10.10.3, oh how I will miss the Aperture application, Photos for OS X at this point isn’t going to be a good replacement for what Aperture used to do for me. Aperture was innovative and first on the scene with photo organization for professional photographers like myself, I’ve owned it and used it religiously since version 1, which each release the solid features were made better and better.
My heart dropped and hoped all at the same time last summer when I saw “Photos for OS X” demonstrated, I had hopes that it would allow me to use some more powerful features that are now available in Aperture and sync with my iPad, I couldn’t wait for that, hoping that it would be possible to edit photos while on the go.
Having only worked with “Photos for OS X” a short time, like the rest of the world really, some of the short comings are almost immediately obvious.
1. It’s hard to browse the photos and edit them at the same time. Aperture had a HUD that would allow edits to be applied without using the “Edit” button. The “Edit” button seems to be a hold over from iPhoto, separating the photographer from the photographs with an extra, unnecessary step, the photos are kept safe until you can manage all of the extra clicks needed to get access to perform an edit.
2. No HUD, the HUD was an amazingly useful “feature” in Aperture, allowing me to view photos full screen while applying edits. Photos doesn’t come even close to this feature, which requires that the “EDIT” bar available with pressing of the “Edit” button to stay visible the entire time I’m doing edits against the photographs.
3. Star ratings, a missing feature for anyone who wants to quickly sort down their photographs when only a heart isn’t going to do the job and you don’t have time to find the “tags” menu.
4. Ability to apply tag’s quickly is missing, I guess that Apple thinks my entire life should be organized by date and faces, never mind that I’m a landscape photographer as much as I am anything else.
5. Open in and plugins, I own a copy of HDR Efex and would really love to be able to edit my photographs in this tool but can’t until Apple in their wisdom allows plugins and “Open In” again.
6. Ability to copy and paste edits, as a professional photographer this is key, and a feature that I have become so used to using that it’s not one that I will do without on account that so many tools have them. Sure if you’re a sometimes photographer you can get away with applying edits to photographs one at a time, but with smart phones I don’t know a single person that is a “sometimes” photographer any more. Many people have more photographs on their phones than their grandparents and certainly great-grandparents had in their entire slide collection, the old way of showing and organizing photographs.
to be continued…