An important news for graphic designers transpired this morning. During the Worldwide Developers Conference on between the 2nd and 6th of June, Apple announced the new Photos App. Today Apple took a decision which awards the newly unveiled Photos App a growing importance: “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,” Apple told The Loop. Together with Aperture, iPhoto will be shut down as well.
Apple terminates Aperture and offers less features in Photos App
Photos App appears to be a downgrade from Aperture. The main function of the app, as stressed by Apple, will be that of offering unhindered access to your photo gallery, no matter what Apple device you are using. In an effort to enforce the interoperability in its ecosystem, Apple moves from a complex software to one oriented towards casual users.
Photos will be available for both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite early next year. Users will be able to transfer their work from Aperture to Photos without any problems. Apple is also working with Adobe to help users move their work from Aperture to Adobe’s Lightroom app for Mac.
The features of Photos are oriented towards basic tasks such as simple organization and some editing tools as cropping, filters or contrast control. Nevertheless, there are a couple of advanced instruments aimed at setting exposure, shadows and highlights.
Even if Aperture’s development will soon by shut down, the other pro editing apps such as the sound processing software Logic Pro and the film processing software Final Cut Pro will continue to be supported. Aperture’s fans will be satisfied to learn that the software will be fully compatible with OS X Yosemite. Beyond that, Apple will not support the version’s compatibility with subsequent OS and will not fix bugs or provide any updates. Apple terminates Aperture, which has not received any major updates since 2010, so it might not seem as a major surprise as an overall strategy. iPhotos has seen its last major update in 2011. Besides, according to VentureBeat, the professional photographers have slowly lost interest in using Aperture and moved to Adobe’s Lightroom.