Those of you who are photography enthusiasts and Mac users, will no doubt have seen the reports that Apple has stopped development of it's pro photography application 'Aperture'. This has left me with a dilemma: do I hang on to see what will come along to replace it, or jump ship to something else? The problem I have with waiting for the 'Photos' app Apple have announced is two-fold: there's no guarantee that this new app will have the same level of sophistication as Aperture does now - just look at the furore over Final Cut Pro when the new version was released; and 'Photos' will only run under the new version of Mac OS X Yosemite. Sadly my old Mac won't run anything higher than 'Lion' so until I upgrade, that's a non-starter. (Upgrade plans are afoot though!)
So, after much research and procrastination, I've decided to go the mainstream route and buy Adobe's Lightroom. This has a number of advantages as I see it; it's the industry standard, there are millions of plugins and presets, and with the purchase model Adobe uses, I get the latest version of Photoshop thrown in too. I did have a bit of trouble activating the software though - and it took some operating system file tweaks to resolve. This was entirely my own fault though, as I'd previously attempted to err, 'extend' the free trial period...
I'm now in the half-way house phase, I've got both Aperture and Lightroom installed and I've begun the process of migrating my photo library between the two. Whilst there are 20,000 photos to move, this looks like it'll give me the chance to weed out unwanted pictures and the many many (many) replicated images.
If anyone is going through the same process, I'm happy to offer help based on my experience so far.
Thanks for the continued support!
