Interesting article here http://www.macworld.com/article/2452232/life-after-aperture-and-iphoto-what-to-do-with-your-image-library.html in MacWorld about Apple dropping support for Aperture and Iphotos. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Iphotos, but Aperture is Apple’s pro image editing software that has been around for years and was a big rival for Adobe’s Lightroom.

So what do you do when all your thousands of images are tied to a now unsupported and soon to be phased out program?? This can be a disaster if you’re not prepared and don’t plan ahead. If you’re just getting started there are several things to consider:

1. Pick a program that has been around and is fairly dominant in the market, and

2. Pick something that stores image metadata and info in formats that are cross platform compatible and can be transferred to other major programs if possible.

There are no guarantees of course, but you can at least minimize your risk by not going with newer, more obscure programs. The article itself has some detailed info on transitioning existing libraries, so if you’re in that boat check out the article.

These are some of the topics covered in the digital workflow portion of the photography classes we teach. There are lots of things to consider when choosing image editing and organizing software, but above all, assume that whatever you choose may be unsupported down the road, and choose something that minimizes your risk of losing images & edits as much as possible.