So the answer is now clear Aperture is a dying product. Apple, have officially said that it will no longer develop it further. This means I’ve waited in vain for the improvements that Lightroom users have. Like lens profiles for one. Aperture is no longer the cool kid on the block.
I felt let down in a big way. When I think that I have paid good money for a professional software and some plug-ins that will no longer be improved. No one knows what the replacement will actually be like. Just my guess ,but knowing Apple it will be a consumer level product not geared to the enthusiast.Thanks Tim!
However I do have Lightroom. It came along with the package when I subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud. I use it too, well not all of it just the printer module, which I find very easy to use since I took a course when I purchased my Epson printer. It’s just the rest of it that I’ve never quite got the hang of. Aperture was so much better at that. You just import and they are stored in some magic Apple way. Some people see this as a weak point. I’m not interested in fiddling around with the pictures I import when they a quite happy sitting in whatever form they do in the picture package. They are there in Aperture waiting for me.
Lightroom is another kettle of fish that I haven’t got my head around its storage methods as yet. However now it seems I’m going to have to start to try and understand, and work at it, (Maybe Adobe will too ;0) if I want a picture editor that is updated on a regular basis. Hopefully someone maybe even Apple will produce a plug-in that will enable a painless transfer form Aperture to Lightroom. I’ll use both,but mainly Lightroom from today even though the storage system is no way as elegant as Apples, and the ability to share is very clunky I’ll get used to it I’m sure.Or maybe Adobe will fix it?
So let the challenge commence … Or I could try this :0)
http://www.lynda.com/articles/one-library-shared-aperture-lightroom
Finally Have any of you readers jumped ship before this ? What were your biggest challenges? Let me know in the comments .
Thanks for stopping by…David.
My Photographic World 
I can’t speak to switching from Aperture to Lightroom but I can say that LR is an excellent piece of software. You can use it to be as simple or complex as you want it to be, adjust the white and black point as you see fit and be done with it or use the brush tool to dodge and burn, curves to make global adjustments, fiddle with HSL to adjust colors (or in the case of B&W, use it as a B&W filter that you would have used with film) etc… It really doesn’t have that steep of a learning curve if you’ve done your own printing.
As far as organizing your images, I use keywords and ratings and it works for me, not sure what Aperture does differently, but it works for me. I wouldn’t hold my breath about Apple and Adobe creating an import tool that saves your edits tough.
Thanks for the comment Ed,
I think I know how I’m going to tackle it. Whats I have in Aperture will now stay in Aperture until the new SW arrives I have back-ups so thats not a big problem.Anything I shoot from today will go into LR. I hear what you are saying about Apple and Adobe. Maybe a 3rd party will come up with a solution that doesn’t require a PhD to migrate.:0)
I moved to Lightroom a couple of years ago when the price dropped to about £90 and then, like you I subscribed to the adobe creative cloud package (the photographers cut down version in my case). My experience has been that I find Lightroom easier to use than Aperture – I like the separation of the library module from the develop module, but it’s all really what you get used to I guess. I’m sure you will have no problem once you’ve tried it for a bit.
O dear. I waited long and wouldn’t have wanted to change…
I took the plunge when the price of lightroom dropped a couple of years ago. I have a great resistance against relearning software, but am on the whole pretty pleased with the switch. LR is pretty competent.