a commitment to another company. 

Thanks Walter for that analysis. FCP X does the same thing with hard links.

Seems the easiest way to tell how much extra space Photos is using with an Aperture library is to monitor the entire hard disk size before and after a migration to see the difference.

Walter, great evaluation. Have you modified a ‘modified aperture file’ in Photos and checked if the modification is reversible? Or nondestructionable  Are you able to retrieve the original raw file?

Has anyone figured out how to use the Favourites button? It’s easy enough to click and make something favourite, but I can’t see any way to filter on that, like you can with Flags in Aperture.

Having looked at the situation, I am deeply pissed off. Migrating to Lightroom loses your Aperture adjustments, but gives you a new professional platform. Staying with Photos loses useful tools like Flags and Colours and filtered views, which are essential.

So Apple has pitched Aperture users into a black hole of pain, the first time Apple have shafted me so badly. I want a pro tool, but losing all the adjustments is just so bad.

I am considering keeping Aperture for as long as it remains usable, but maybe using Lightroom going forward for new images, and not migrate unless I really have to. Perhaps even then I would use Photos for the legacy portion of the library so as not to lose adjustments, but that loses me my Flagged selections.

Which ever way you go, Apple have dropped Pro users onto a bed of nails. I would resort to expletives but this is a nice forum so I’ll stop.

Bill.

Could someone explain to me why they are convinced that the new Photos app, because it is missing certain specific features in the first publically discussed Developer Beta that it will NEVER have those features or that Apple is intentionally withhoding those features just to be spiteful?

Apple has been very busy behind the scenes re-writing a completely new paradigm … they aren’t taking shortcuts. They are not simly going to copy and paste old tired code into this new vehicle. There are way too many apps that already offer that … bloated, excessive, resource hogging code that sometimes isn’t worth the storage space it consumes when it comes to measuring it’s worth.

Does Aperture 3.6 have more or less features, functions and capabilities than did 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 …. or 2.0 or 1.0?

Stop and think about it. Didn’t Apple recently add the ability to more easily add color labels and tags (keywords) at the OS level? Why, after all this time of not only Aperture but iPhoto as well, have star ratings …. the Photos app doesn’t have it in the first beta offered … so that is proof positive it will NEVER have it?

This all reminds me of kids peeking in their mother’s oven while a cake is baking and they are convinced it’s never going to be any good because she tried a new recipe … show a little patience and wait until you can actually taste the cake before you convince yourself it’s not fit for consumption.