Apple Dumps Aperture, iPhoto in Favor of Photos App
Apple is streamlining its photography-software options. The company said today (June 27) that it will stop development of its professional photo-editing OS X title Aperture in favor of the newly announced Photos software, which will be available for both OS X and iOS 8. You won't get updates or bug fixes beyond the current version of Aperture.
According to The Loop, the Photos app will also take over iPhoto, Apple's existing consumer-level photo editor, to give users a more seamless experience across devices. Photos is expected to launch with iOS 8 and on OS X early next year. It will store all the pictures you've taken into iCloud so you can retrieve them wherever you are.
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Photos also offers simple organization and editing tools, such as cropping, filters, brightness and contrast controls. It offers composition and adjustment features, automatically straightening horizons and modifying overall light in a picture with one tool. You can also use sliders to brighten your image or edit the level of saturation.
Those who want more granular control over each setting will appreciate being able to fix specific details such as exposure, highlights and shadows.
Pro photographers may find Photos lacking, since the new software doesn't offer the side-by-side comparison tool, flagging and color-label-sorting features that Aperture does. You'll be able to move your existing Aperture library to Photos for OS X when it ships, so you won't lose all your work.
According to AppleInsider, Apple said it is working with Adobe to help users migrate to the latter's Lightroom app for Mac, which should provide a good alternative.
Apple also told TechCrunch that it will make Aperture compatible with OS X Yosemite, but will not provide further support for the application after that. Aperture users could find compatibility issues when trying to edit on operating systems beyond Yosemite, and won't get help from Apple's team when they run into bugs on the program.
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