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Comment by apgwoz | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been waiting to see what happens with Photomator, and the fact that it’s not being included in anyway here makes me think it might not survive? Either that, or it’s gonna be heavily integrated into Photos…

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I was also surprised to not see Photomator included. Wouldn’t it perfectly complement the lineup? I hadn’t thought of such a pessimistic interpretation, but now I’m worried as well …

I think Apple killed Aperture primarily because it was confusing to have iPhoto and Aperture with largely overlapping workflows. Aperture had the loupe view, and side by side comparison stuff, saved color grading tools (I think?), sure, but it wasn’t differentiated enough to justify a Pro designation. I think it makes more sense for Photomator features to be absorbed into Photos… and maybe Photos gets some new Pixelmator integrations if you have it, for quick touch ups / enhancement type things.

On the other hand, Final Cut / iMovie will exist side by side because it’s truly a basic vs Pro situation.

Not a product manager at Apple, of course, but this is what logically seems to make sense.

Uff, I sure hope you are wrong! I don’t want to use the iCloud library for photos, but have my photos available as digital files elsewhere on the ssd. Of course, your prediction makes more sense from Apple’s standpoint, unfortunately.

I do like the convenience of iCloud, but totally agree that having them safe elsewhere is necessary. I’ve been pretty bad about keeping solid, non-iCloud backups of my photos. I definitely need to be more proactive about it.

I mean, the friendly way to kill off the differences between Aperture and Photos would have been to add all the missing workflow stuff to Photos before killing Aperture. Photos did not get lift-and-stamp edits until late 2022, years after Aperture was discontinued, and it isn't as good as the corresponding feature in Aperture was. Also, it would have been cool if the Photos import from Aperture library had ever worked, even a little bit. I keep an external hard drive around with my old Aperture library because I know it contains photos that Photos.app still hasn't pulled in correctly.

I don't think it's actually confusing to a professional at all

Not to a professional, no. But this isn’t iMovie vs Final Cut. Aperture was only slightly above where iPhoto was going in capability. They should have raised the iPhoto/Photos bar a lot more to get back to where Aperture was, though.

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