14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has confirmed plans to end development of Aperture, the company’s longstanding professional photo editing application exclusive to the Mac. Competitors like Adobe and Corel are already jumping in to help photographers transition their projects over to Photoshop and AfterShot Pro.
The Cupertino giant gave the following statement to the media, confirming the impending demise of the photography software used exclusively by Mac customers.
“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.”
Photos for OS X is pictured above (courtesy of TechCrunch). This will be the native photo editing solution for Mac users starting next year.
Adobe, a competitor on the photography front, is actually working with Apple to help customers migrate their work over to Lightroom in a bid to allow everyone to continue working on their projects with the best tools.
The Flash makers said in a statement that they're "doubling down" on investments in Photoshop Lightroom and the Creative Cloud Photography plan, telling customers to expect "a rich roadmap of rapid innovation" in the near future. Both desktop and web users will have a great deal of new features to toy with.
“We also continue to invest actively on the iOS and OSX platforms, and are committed to helping interested iPhoto and Aperture customers migrate to our rich solution across desktop, device and web workflows,” said Adobe.
Corel is also taking steps to capitalize on Aperture’s demise. However, unlike Adobe, Corel doesn’t have Apple’s full commitment to turn AfterShot Pro 2 into a full-fledged alternative to Aperture. Instead, the company is taking matters into its own hands.
A spokesperson for the company reached out to us earlier today to inform that Corel AfterShot Pro 2 is ready to meet the requirements of creatives who are moving away from Aperture as a result of Apple's discontinuation.
"Launched last month, the new AfterShot Pro 2 offers competitive upgrade pricing ($59) to Aperture users. We're getting ready for Yosemite now and unlike Lightroom, AfterShot Pro already supports use of a more Aperture-like file system to manage your photos,” the company tells Softpedia.
Corel said they will be looking for more ways to enable a smooth transition for Aperture users. We're also told that AfterShot for Mac will be getting some exciting new features really soon.