Exporting complete Aperture library to Affinity

[Alain de HK]

Hi, I am quite keen to shift from Aperture to Affinity as I am not sure about how Apple is going to support Aperture in the future. I would like to know how easy it is to export a complete library from Aperture into Affinity, and how the library architecture and the filing structure of all the assets works within Affinity ? I have around 75,000 pictures most of them retouched split into 500 projects. Thanks a lot in advance. 

 

 

 

[MEB]

Hi Alain de HK,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Affinity Photo is not a DAM (Digital Asset Management) software like Aperture or Lightroom. It's a RAW converter/developer and Photo Editor. It 's not able to manage libraries of photos, only edit them individually.

It's comparable to Camera RAW/Photoshop.

[ldexterldesign]

BUMP

 

https://twitter.com/ldexterldesign/status/690966573629231104

 

Hope this is useful

 

Regards

[jedorme]

As a Mac user who switched to Aperture after becoming frustrated with the non-intuitive operation of LR, I now use Aperture for my file organization & storage but Affinity Photo for all of my editing.  Aperture has a feature that allows you to select Affinity Photo as an external editor by going to Preferences & selecting the Export tab; under that you press the Choose button to select the External Photo Editor & pick Affinity Photo.  For the External File Format you can select Tiff (8 or 16 bits as you prefer).

 

Then when you want to edit an image from those stored in Aperture, you right-click on the image & select Edit with Affinity Photo App.  Affinity Photo will start with the image loaded & ready to be edited.  Then to return the edited image to Aperture for storage, select File > Save - a dialog will appear saying the image contains non-pixel elements - Select Save Flattened to flatten the image before sending it to Aperture.  That's it; the edited image will appear in Aperture alongside the original.

 

Hopefully Affinity will soon have its own storage & organization of images so it will no longer be necessary to involve Aperture in this DAM function.  But for now at least, I find this to be a very easy & straightforward way to use Aperture with Photo.

[DiederikvdS]

Is there anyone out there that can help?

I am still desparately lokking for an easy way of managing my photos now that Aperture is no longer supported. I purchased Affinity to enjoy the more advance editing possibilities, but it does not replace the ease of use of Aperture. Also, Apple's Photo app does not help at all as a photo manager as that can't work with RAW files (NEF in my case). I am holding off upgrading to anything passed MacOS 10.14 now because after that my Aperture libraries will be totally useless I'm told. I know that Affinity has not featured a management system yet (still hoping for that) but has anyone a workable idea of moving thousands of photos from many Aperture Libraries to a sensible way of finding them back later again? I know I can extract the master folder from the libraries and store them separately. I will loose any sorting to subject I've done within Aperture as the Aperture library master simply stores by date (it is something I guess). But this is still a massive time consuming operation. Perhaps there is some software out there that can help? I would would be most keen to learn about anything here.

Many thanks for any helpful thoughts in advance.

Diederik

Amsterdam

[thomaso]

58 minutes ago, DiederikvdS said:

I am still desparately lokking for an easy way of managing my photos

It seems you are looking for a DAM (Digital Asset Manager). In the Affinity forum exist already various related threads with lots of aspects and discussed alternatives (some incl. RAW developer, some are managers only). For instance...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DAM+in+Affinity+site%3Aforum.affinity.serif.com&t=ffab&ia=web

 

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, DiederikvdS said:

I am still desparately lokking for an easy way of managing my photos now that Aperture is no longer supported.

One Mac software that probably might come close to the abandoned Aperture philosophy is RAWPower, which BTW is coded by a former Apple Aperture developer. - You can give that a try out and see if it does what you need.

[user_0815]

Hi Diederik, I have used Aperture until it was officially discontinued. It was such a great piece of software and I still miss it. Afaik the most-switched alternatives are Capture One Pro and Lightroom. I am using Capture One as Catalog-/Session Manager because it is the closest in terms of usability for my way of working. Both have a kind of Aperture-Importer that retains the catalog structure and some of the edits. But none will re-create all the edits that you have made in Aperture. That's why I recommend to export all your files as jpeg or tifs to save your final edits and avoid re-editing.

Additionally I think Apple's Fotos App does do RAW files as MacOS can handle almost any RAW file natively. So the easiest route would be to convert to the Fotos app if you are ok with its UI and features. It might also do the best job of keeping the edits from Aperture. From the Fotos app you can do "Edit in Affinity Photo" and stay within the catalog.

Since Aperture, I have transitioned from Catalog management to a Session based approach. This gives me the benefit of having access to all files via Finder. Also, I do a lot more editing in Affinity Photo and less in Capture one. Unless I have batch-edits, I usually export my "Selects" as tiffs straight away and do all the edits in Affinity Photo.

[DiederikvdS]

Many thanks to all. I'll study all options. My goal is to stay away from cloud based solutions (using somebody else's servers to make changes to my own files is an environmental crime in my view, and also, I really am not interested in having all my devices just as temporary looking glasses to my property residing in some other country) and as long as I can I also avoid subscription based software. I understand the drive for software developers, but my volume of handling never ever justifies the continuous drip from my assets. I would have welcomed modular apps so I can choose just the functionality I need and leave it at that, but it's the world we live in apparently.

Sorry of my rant. I think differently still. Brings out an opinion once in a while.

Trying to move forward with your suppportive suggestions. Again many thanks!

[v_kyr]

There are also some opensource apps, which can fulfill the one or other job quite well here, or when used together, just take also a look at ...

• digiKam
• Darktable
• RawTherapee

[rhmb]

Apple Photos may or may not be what you are looking for but it does handle raw quite well. Also, it is not required to use the cloud with Apple Photos, you can store all your work on your computer. Presumably you already own Affinity. Affinity plus Apple Photos covers a fairly broad spectrum, although some users have experienced some persistent bugs with the Affinity extensions. 

Regardless of what direction you decide to go, my one piece of advice is similar to that given above by user_0815. Export and save good quality jpgs or tiffs of all your edits and keep them somewhere safe, before migrating your library to another app. Save your originals too. 

I understand your concerns about subscription based software. That said, unless you go with one of the open source solutions, Apple Photos (free for Mac owners) or something like Adobe Bridge (also free, but it is only a DAM), there are inevitably upgrade costs from time to time.