Apple's "Photos" Beta

[Mike Farley]

Apple has just released a beta version of its new Photos application, which will replace both iPhoto and Aperture later this year. It is geared towards the consumer end of the market, which will leave former Aperture users looking elsewhere for more advanced features.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/20 ... app-photos

[davidb]

which will leave former Aperture users looking elsewhere for more advanced features

I had moved over to LightRoom long before Apple's announcement but it would be interesting to check it out once it does arrive. Though I doubt that I'll be moving back to Apple - they have a tendency to introduce software, support it for a few year and then cancel all development and subsequently drop it from their portfolio.

[davidc]

That's surprising to hear, which software have they done that with?

All I really use is iTunes which according to wikipedia is a venerable 14 years old now! I think they shot themselves in the foot by nixing Aperture without a replacement already at market though (Aperture was 9 years old when it was canned).

[Mike Farley]

That's surprising to hear, which software have they done that with?

All I really use is iTunes which according to wikipedia is a venerable 14 years old now! I think they shot themselves in the foot by nixing Aperture without a replacement already at market though (Aperture was 9 years old when it was canned).

Apple makes a lot of money from iTunes and takes 30% commission from each transaction, While people are buying, Apple will not can it. Aperture, although a paid for application, would never have generated a significant amount of revenue, especially as it was only ever available for OS X. Possibly it might have been different had there been a Windows version, but that would not necessarily have guaranteed its future. Safari on Windows did not last long, especially after Apple encountered a number of security issues.

[davidc]

That's not quite what I was meaning, though nor is what you say surprising. Products not being continued when their profitability drops is no surprise at all and apple are far from alone in dropping poor performing products. What surprised me was David's observation that Apple have canned a number of products in the short term and - not really being au fait with Apple as a whole, I just like their phones! - so I'm curious what they've been up to! A 9 year run for a piece of software is pretty good really!

[davidb]

That's surprising to hear, which software have they done that with?

I can't remember all of Apple's dumping history but one instance I can -

Apple introduced a product a number of years ago amongst which was an email product with a unique address which is where I got my ".mac.com" address. They charged £69 pa for this. The Mac.Com product was eventually dropped and me.com was introduced (for free) but the mac.com address run alongside the me.com one.

Again, a few years ago, Apple dropped me.com (it had never been a particularly popular suite and had a number of problems associated with it) and introduced iCloud.

So I now have three Apple address's - david.a.beard@mac.com, ...@me.com and ...icloud.com although I don't use me.com and try to avoid using iCloud.com. I feel the .mac.com address says more about me than the others - I am a Mac user and proud of it; I just don't have the one I really want (lack of resources)

I suppose Apple is right to dump programs that it no longer supports. Aperture was always playing catchup with LightRoom.

[Mike Farley]

A 9 year run for a piece of software is pretty good really!

I hope Adobe does not follow suit with Lightroom. Development started in 2003 and the first of four public betas was released in 2006, with the launch of the official product coming a year later in 2007. Along with many others, I have a lot invested in the application and withdrawal of support would be a major blow. I guess that there are a lot of Aperture users feeling much the same way at the moment, although Adobe has provided a facility to migrate images from Aperture into Lightroom.

[davidb]

withdrawal of support would be a major blow

Mike, I don't know about you but my version of LR is the cloud version (part of the CC suite). If Adobe were to discontinue it I would be screwed. Others may be lucky if they had bought the product as a stand alone program but I signed up for the Creative Cloud version and I wouldn't be best pleased if something should happen to it!!

Aperture is/was a nice program to manage your assets but it isn't/wasn't as versatile as LightRoom when it came to making changes to images.

[Mike Farley]

David

I strongly suspect that applications based around Adobe Camera Raw (Lightroom and Photoshop Cx/Elements) have the lion's share of the market. When I go to other camera clubs to do one of my Lightroom based talks, I always ask what people are using and these are far and away the most popular options. The other day I saw an interview featuring Scott Kelby and he reckoned Adobe now has 3.5m Creative Cloud subscribers, which is impressive especially given the horlicks they initially made of going to the subscription model. Kelby and others are making very good livings from providing tuition in Adobe's products, so it is fair to assume that Adobe is doing at least as well. Apple obviously was not succeeding with Aperture, which was not helped by it being confined to the Mac platform, so decided to pull the plug rather than keep faith with its customers. That occurred even though the company could easily have afforded the additional investment given its gargantuan profits. With its substantial market penetration, I cannot see Adobe withdrawing and competitors will be scrabbling for the left overscraps on the table.

Interesting comment about Aperture's image manipulation capabilities. No doubt that is another factor in its demise.

[davidb]

Apple has finally released "Photos".

I've had a quick look. I've imported a couple of "Bluebell" events (I'm a Lightroom user now and don't really want to revert to Apple's offering).

The first thing which annoy's me is that the import is placed into a "folder" named the date of the shoot; It doesn't seem possible to rename the folder to something more appropriate (in the case of the two events I sampled I can't change the name from "10 Aug 2005" to "001 BLUEBELL RAILWAY" and "26 Oct 2007" to "019 BLUEBELL RAILWAY"

Image edit tools are limited (Rotate, Crop (with straightening), Filters (8), Adjust *Light, Colour, Black & White) and healing (remove unwanted elements by cloning) and far inferior to Lightrooms.

You can create projects like calendars, books, etc. The book I started looked a lot like the templates available in iPhoto and Aperture and seem just as expensive.

I might use Photos to create books (I like the previous books purchased from the Apple software) but for asset management and processing I'll stick with Lightroom for medium term. I'll wait and see how Apple develop Photos.