A Lament for Aperture

https://ikennd.ac/blog/2026/01/old-man-yells-at-modern-software-design/

by firloop • 6 months ago

243 55 6 months ago

oger• 6 months ago

Aperture is dearly missed even today. And to make matters worse: you cannot even import Aperture libraries into Photos any more. Essentially leaving you with picking out the raw images from the package. And don’t get me started on excellent support for tethered shooting in a studio setting. And I could go on and on. The only thing I really missed in Aperture was first level support for Nik tools which are cool for their adaptive and non destructive masks.

Nextgrid5• 6 months ago

I'm not a photographer so pardon my ignorance: is there any reason these old tools can't be used nowadays? Like film photography tools haven't fundamentally changed since the heyday of film, why can't digital tools be treated the same?

Maybe there is a niche business rescuing old machines & software and offering them as a packaged tool - offline, air-gapped, with modern bridges where necessary (a Rpi/etc that exposes a modern & secure fileshare on one side, and a legacy fileshare on the machine side, doing file format conversions if necessary).

Since the market for modern tools (as opposed to Liquid (gl)ass-infused ad delivery machines) no longer exists, it seems like using and taking care of legacy tools is the best we're got.

dennisnghouse• 6 months ago

New cameras produce raw files that are not backwards compatible with older raw file formats. These raw files are key to the highest quality and flexibility in editing.

gyomu• 6 months ago

any reason these old tools can't be used nowadays

For Aperture specifically:

- it doesn’t run on newer machines. Sure there are workarounds (run it in a VM, use a dedicated old computer, …) but those are clunky and people want things to run smoothly within their current setups.

- it doesn’t support newer file formats (the insistence of many manufacturers to use proprietary RAW formats when there truly is no need to is its own rant-worthy rabbit hole…)

- even if people praise the UI and remember it fondly, there are a number of modern tools and conveniences one expects in photography software in 2025 that 2010 Aperture doesn’t have. Eg people care about things like AI denoising/upscaling now, support for HDR color profiles, etc.

it seems like using and taking care of legacy tools is the best we're got

I’d vote for supporting independent developers and open source software.

jwr2• 6 months ago

Aperture doesn't run on newer MacOS systems.

I keep and old Mac laptop with an old OS just to run Aperture so that I can access my archives.

abruzzi• 6 months ago

I still keep all my digital photos and film scans, except those photos that originate from a Leaf or Phase One digital back, in Aperture. (the raw format of those digital backs pretty much requires Capture One.) The machine does not visit the internet because it needs 10.14 to run and there haven't been security updates in a while.

Nextgrid5• 6 months ago

It was powered by some of the most impressive technology around at the time, but you’d never even know it because you were too busy getting shit done.

If you're busy getting shit done you will not have time to engage with ads. That became a problem once technology switched from being a tool to an advertising delivery vehicle.

trinix912• 6 months ago

Until you have to do extra work to get them out of your way, wait for them to end, scroll more down/up and so on. They're also one more thing making UIs less deterministic which IMO is a lost art.

dangus2• 6 months ago

I’m confused at how advertising is related to the subject at hand, since Apple does not offer a photo app with advertising.

Nextgrid5• 6 months ago

Technology has been increasingly pushing towards advertising and media consumption over productivity, and productivity features have been left to degrade or outright removed.

Apple may not offer a photo app with advertising but the photo apps it offers are clearly inferior with less information density and less powerful features, because there is no longer incentive to offer a powerful photography tool.

In fact since a lot of software "success" is measured with "engagement" (regardless of the presence of ads), making a productive tool isn't incentivized as it would reduce engagement if the tool allows one to complete their task faster.

geerlingguy• 6 months ago

I still mourn the loss of Aperture. IMO the best pro software Apple ever made. Lightroom was always a distant second for RAW photo workflows, and Photos is still a far cry.

SanjayMehta3• 6 months ago

I went from Aperture to LR 5 to DXO and Affinity. But nothing beats Aperture.

tempodox• 6 months ago

I miss Aperture dearly, too. It is a monument of a time when Apple still could do Software, instead of just Services that feel restrictive and patronizing. I cannot get myself to use that shitty Photos app and am still constantly on the lookout for something to recreate the Aperture of old.

JKCalhoun3• 6 months ago

Many of the "old-timers" on the Photos team (when I was on that team for a couple of years) also missed Aperture. Very much so.

Many kept Aperture running on a device at home—still used it for their own workflows (many passionate photographers on that team—surprise!). And in fact when it came time to discuss future Photos features there was always a contingent pushing to add back features that were lost in the transition away from Aperture.

While I was there, for example, they pushed (and got) Curves added to the editing pane. Levels had always been there but the purists missed the more laser-focused "curve" adjustments.

They wanted, did not get, the ability to "brush" a setting (the way you might dodge/burn an area of the image).

These days, who knows. Like me, perhaps the old guard have moved on…

(To clarify though, I was never the "old guard" with regard to the Photos team—had never worked on Aperture.)

kccqzy• 6 months ago

Around the time Aperture became dead, I was looking for a photo editing app on the iPhone; three of my non-negotiable requirements: non-destructive adjustments, curves, and the ability to brush a mask for an adjustment. I found Snapseed which fulfilled these requirements. But of course, why did I get the idea for these requirements of mine? Aperture of course. Once you got used to the features of Aperture, you really don’t want to use a lesser app like Photos.

ghostly_s• 6 months ago

And in fact when it came time to discuss future Photos features there was always a contingent pushing to add back features that were lost in the transition away from Aperture.

Apple actually publicly promised they would be doing this when they killed it. But not much ever came of it.

ericwood• 6 months ago

It is so disappointing; I started getting into photography over the past few years, shooting rolls of film here and there and need some basic library management tools to track my shots and add EXIF data for film stock, camera, etc. Photos.app kind of does what I need, but there's baffling decisions like all photo data being uneditable, even through APIs. You can edit EXIF data on the original image but the app's internal database is completely immutable. I have a handful of photos with inconsistent metadata I'd love to fix and the only option appears to be removing them from the library and re-adding them.

I really don't need many features! I'm not a pro and while I wouldn't mind shelling out a one-time fee for good software I'm not paying a subscription for cloud storage I'm not going to use. The OSS options here are not awesome, either.

hahn-kev• 6 months ago

Someone should vibe code a new version of Aperture

grey-area• 6 months ago

Please do go ahead and try it. Should just take an afternoon, right?

irl_zebra• 6 months ago

This sounds like a great half-day project. Just use Gas Town and create a team of product managers, senior and junior developers, designers, and architects and have them get on it. (I recommend keeping Opus as the senior, and Sonnet as the juniors). Once you do this, you can release it and you'll be a (very financially successful) hero!

wiseowise• 6 months ago

And here I thought it’ll be about Portal.

petecooper• 6 months ago

Nitro comes close:

https://www.gentlemencoders.com/nitro-for-macos/

____________g• 6 months ago

Just wanted to add that Nitro was built by Nik Bhatt, who was the Senior Director of Engineering at Apple leading the Aperture and Core Image teams. I believe he built Nitro specifically to fill the vacuum Apple left behind. Not sure how close it gets to the OG.

JKCalhoun3• 6 months ago

Yeah, I was on the Photos team when Nik Bhatt left Apple to start this project/company. So I suppose you clearly have Aperture DNA there…

softinio2• 6 months ago

shame I had not heard of this till today.

matwood2• 6 months ago

Also loved Aperture and also a shame this is the first time I've heard of this tool.

macshome• 6 months ago

I’m a big fan of their Raw Power app as well that predated Nitro.

jjtheblunt• 6 months ago

thanks for recommending that: i had not found it and also lament Aperture's retirement for years. Subscribed monthly to Nitro just now...looks great

shevy-java• 6 months ago

There is sort of a correlation here:

AI for some reason, and amongst the complaining in the comments you’ll invariably find it: “I miss Aperture.”

and:

Apple released macOS Tahoe, which has been pretty constantly raked over the coals for poor design and broken interactions from the day it was released (and even before, if we’re honest).

Of course this may not indicate causation, but I believe that the AI hype has also in part led to a decline in quality overall. Not necessarily everywhere, but there is almost definitely some influence that degraded things. I see this all the time on youtube videos or Google search. In fact, I recently also switched to other search engines; they have issues too, but Google search consistently yields worse results nowadays, even when the search string used excludes AI and other things. The quality declined overall. (And on youtube you can not even really search for much at all, Google tends to show some unrelated crap after some time. They are deliberately trying to waste time of humans.)

Nextgrid5• 6 months ago

The decline has started before LLMs became a thing.

jwr2• 6 months ago

Sigh. After Apple suddenly discontinued Aperture, which left users like me with huge complex photo archives hanging, I will never trust any professional software tool from Apple again. It is a disaster that I still haven't fully recovered from.

I've learned my lesson — all my archives will now be maintained by me, in file structures, with metadata in text files.

And yes, I agree with the article, Aperture was a really good piece of software, with many design decisions that seemed controversial, but were driven by many hours spent with professional photographers, looking at their workflows and listening to them. The result was very good.

hoyhoy• 6 months ago

I've been having the same thought. Just move back to a file structure which is what I was doing from 1995 until 2007 before migrating to iPhoto.

The metadata in Apple Photos doesn't fully sync to iOS over a cable now. Did Apple intentionally make offline sync not work to force everyone on to iCloud? Also, even the local search inside of Apple Photos doesn't work correctly either. I thought it was hilarious when they tried add "AI" to this shitshow. Apple literally can't even make a local tag search.

Isn't it possible to put all the metadata in EXIF tags? People keep telling me to use Immich, but IDK.

alextsayun• 6 months ago

They will soon add Photomator app to Apple Creator Studio. They have bought Pixelmator team last year and since Pixelmator is already in this bundle, I think the next app will be Photomator, a pretty close replacement for Aperture.

JKCalhoun3• 6 months ago

I think you might be right. I've been using Pixelmator (and recently Pixelmator Pro) for years now. It's a great app and has the "paint an effect" (like blur, sharpen) that Aperture had. I suspect this app, now that Apple bought it, will be where we look for Aperture-like features going forward.

amir• 6 months ago

Neither provides a DAM though. Photomator's asset management features are basically what Photos provides, which is far inferior to Aperture's DAM features. Many who miss Aperture aren't just lamenting the editing tools, they miss library organisation features that Photos simply doesn't offer.

matwood2• 6 months ago

Exactly! There are plenty of photo editors that could replace Aperture (and LR if you'd like), but DAM always seems to be the missing piece.

I'm using Photos DAM after leaving LR which I was forced to when Aperture went away.

divan• 6 months ago

It's actually good. I use it as my main photo editing app, as it's does exactly what I need, does it good and fast. So my workflow is Photo Mechanic for culling, then importing RAWs into Apple Photos (not to the gallery, just as a separate folder/album) and then it gets picked up by Photomator automatically. It's not a perfect flow (Apple does some weird conversion from RAW in the background and it takes a lot of CPU time when importing a lot of photos), but it gives me pretty much all what I need (including face recognition, ML exposure/color, quick subject/background masking, HDR photos editing, etc).

spiritplumber• 6 months ago

Wish we could put Cave Johnson back in charge. That'd fix it!

bix6• 6 months ago

What are people using now? I’m so tired of LR and planning to make the switch to darktable.

Arubis• 6 months ago

Aperture’s death coincided with my life getting less excitingly photogenic. The combination was enough to break my habit of shooting pictures altogether.

My old well-curated and edited and tagged libraries are still on S3 backups. No conversion has been satisfactory.

monocultured• 6 months ago

I switched to Capture One a couple years ago and like it - used Lightroom Classic for many years before that, and think I've tried most DAMs over the years.

_0xdd• 6 months ago

Darktable. It has a hell of a learning curve, but it's one hell of a powerful raw editor with some really cool masking features. It has a reputation for being difficult to learn, but the newest release bundles a new tone mapper (AgX) that requires a whole lot less massaging than the old Filmic (and, to a lesser extent, the later Sigmoid mapper). I'm back to managing my photo libraries using plain old files and folders, and syncing them to my NAS using Syncthing. I couldn't be happier, and it doesn't cost me a dime.

needSomeCoffee• 6 months ago

Just a comment to the author. Very much appreciate how you go about explaining this, and your writing style. Thanks for taking the time. NSC...

...an ex-Arpeture user.

nicoburns• 6 months ago

I haven't used it in a decade, but when I last did need this kind of software IdImager's Photo Supreme came out top of my research.

The photo editing capabilities were relatively weak (but it would integrate nicely with the editing software of your choice), but the cataloging capabilities were fantastic, and it had a lot of flexibility about how the files were stored on disk (have it organise that for you or not) and the option to store the metadata it created directly in the metadata of photo files themselves where much of it could be read by other software.

https://www.idimager.com/

softinio2• 6 months ago

Aperture was the best. I miss it.

paradox460• 6 months ago

Even worse when you look at things like Shake. Apple owned compositing for at least half a decade, and then just gave up, leaving a void

orefalo• 6 months ago

I miss it too..

hshdhdhj4444• 6 months ago

I might be thinking of a different app (possibly iPhoto before Apple dramatically changed jt, but I don’t think so), but if it was Aperture, it was also excellent for photo organization.

A Lament for Aperture

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