Adobe Releases Plugin to Help Aperture Users Transition to Lightroom

Earlier this year, Apple announced that it was ending development on Aperture in order to work on an upcoming Photos app for OS X that will replace both Aperture and iPhoto.

At the time, Adobe, the company behind popular photo editing software Lightroom, promised to make a tool to allow Aperture users to import their photos into Lightroom 5, and today Adobe released its Aperture Import Plugin for Lightroom 5.

The free plugin, which can be downloaded from Adobe's site, will make it simple for Aperture users to migrate their libraries into Lightroom, a task that takes quite a bit of time to do manually. It is available only for Mac users and requires Lightroom 5.6 or later.

lightroomplugin

Using the plugin, Aperture users can import the following data into Lightroom: Flags, Star Ratings, Keywords, GPS Data, Rejects, Hidden Files, Color Labels, Stacks, and Face Tags.

Color Labels, Stacks, and Face Tags are imported as Lightroom keywords, and because adjustments to photos made in Aperture can't be read into Lightroom, the tool will import both original images and copies of images with adjustments applied.

Former Aperture users who sign up for Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography Plan (priced at $9.99 per month) will receive a free three-month membership to photography site KelbyOne, which offers a number of tutorials on transitioning from Aperture to Lightroom and several Lightroom training videos.

The now-discontinued Aperture has long lagged behind competing software like Lightroom for Adobe, and as its last major version update came in October of 2013, it is no surprise that Apple has opted to abandon the software. Apple has offered a final update to Aperture to allow it to run on OS X Yosemite, but plans to stop development after that.

Though Aperture is no longer being updated, early screenshots of the OS X Photos app and information from Apple representatives suggests that some of Aperture's professional-grade features might make it into the upcoming Photos app.

Tag: Aperture

Top Rated Comments

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AllergyDoc

69 months ago

Yet, Apple continues to offer the purchase of Aperture with new Macs.

Rating: 6 Votes

lunarworks

69 months ago

Thanks, but no thanks, Adobe.

I'm sticking with Aperture until it actually stop working.

Rating: 5 Votes

0098386

69 months ago

Queue the angry, disproportionate responses from the top 10% of Aperture users.

I always thought that was "cue", because something is preparing and not lining up.

Rating: 3 Votes

kurosov

69 months ago

I used to use Aperture but the user interface was so gross and 90's and fcp 7-ish that I stopped. Adobe apps are not much better.

they really need to make a photo editing app that has the same interface as FCP X. The screens of the new Photos app looks like it, but I'm skeptical about how in-depth the controls are despite Apple saying it will satisfy former Aperture users

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Thats basically every Adobe program.

Anything other than the superficial differences in interface between aperture/fcpx would make no sense at all because they are for fundamentally different purposes.

If anything i'd say the new photos app UI is based on the aperture full screen UI, which I really liked and spent most of my time in. I find both light rooms UI and workflow to be far worse than aperture.

I'm still hoping for either the pixelmator folk to release an aperture replacement or for apple to buy them out and use the team to build some apps to compete with adobe's stranglehold on the market. Pixelmator still isn't up to photoshop levels of functionality but it's significantly faster and has a more mac native interface.

Why would anybody want to do that?

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Lightroom is a much better software but with a horrible interface.

Because as nice as new features are, workflow is far more important and Lightroom is a nightmare to work with. aperture 3 was perfect for the job years ago and hasn't lost any functionality so as long as it still works i'll be using it over lightroom.

Rating: 3 Votes

FasterQuieter

69 months ago

I was just writing a long reasoned response about how I wasn't angry with Apple, just dissapointed that adjustments to 1.5TB worth of photos may not be compatable with future software. And how I didn't like Lightroom. Then Safari crashed on my phone and I lost it all. Now I am hopping mad at Apple. Damn!

Rating: 3 Votes

Small White Car

69 months ago

a little too late Adobe...

In the 16 months between Apple announcing this and their ending support for Aperture Adobe came out with this in month number 4. How is that "too late?"

Rating: 3 Votes

britboyj

69 months ago

Adobe'd gotten too expensive for the casual user with its subscription plan. It's as financially ignominious as a cable company.

Math is hard for you I guess?

I pay $10 a month for Photoshop and Lightroom and have updates... Forever.

I used to pay $650 for an individual copy of Photoshop at the cheapest. That's more than 5 years of the subscription version, at which point, I'm actually getting constant updates (versus paying another $200-300 for the next CS update) and I get whole other program.

Rating: 2 Votes

netwalker

69 months ago

Once it was clear Apple would discontinue Aperture I gave Lightroom and Capture One another try. I simply can't stand Lightroom and prefer not to do business with Adobe.
Capture One on the other hand first didn't convince me but the latest 8.0 release is better and also offers a direct Aperture library import that works quiet well. Using the trial version of Capture One I started to notice all those things that Aperture didn't offer and am probably going to migrate soon.
Even if the the photo app can replace Aperture, I doubt it will offer the features we are now already missing.

Rating: 2 Votes

Jacquesvw

69 months ago

I gave Lightroom a try when the bad news about Aperture was announced, but I just cannot find my way around in LR, it feels so bloated and unorganized. I guess I will have to sign up for a course on LR.

For now I'm using Aperture and enjoying it while it's still working.

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Queue the angry, disproportionate responses from the top 10% of Aperture users.

I think it's reasonable to be angry/disappointed over this and 10% of Aperture users will be quite allot of people I would imagine.

Rating: 2 Votes