14 DAY TRIAL // In a few months from now, Apple plans to ship a new photography app dubbed Photos that replaces iPhoto and Aperture with a combination of features meant to address the needs of amateurs and professionals alike.
The latest tidbit regarding Photos’ upcoming features comes straight from Apple’s mouth. Well, not exactly straight from their mouth, but from a conversation Apple had with Ars Technica, which reports that an Apple representative mentioned plans for pro-level features like image search, editing, effects, and third-party extensibility.
That last-mentioned perk is enough to get the photography community excited about transitioning their Aperture projects over to Photos.
While it may not be enough to fulfill their day-to-day editing, Photos will be able to employ features from third-party apps and / or plugins, essentially growing the application into something new altogether. Apple is basically providing a foundation which third-party solution vendors will build upon, taking Photos to new heights.
Because Apple likely grew tired of not being able to meet the demands of creatives everywhere and because photography is becoming more and more accessible thanks to apps like Pixelmator (at much more attractive prices), the Cupertino giant has announced plans to stop developing Aperture.
“With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X,” the company said last week.
In all fairness, Apple’s decision to stop development of Aperture could be the right one. The software, meant to rival solutions like Adobe’s Photoshop and Core’s AfterShot Pro, never quite took off as a one-stop-shop for image editing. Users found it to be lackluster in some areas, and therefore still had to employ other companies’ solutions.
Not surprisingly, when the Mac maker informed the world of its plans, Adobe and Corel immediately announced their full commitment to get creatives up and running with their respective solutions, making the transition from Aperture over to Lightroom and AfterShot as smooth as possible.
Apple is still expected to maintain Aperture with bug fixes and tweaks until the OS X Photos app is complete. Until then, customers can continue to download Aperture from the Mac App Store. Unlike with Final Cut Pro, however, Apple doesn’t offer a trial version download for this professional-grade application.