Aperture to Capture One... work in progress

... I'd also quite like to export all the edited versions from Aperture, although that can probably easily be done to an external drive.

OK, I am currently running the trial version of ApertureExporter, which is limited to 10 images in each folder. There do appear to be some useful options available:

Screenshot 2019-08-20 at 09.49.22.jpg

I do like the idea of TIFFs for higher rated images, and JPEGs for lower rated ones. That ETA time though is a hopelessly optimistic estimate; this trial run has been going for about 3 hours now (exporting to an external drive on a standard USB port, 2014 era), and is now estimating the ETA as 12 hours 40 minutes! There does not appear to be any way (that I can see) to run it on a subset, eg a set of folders... although, I suppose you could export that set of folders as an Aperture Library and run ApertureExporter on that.

One thing I had not quite appreciated is that ApertureExporter requires Aperture to work, so you definitely have to do this before Aperture stops working, ie before MacOS Catalina.

I have noticed various oddities in relation to file sizes, eg exported JPEGs being different in size from the sizes reported by Aperture. At the moment (since most images have had some adjustments in Aperture) I'm getting two files from each image, eg CB67A01A.jpg for the original and CB67A01A_WithAdjustments.jpg for the adjusted version. For that image, Aperture reports the file size as 1.95 MB, the original pixel size as 3300 × 2207 (7.3 MP), and the adjusted pixel size as 2154 × 3221 (6.9 MP)... it has been rotated and cropped (as well as straightened, 6 dust spots removed, and a Levels adjustment). ApertureExporter's "original" version is reported by Finder as 2 MB, and the adjusted version is 1.7 MB. While the file creation date is today, the Content Created date reported by Finder is March 1967, and it shows the device make and model as Plustek 7500i (my scanner). Interestingly, Finder shows the Content Creator as QuickTime 7.6.6.

At the moment, I think I'm probably going to pay the price to get the full version of Aperture Exporter, not least as an insurance policy. I'm hoping that for most adjustments, Capture One Pro will do a reasonable job. However, I believe that C1Pro does not transfer spot, repair and clone adjustments. Since the source of much of my library is from scanned negatives and slides, some over 50 years old, there are a lot of images with those adjustments. For them, I may be better ignoring the C1Pro imports and using the ApertureExporter adjusted versions instead. I haven't quite worked out how to do that yet.

Once this run is complete, I'm planning to do a trial import from my 2019 folder in C1Pro. I hope that will let me make up my mind before the current offer on the C1Pro Fuji version expires at the end of the month (TBH I think I'm pretty much committed to paying up now!).
 
One thing I forgot to mention, there have been quite a few errors reported on export. Sometimes the image wasn't available, sometimes (I think) they were Raws that Aperture couldn't deal with, some reported that IPTC information wasn't correctly exported, and I think I had a few files scanned in JPEG2000 format, that Aperture couldn't read anyway.
 
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Well, the Aperture Exporter run finished in a little over 11 hours. If there really were 1024 folders (why do I find that number suspicious?), with up to 10 images transferred in each with the trial version, that would be up to 10,000 images. AE reported around 33,000 images, so a full run would presumably take around 33 hours.

The "ETA" time bottom left of the window above is pretty useless. When the Mac went to sleep while I was away doing other things, as far as I can see AE kept doing its job, but the ETA increased each time, before counting down again. At the end of the job it stood at nearly 24 hours, when it should presumably have counted down to zero.

Next task is to transfer a significant folder from Aperture to Capture One, using the latter's library import mechanism, and have a look at the results. I'm hoping that this will be a good enough basis for most images. I'm most worried about scans with significant dust removal adjustments. It would be good to use the AE-exported images for those cases, but I've yet to work out a reasonably automated way to do that (there are going to be many thousands of such images).

Is there an Aperture search that would let me select all the images in a folder with retouch adjustments?
 
Is there an Aperture search that would let me select all the images in a folder with retouch adjustments?

The answer to that one appears to be yes, there is!

Next task is to transfer a significant folder from Aperture to Capture One, using the latter's library import mechanism, and have a look at the results. I'm hoping that this will be a good enough basis for most images. I'm most worried about scans with significant dust removal adjustments. It would be good to use the AE-exported images for those cases, but I've yet to work out a reasonably automated way to do that (there are going to be many thousands of such images).

I was pretty sure I'd made reference to a useful post and video on this, but I couldn't find it on a quick scan through the posts above (links are quire hard to spot these days!). It is https://www.nikoncafe.com/threads/migrating-aperture-libraries-to-capture-one.315514/

The first thing he suggests is exporting your keyword structure from Aperture and importing it into Capture One; apparently this lets you preserve the keyword structure. I did this, although I didn't think I had a keyword structure. The import failed! It turns out that ApertureExporter ADDs keywords to images representing the albums they are included in; what's worse is that these keywords are structured, and also include characters ("|") not recognised by Capture One. There was also another error about an invalid indentation. I solved this eventually by going back to Aperture and deleting the set of keywords created by ApertureExporter (all helpfully structured under the keyword AE), which seemed to solve that. Second import of keywords worked.

I had already changed my most recent (2019) folder of film roll scans from managed to referenced images, as recommended. So next, export that folder as a temporary Aperture Library, go C1 and create a new temporary catalogue of the same name and import the temporary Aperture Library. Out of a thousand or so images, the import stopped for 5 images, which it said were not accessible. On closer inspection back in Aperture, it looked like those images were duplicates that ApertureExporter had renamed, and which were also on the offline disk where I had asked AE to store its results; furthermore the filenames of those duplicates had been changed by AE! The solution seemed to be to skip those on import. So far, so good I thought.

(So my message at this point is, ApertureExporter may be a very good thing, but definitely use it AFTER you've transferred your images into Capture One!)

However, when I came to open the projects imported, the first project had no images! In fact there were many projects with no images. These appear to correspond to projects derived from black and white films that I have scanned myself (I checked this by exporting one such project from Aperture as a Library and importing it into C1; no images were imported). At this moment, I have no idea why this is happening.

It looks like I could import these projects from the original scans, or perhaps preferably from the files created by ApertureExporter; indeed (since these are the most likely images to require spot removal adjustments) the latter might be the way to go, but it's a bit of a pain. I'm going to try to find out more why this might be happening from the C1 support website.

BTW I have no idea if this is interesting to anyone else, but I plan to carry on documenting this here anyway!
 
It looks like Capture One Pro will not import JPEG images where the Color Model is Gray. It successfully imports TIFFs or DNGs where the Color Model is Gray!

This is a PITA because I scan my black and white images as Gray JPEGs!
 
It turns out that ApertureExporter ADDs keywords to images representing the albums they are included in; what's worse is that these keywords are structured, and also include characters ("|") not recognised by Capture One. There was also another error about an invalid indentation. I solved this eventually by going back to Aperture and deleting the set of keywords created by ApertureExporter (all helpfully structured under the keyword AE), which seemed to solve that. Second import of keywords worked.

...

(So my message at this point is, ApertureExporter may be a very good thing, but definitely use it AFTER you've transferred your images into Capture One!)

After further work I realise that unchecking two boxes in the ApertureExporter startup page (make keywords for albums, and tag faces with keywords) should solve the problem of badly formed keywords.
 
It looks like Capture One Pro will not import JPEG images where the Color Model is Gray. It successfully imports TIFFs or DNGs where the Color Model is Gray!

This is a PITA because I scan my black and white images as Gray JPEGs!

Well. It turns out it's more complicated than that!

Most grey JPEGs (if you accept that short-hand... it means 8 bits per pixel) won't import. Some grey JPEGs and also grey TIFFs (16 bits per pixel) will import, but are not editable. Some grey-coloured JPEGs and TIFFs (with 24-bits or 48 bits per pixel, respectively) will import and are editable (these were produced by scanning negatives as positives, preparatory to inversion in different software). (There are other little wrinkles here that I don't completely understand, but have left out for simplicity.)

So that leaves me with thousands of black and white scanned images as 8-bit per pixel JPEGs. I am told you can convert these to 24-bit per pixel JPEGs in Photoshop (and presumably others such as Affinity Photo). However, for the nubers of images I have to deal with, that's not practical.

Does anyone know a way to carry out such a conversion in batch mode?
 
So that leaves me with thousands of black and white scanned images as 8-bit per pixel JPEGs. I am told you can convert these to 24-bit per pixel JPEGs in Photoshop (and presumably others such as Affinity Photo). However, for the nubers of images I have to deal with, that's not practical.

Does anyone know a way to carry out such a conversion in batch mode?

The best answer I've found, from another thread is xnconvert, available free in the Mac app store.
 
It looks like Capture One Pro will not import JPEG images where the Color Model is Gray. It successfully imports TIFFs or DNGs where the Color Model is Gray!

This is a PITA because I scan my black and white images as Gray JPEGs!

This may not have been quite accurate. Phase One suggest it's a feature (not a bug); Capture One Pro is designed to process colour only (ie RGB etc) and has no capability to edit images in Greyscale.

I have now managed to change all my Aperture images to being referenced, and to convert all (AFAIK) my greyscale images to RGB using xnconvert. I have also worked out the parameters to scan future black and white images as RGB. Soon, I will attempt my first large scale import of scans into C1Pro.

This has taken on extra urgency, as Catalina has now been released, so there's always a chance that something will happen that will force me to upgrade!
 
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I did see a reference to this, in Petapoxel or the like. It does leave me in quite a quandary. Obviously it would be good to just carry on indefinitely, but my guess is that this is only temporary relief. If I keep on with Aperture (which suits me very well), I'm just adding to the size of the image collection that has to be converted eventually. I'm guessing that many images will need some degree of re-working after migration. So if I keep working with Aperture and shoot another 50 films, that's another 2,000 images that might need further re-editing. If I do make the change now, those 2,000 images will get edited in C1Pro. That's what I'm currently telling myself, anyway.

OTOH I'm really struggling to get to grips with C1Pro, so the temptation is very real!

I've just spent most of the afternoon with one image from the 1960s with lots of dust spots, trying to work out how to remove them in C1Pro. Eventually worked out that the "dust removal" tool is very much aimed at dust on the sensor, and I need the "spot removal" tool instead, which actually seems to work.
 
Over the past few days, I've done a complete run on my Aperture Library with ApertureExporter, which I bought for C$19.99. I now have 33,000 images and 1,300 projects in the library. After about 11 hours, I reckoned it was around 2/3 finished. Rather than leave it running overnight, I decided to stop and re-start with the "Resume" option next morning.

*** Alert Klaxon *** Alert Klaxon ***

Do NOT do this! The resume mode goes through the entire library checking each image, and is nearly as slow as the export. I think it actually got to the point of exporting new images after about 9 hours, during which time it was hard to see that anything was happening, unless I went into the Console app and selected Aperture messages. In the end I left that running overnight; I think it must have had a sleep as it was still running when I woke it in the morning, but happily finished after another couple of hours from there.

If your destination is Capture One Pro, don't forget to turn OFF the option to tag images with keywords representing their albums, otherwise you get keywords separated with a "|" character, which won't import.

It's also worth remembering that ApertureExporter requires Aperture to be running, for it to work. I hope the new information mentioned in the last few posts will give people a bit more time, although I have no information on whether ApertureExporter will run on Catalina.

At the moment I'm tossing up whether to simply use the images exported with adjustments as an import into C1Pro, for the older retro-converted images. That would solve the massive dust problem, as I've mostly done that work in Aperture already. It does mean I won't have access to the original scan files in C1Pro, which might do a better job of editing. Need to do a few more tests, I think!
 
If your destination is Capture One Pro, don't forget to turn OFF the option to tag images with keywords representing their albums, otherwise you get keywords separated with a "|" character, which won't import.

So I'm not sure whether I still had it set up incorrectly, but when I checked the list of keywords in Aperture, I notice there were still a bunch of weird keywords in a hierarchy under "AE". These were obviously adde by ApertureExporter. Happily, it's a one click process to get rid of them! While I was there I went through the whole keyword list, removing a few and correcting some of the obvious typos like "Pntax". Worth doing, I think.

At the moment I'm tossing up whether to simply use the images exported with adjustments as an import into C1Pro, for the older retro-converted images. That would solve the massive dust problem, as I've mostly done that work in Aperture already. It does mean I won't have access to the original scan files in C1Pro, which might do a better job of editing. Need to do a few more tests, I think!

I have now done a full migration from Aperture, using the workflow in the video linked from post #44 above. I decided to use the images in Aperture, with whatever adjustments carried over (but NOT baked in), while keeping my ApertureExporter fully adjusted images in reserve. I'll use them in cases where it would take too much work to re-do an image in C1Pro. The most obvious cases would be some of my 40-year-old, retro-scanned negatives and slides, some of which have had extensive work with the Retouch tool to get rid of dust and scratches. The Retouch adjustments are not carried over in the migration.

I didn't quite do it project by project, as the video recommends, as I have over 1,000 projects. But the projects were divided into around a dozen folders, and I worked fine using a folder at a time. The Fuji folder, for example, had almost 10,000 images in it. I think that folder took 2-3 hours to migrate. Overall it took me about 3 days, off and on. Then there were a bunch of referenced images that didn't migrate because Aperture couldn't locate the files; some of those I was able to find, and then transfer just those projects.

The migration process worked a bit better than it suggested. For example, it says it will migrate crop or straighten adjustments, but in practice it seems to have done both.

One nice thing is that just clicking the "auto-adjust" button in C1Pro has often produced a better image than I had in Aperture.

But... and it's a big BUT... I'm going to have to do a LOT of learning to get up to speed with C1Pro! It took me 2 hours yesterday before I could export an image with 1024 pixels max side, and I still don't quite know how I did it. Obviously things like that will work well quite quickly (I gather I have to build a "recipe" for that... but I couldn't even work out how to specify pixels, it seemed to want to work in inches!). But it's going to take a lot of time to build up the "muscle memory" I had with Aperture.

One of the things that's bugging me a lot at the moment... I used to switch between viewing a single image and a grid of all the images in a project, with a single button click. The only way I've found to do this in C1Pro is to go into the View menu and turn off the Viewer check. Then next time I look at an image, do it again to get back to the grid! I must be missing something...

I bought a book when I started with Aperture, and it was a big help. The C1Pro manual is a bit techy (and possibly a bit Danglish); can anyone recommend a good book on Capture One Pro?
 
So I'm not sure whether I still had it set up incorrectly, but when I checked the list of keywords in Aperture, I notice there were still a bunch of weird keywords in a hierarchy under "AE". These were obviously adde by ApertureExporter. Happily, it's a one click process to get rid of them! While I was there I went through the whole keyword list, removing a few and correcting some of the obvious typos like "Pntax". Worth doing, I think.



I have now done a full migration from Aperture, using the workflow in the video linked from post #44 above. I decided to use the images in Aperture, with whatever adjustments carried over (but NOT baked in), while keeping my ApertureExporter fully adjusted images in reserve. I'll use them in cases where it would take too much work to re-do an image in C1Pro. The most obvious cases would be some of my 40-year-old, retro-scanned negatives and slides, some of which have had extensive work with the Retouch tool to get rid of dust and scratches. The Retouch adjustments are not carried over in the migration.

I didn't quite do it project by project, as the video recommends, as I have over 1,000 projects. But the projects were divided into around a dozen folders, and I worked fine using a folder at a time. The Fuji folder, for example, had almost 10,000 images in it. I think that folder took 2-3 hours to migrate. Overall it took me about 3 days, off and on. Then there were a bunch of referenced images that didn't migrate because Aperture couldn't locate the files; some of those I was able to find, and then transfer just those projects.

The migration process worked a bit better than it suggested. For example, it says it will migrate crop or straighten adjustments, but in practice it seems to have done both.

One nice thing is that just clicking the "auto-adjust" button in C1Pro has often produced a better image than I had in Aperture.

But... and it's a big BUT... I'm going to have to do a LOT of learning to get up to speed with C1Pro! It took me 2 hours yesterday before I could export an image with 1024 pixels max side, and I still don't quite know how I did it. Obviously things like that will work well quite quickly (I gather I have to build a "recipe" for that... but I couldn't even work out how to specify pixels, it seemed to want to work in inches!). But it's going to take a lot of time to build up the "muscle memory" I had with Aperture.

One of the things that's bugging me a lot at the moment... I used to switch between viewing a single image and a grid of all the images in a project, with a single button click. The only way I've found to do this in C1Pro is to go into the View menu and turn off the Viewer check. Then next time I look at an image, do it again to get back to the grid! I must be missing something...

I bought a book when I started with Aperture, and it was a big help. The C1Pro manual is a bit techy (and possibly a bit Danglish); can anyone recommend a good book on Capture One Pro?

When I started using c1 I went on YouTube which was great. Phase One have a load of tutorials posted on there and there are a couple of other guys explaining how to do things. Might be worth a look and if you have two monitors like me just put the tutorial on one screen and C1 on the other and follow along. It is dead easy learning that way.
 
But... and it's a big BUT... I'm going to have to do a LOT of learning to get up to speed with C1Pro! It took me 2 hours yesterday before I could export an image with 1024 pixels max side, and I still don't quite know how I did it. Obviously things like that will work well quite quickly (I gather I have to build a "recipe" for that... but I couldn't even work out how to specify pixels, it seemed to want to work in inches!). But it's going to take a lot of time to build up the "muscle memory" I had with Aperture.
One of the things that's bugging me a lot at the moment... I used to switch between viewing a single image and a grid of all the images in a project, with a single button click. The only way I've found to do this in C1Pro is to go into the View menu and turn off the Viewer check. Then next time I look at an image, do it again to get back to the grid! I must be missing something...

The dimensions and resolution settings in the Recipe have a drop down (indicated by a double arrow symbol) that allow you to select pixels or inches. The recipes are very powerful but do need a little time to get them sorted in your head.

The advice given in the Capture One tutorials by David Grover is to set up a hotkey to toggle the viewer to grid view, and he (and I) use the weird double interlinked s at the top left of the keyboard to toggle the grid view.

As well as the dozens of Capture One videos that Phase One provide (essential viewing), this is very useful http://alexonraw.com/capture-one-free-guide-1/

And if you want a book (as far as I know, only two exist) there is https://rawcaptureguide.com/ebook/ which goes through menu items and explains not just what they do, but also how you would use them and there is also this one https://rockynook.com/shop/photography/capture-one-pro-10/.

I have both and find them both useful. The first came out for version 11, and I got a free upgrade to the version 12 version. The second came out as for version 9, and I had to buy the version 10 copy, which hasn't been updated since.

I would probably only buy the first book listed (Photographers guide to Capture One 12), but I full exhaust Alex's free guide first and spend the time watching Phase One's Capture One video tutorials.

I would also give this site a browse https://imagealchemist.net/
 
Reviving this thread. I've adjusted the title and edited the first post with new text as follows:

For any late newcomers to this thread, I'm editing this initial post. The original appears un-edited [later in the first post].

The current state of play is that I've pretty much decided to move to Capture One Pro, and have done quite a few experiments along the way, which are documented in this thread. I have bought Capture One Pro Fujifilm 12, and also the eBook that relates to that by Nils Wille Christofferson (see his site here). I bought C1Pro slightly too early to get the free upgrade to C1Pro 20, and I didn't feel like paying for the upgrade until I'd got into the swing of using v12 (I'd also have to upgrade the eBook).

I also bought ApertureExporter, and have done a run of the 2019 library onto a separate disk.

I have changed my 2019 Aperture library from Managed to Referenced, and any new projects are Referenced.

I have imported most of my 2019 library into a C1Pro catalogue, via the process described andreferenced in post #44. I've done a few experiments on how well Aperture adjustments are brought across, which have gradually made me less certain that this is the way to go (not yet documented in the thread). I also confused myself utterly on how to import new images from my Master Images folder on the Mac into the structure created by the import.

These problems (and natural laziness) have meant I didn't start using C1Pro in anger in 2020 as I'd planned. So I've continued using Aperture! :)

However, my 2014 MacBook Pro is developing a few weird glitches, I'm still on Mojave (not High Sierra as I was when this thread started), and the screen has deteriorated with Staingate issues. So I can see a new Mac in my not-too-distant future; if that's based on Apple Silicon, it's less and less likely that the fix that allowed Aperture to work in Catalina will continue to work. And if Aperture doesn't work on a new machine, I'd be in a bit of bother! So I really do need to get my act together and try to start using C1Pro properly in 2021. That probably means rebuilding the C1Pro catalog first.

It helps a bit that I'm a film photographer, so my images arrive in batches, rather than pretty continuously. OTOH I can't fill up a massive SD card while I experiment! Anyway, I've got a bit of time. I just have to make myself do it. One way (I hope) is to document the various steps here. On that basis, it doesn't really matter if no-one else reads this, and there are probably relatively few die-hard Aperture users left to whom it would be relevant anyway. But I hope it might just possibly be relevant to a few others.

If you're new to this thread and want to read about my Aperture to C1Pro experiences (rather than the other diversions along the way), you could probably skip everything up to about post #37.

So now I need to take stock and try to work out how to go forwards!
 
Some basic parameters to my decision-making...

I have just over 93 GB available on my Mac drive; however there are about 44 GB in Trash, so I guess that gives me potentially up to 130 GB at a pinch.

My Aperture Library is 64 GB. This used to be mostly a managed image library, and I converted to a referenced image library; I'm not sure if that might have contributed some bloat. I guess I should also empty Aperture's Trash.

My Master Images folder is 118 GB.

My current C1Pro Catalogue is 12 GB, after doing an import of most (but not all) of the Aperture Library. Quite small, in comparison to the Aperture Library.

The files created by ApertureExporter on an external hard drive as of late 2019 take up 84GB (these only seem to include adjusted files, not the originals as well, which I had thought were included but would presumably nearly double the size). I don't at this moment know why it is so much smaller than the Master Images folder, given all the 4 and 5-star images are TIFFs rather than JPEGs. I don't think the images I took in 2020 would amount to 30 GB! I wonder if some images are missing!

I think I need to make two slightly complicated decisions before committing to the next big step (re-creating the C1Pro Catalogue):

a) how to best structure the C1Pro Catalogue so it works best for me. This will require understanding the different meanings f albums, folder, groups, collections etc, and

b) whether to use the original scans/raws or the files adjusted by ApertureExporter as the basis for the new Catalogue. In either case, either the adjusted files or the originals should be available at worst on an external drive.
 
I think what I'd do is

Export all originals into folders with original file name with the project name being the folder.

Repeat but then export the edits as 16 bit tiffs

I tried importing into c1 Pro. Just a mess. Easier to start afresh.

As it were I have to leave c1pro as it won't support pentax 645z files so its either On1 RAW, or DXO
 
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I think what I'd do is

Export all originals into folders with original file name with the project name being the folder.

Repeat but then export the edits as 16 bit tiffs

I tried importing into c1 Pro. Just a mess. Easier to start afresh.

As it were I have towage c1pro as it wlmt support pentax 645z files so its either On1 RAW, or DXO

I think that's effectively what having my Master Images (originals) and the files created by ApertureExporter has done for me, except that I've chosen to save edited images of 3 stars or less as JPEGs rather than TIFFs. I checked and yes, the TIFFs are 16 bits.

Your last sentence was hard to understand, but you might be saying you need to ditch C1Pro as it doesn't support the 645Z raws?
 
... My Master Images folder is 118 GB.

[...]

The files created by ApertureExporter on an external hard drive as of late 2019 take up 84GB (these only seem to include adjusted files, not the originals as well, which I had thought were included but would presumably nearly double the size). I don't at this moment know why it is so much smaller than the Master Images folder, given all the 4 and 5-star images are TIFFs rather than JPEGs. I don't think the images I took in 2020 would amount to 30 GB! I wonder if some images are missing!
...

After some investigation, I have not spotted any files missing, apart from 2020 images, which probably account for less than 10 GB.

The answer appears to be that a lot of my original JPEGs from lab scans are over twice the size of the files exported by ApertureExporter. So my Pentax New folder, for instance, is 60 GB in the Master Images (including 7 GB of 2020 images) and 30 GB as exported by AE. Some of the black and white files I scanned myself, however, are smaller on the original Master Images. It looks like I need to think about the JPEG quality parameter in AE.

Or maybe, since these are 3 stars or less, I don't care so much? JPEG quality is a diminishing returns game AFAICS. If I follow the strategy that's forming in my head, I'd still have access to the original if I decided I wanted to rework and promote an image for some reason...
 
I started with Apertureexporter or some thing like that.

ended up with Retroactive
 
I started with Apertureexporter or some thing like that.

ended up with Retroactive

Ah yes. Retroactive is the tricksy app that fools MacOS into running Aperture and a few other apps. As @Pound Coin says is described at https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive . There is a "deep dive" here that shows how it works.

Some points worth making: first, the github page includes a couple of fixes that refer to problems under Rosetta 2; this implies that (with those fixes) it likely works on Apple Silicon under Big Sur. That's good!

Second the deep dive shows an alarming amount of jiggery pokery and changes to libraries and code etc going on to make it work. While I might be happy to keep Aperture around in this altered state, I don't think 'd want to be relying on it for my main and only image editor and DAM!

Third, most of the solutions for getting off Aperture that I'm aware of rely on Aperture being around and working. If for some reason it stopped working, then migration would become very difficult.

For the latter two reasons, I think I really need to complete my migration, and start using C1Pro for new work. Once I've managed that, I might well try Retroactive! But thanks for the reminder.
 
I think that's effectively what having my Master Images (originals) and the files created by ApertureExporter has done for me, except that I've chosen to save edited images of 3 stars or less as JPEGs rather than TIFFs. I checked and yes, the TIFFs are 16 bits.

Your last sentence was hard to understand, but you might be saying you need to ditch C1Pro as it doesn't support the 645Z raws?
Sorry. Bad typing.

I'm ditching c1pro as it won't support 645z files. Shame really.

I really wish apple kept aperture going. It was more intuitive and way better laid out than any other program. If they had I would have replaced my macpro tower with another one.

As it were im back to folders and TIFFs.
 
Ah yes. Retroactive is the tricksy app that fools MacOS into running Aperture and a few other apps. As @Pound Coin says is described at https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive . There is a "deep dive" here that shows how it works.

Some points worth making: first, the github page includes a couple of fixes that refer to problems under Rosetta 2; this implies that (with those fixes) it likely works on Apple Silicon under Big Sur. That's good!

Second the deep dive shows an alarming amount of jiggery pokery and changes to libraries and code etc going on to make it work. While I might be happy to keep Aperture around in this altered state, I don't think 'd want to be relying on it for my main and only image editor and DAM!

Third, most of the solutions for getting off Aperture that I'm aware of rely on Aperture being around and working. If for some reason it stopped working, then migration would become very difficult.

For the latter two reasons, I think I really need to complete my migration, and start using C1Pro for new work. Once I've managed that, I might well try Retroactive! But thanks for the reminder.
Could you not convert your aperture library to a photos one. It uses the same RAW engine so they look the same and you can pick up where you left off with curves/levels and sharpen at the same point.

Just do your new images in c1pro
 
Could you not convert your aperture library to a photos one. It uses the same RAW engine so they look the same and you can pick up where you left off with curves/levels and sharpen at the same point.

Just do your new images in c1pro
That's a good shout and possible fall-back position, thanks. however, I've never really got on with Photos when I've tried it, and I rely quite a lot on star ratings in my workflow. Mind you, I'm not sure that star ratings work the way I want in C1Pro, either!

The way I use star ratings quite a lot in Aperture is to choose a folder, eg the 2019 folder inside the Pentax folder, show all the images from all Pentax 2019 projects (ie films) in grid mode, then use the filter to show all the images above a certain star rating, say 3 stars and up (looking for images with potential). I've no idea how to do the equivalent in C1Pro!
 
That's a good shout and possible fall-back position, thanks. however, I've never really got on with Photos when I've tried it, and I rely quite a lot on star ratings in my workflow. Mind you, I'm not sure that star ratings work the way I want in C1Pro, either!

The way I use star ratings quite a lot in Aperture is to choose a folder, eg the 2019 folder inside the Pentax folder, show all the images from all Pentax 2019 projects (ie films) in grid mode, then use the filter to show all the images above a certain star rating, say 3 stars and up (looking for images with potential). I've no idea how to do the equivalent in C1Pro!
I don’t know specifically about star ratings but Apple Photos maintains a lot of that sort of thing* from Aperture which can be found via Search (in Photos) though not obvious otherwise.

I was going to suggest keeping a copy of Aperture & it‘s Library in case you find something missing later on but importing to Photos seems a good extra ‘backup’ plan.

* from memory, it keeps keywords, so it would be trivial to add a keyword “5star” to all the 5 stars if stars are not preserved.
 
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I don’t know specifically about star ratings but Apple Photos maintains a lot of that sort of thing* from Aperture which can be found via Search (in Photos) though not obvious otherwise.

I was going to suggest keeping a copy of Aperture & it‘s Library in case you find something missing later on but importing to Photos seems a good extra ‘backup’ plan.

* from memory, it keeps keywords, so it would be trivial to add a keyword “5star” to all the 5 stars if stars are not preserved.
photos keeps everything bar retouching i think. I don't use keywords due to the way I named my projects in Aperture 3 and the content I create. I do it like 2020_12_kelpies.

I think this is a good option. Copy the aperture library to an external drive and keep it there. Then open photos and convert the library to a photos one. Then you have all bases covered. Aperture is dead and will never come back so converting the edit history to something its more modern OS can use is logical if a little storage intensive

That way you have an Aperture and photos one with the bulk of the Aperture edits intact - bar cloning (which in Aperture 3 just equates to sensor dust removal and this could be replicated I think in photos - I do say I think as I tried photos once and thought hell no - irs just no good and gimmicky). This is why I'd export full sized TIFFs, Full sized quality 12 JPEGs also so you have a rendition to send to print, to upload, to share etc that was done on the proper Aperture 3.

Then you export your RAWs into a folder structure that you want - ready if need be to edit in any suite of your choice. You may not stick with c1, you might move to on1, dxo so always have the RAWs to go back to and a JPEG to look at to recreate if need be.

I know its storage extravagant but storage has never been cheaper and if you're an amazon prime member its unlimited photo storage included in the membership. Throw in free delivery and some free TV shows and its the best 80quid/yr you'll spend.
 
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Ah yes. Retroactive is the tricksy app that fools MacOS into running Aperture and a few other apps. As @Pound Coin says is described at https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive . There is a "deep dive" here that shows how it works.

Some points worth making: first, the github page includes a couple of fixes that refer to problems under Rosetta 2; this implies that (with those fixes) it likely works on Apple Silicon under Big Sur. That's good!

Second the deep dive shows an alarming amount of jiggery pokery and changes to libraries and code etc going on to make it work. While I might be happy to keep Aperture around in this altered state, I don't think 'd want to be relying on it for my main and only image editor and DAM!

Third, most of the solutions for getting off Aperture that I'm aware of rely on Aperture being around and working. If for some reason it stopped working, then migration would become very difficult.

For the latter two reasons, I think I really need to complete my migration, and start using C1Pro for new work. Once I've managed that, I might well try Retroactive! But thanks for the reminder.

Agreed,

I should have said that I don't use Aperture for new stuff, I use Cap One. (And seem to manage with star ratings, but still struggle with the lack of metadata searches) but my old main Aperture Library reached 2TB :eek::oops: :$ and I have loads of other minor ones. What I'm using Retrospective for is making the Aperture Libraries manageable, before deciding whether migration is the way forward (or exporting a select few images...)

Oh, and I could never understand get on with Photos.
 
Thanks for your thoughts on this, folks. I've been thinking a lot about the way to go forward.

I think I need to stick with C1Pro for a while, until I either get it going to my satisfaction, or prove to myself that it's not for me. Stubborn like that! But I'll not upgrade until/unless I'm happy with it.

I do have a comprehensive migrations from Aperture to C1Pro via the "Import an Aperture Library" mechanism, up to late 2019. I also have a full set of adjusted images created by ApertureExporter up to that date (on an external drive), and of course also the referenced originals (although they go up to December 2020).

Each time I look at my C1Pro catalogue I seem to get hung up on details of how it's organised. So this is the new plan, from now...

a) I'm creating a new C1Pro catalogue for current work. Everything shot in 2021 and later goes into that catalogue, and does NOT go into the old Aperture library (that's going to be hard). As this new work builds up I hope I'll learn C1Pro a bit better, and maybe edge towards an appropriate way of working with it.

b) At a later date, I might bring either just the 2020 work into that catalogue, or possibly everything with my current main cameras. But meanwhile they'll remain accessible via Aperture.

c) In yet another catalogue I'm going to experiment with the very old film scans (retro-scanned by me, these are from 1967 to 2005). For some reason, I didn't import these into the existing migrated catalogue. The point here is to import migrated images and images created by ApertureExporter, separately in the first place, and see what disadvantages there are in working with the latter.

d) In parallel with (c), in the existing migrated catalogue, I'm going to check out a variety of images of the type that will not have had adjustments imported properly. While I'd prefer to be working from the original master scans, I think some images which have lots of brushed adjustments or lots of dust spotting, or which have both significant straightening AND a significant crop, would be too much work to replicate in C1Pro. So I'll see if I can identify these images, then add the adjusted images from ApertureExporter into the same Master folder, and try importing them. Even better if I could work out a way of automating this; I suspect it's possible in Applescript but I suspect that's too high a hurdle for me at this stage! Anyway, I hope this will mean that when in future I want an image from the mid-age material, I'll have a choice of a migrated image or an AE-adjusted image

I guess step (d) is optional, as when I want a mid-age image I could decide at that time whether to bring in the adjusted image or try to replicate the PP in C1Pro. But I would always prefer my library to be in as good a condition as it can reasonably be. No idea why!

EDIT: At some point, I'll re-create the existing catalogue for back material, using whatever I've learned in the process, and incorporating any edits made since late 2019!
 
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a) I'm creating a new C1Pro catalogue for current work. Everything shot in 2021 and later goes into that catalogue, and does NOT go into the old Aperture library (that's going to be hard). As this new work builds up I hope I'll learn C1Pro a bit better, and maybe edge towards an appropriate way of working with it.

I've managed to keep this part of my 2021 resolution, I've developed and scanned one black and white film so far, and have imported it into C1Pro. It seems I was a bit careless in the dev process, and the scans are a mare for dust on the negatives. The negatives also looked a bit weird; there are quite a few images of foggy scenes, and the matrix metering on my Pentax MX (driven by me, of course) does not seem to have done a very good job of the exposure.

The good news is that the PP process was easier than I expected. It's nice to be focusing on some actual images, rather than the structure of the catalogue. I'm reasonably happy with some of the results, so far.

The most annoying thing is that a few had hair-like marks on them. In Aperture I would do the dust and these marks with the same Retouch tool, but with C1Pro the dust specs are done with the Dust tool, but larger, irregular marks need to be done with a Healing Layer. However, although layers in general seem to drive me cross-eyed, I've managed to do it!

The process has shown that I need to do quite a bit more reading on things like how the Crop tool works. In Aperture I could select an aspect ratio, Square for example, and I'd get a square crop of the size and place that I choose. In C1Pro the Crop seems to be Unconstrained.

c) In yet another catalogue I'm going to experiment with the very old film scans (retro-scanned by me, these are from 1967 to 2005). For some reason, I didn't import these into the existing migrated catalogue. The point here is to import migrated images and images created by ApertureExporter, separately in the first place, and see what disadvantages there are in working with the latter.

d) In parallel with (c), in the existing migrated catalogue, I'm going to check out a variety of images of the type that will not have had adjustments imported properly. While I'd prefer to be working from the original master scans, I think some images which have lots of brushed adjustments or lots of dust spotting, or which have both significant straightening AND a significant crop, would be too much work to replicate in C1Pro. So I'll see if I can identify these images, then add the adjusted images from ApertureExporter into the same Master folder, and try importing them. Even better if I could work out a way of automating this; I suspect it's possible in Applescript but I suspect that's too high a hurdle for me at this stage! Anyway, I hope this will mean that when in future I want an image from the mid-age material, I'll have a choice of a migrated image or an AE-adjusted image

I had a look at some of the images imported into C1Pro from my Aperture library. The biggest issue is that Retouches are not transferred. A few filtered searches with Aperture showed that many of my film folders have Retouch adjustments, because of dust or scratches. So the new plan is to only use images imported from Aperture for my digital camera images (most just snaps, really). I plan to use the images created by Aperture Exporter as the basis for the film part of my catalogue. I'll have the originals available on an off-line disk (or two, maybe!). I'm in the middle of a test run of this at the moment.

However, the organisation of the C1Pro catalogue remains the biggest puzzle and block to significant further progress. I was very pleased to read another thread on here about a Capture One Pro beginner struggling, and this post by @Sky was very helpful:


@myotis also had some helpful suggestions a couple of posts later.

However, doing imports a couple of different ways has shown different ways the catalogue ends up being organised, and I beed to understand the implications of these. I'll do a separate post to try to illustrate my dilemma.
 
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The most annoying thing is that a few had hair-like marks on them. In Aperture I would do the dust and these marks with the same Retouch tool, but with C1Pro the dust specs are done with the Dust tool, but larger, irregular marks need to be done with a Healing Layer. However, although layers in general seem to drive me cross-eyed, I've managed to do it!

The process has shown that I need to do quite a bit more reading on things like how the Crop tool works. In Aperture I could select an aspect ratio, Square for example, and I'd get a square crop of the size and place that I choose. In C1Pro the Crop seems to be Unconstrained.

Most people seem to be now using a heal layer for dust spots, now that you can have many healing points on a single layer as you want. The healing tool seems to works better than the old spotting tool.

If you click on the small arrow of the crop tool, you get a drop down list of fixed aspect ratios and you can add, and save, customised ratios using the same drop down..
 
Most people seem to be now using a heal layer for dust spots, now that you can have many healing points on a single layer as you want. The healing tool seems to works better than the old spotting tool.

If you click on the small arrow of the crop tool, you get a drop down list of fixed aspect ratios and you can add, and save, customised ratios using the same drop down..

Thanks Graham. I'm still on version 12 so need to have a separate Heal layer for each source point, IIUC.

I thought that little down arrow would provide a list of ratios as you suggest. However, for some reason none of those little down arrows work for me!
 
I thought that little down arrow would provide a list of ratios as you suggest. However, for some reason none of those little down arrows work for me!

The full cropping tool are in the lens tools panel ie under the lens icon in the tool tabs.

I think it’s the lens tool panel. All my panels are so customised that I have tools in custom created panels, and I have them duplicated and moved around the existing panels so much that I can't really remember where things are by default.
 
The full cropping tool are in the lens tools panel ie under the lens icon in the tool tabs.
So it is, thank you very much for that. No idea why the little drop-down things don't work.

I do find the selection of tools really weird. In time I think I'll make my own modifications to the lists, but I'm leaving it as it is at the moment...
 
So it is, thank you very much for that. No idea why the little drop-down things don't work.

I do find the selection of tools really weird. In time I think I'll make my own modifications to the lists, but I'm leaving it as it is at the moment...
Nor do I. much as I like C1, over the years Ive been using it, I get the impression its got buggier and buggier.

But one of the good things about C1 is how easy it is to change the tools arraangment.

As well as complete customised panels, I often add a tool to a panel as I'm working or more often, drag a tool(s) off a panel to make it floating and bigger.

I always reset it to my customised default, but at the end of a day editing, my tool panels and tools can often bear no resemblance to the way they started.
 
So, a little preamble about my organisation on Aperture, as background for those not familiar with it. I should also mention that terms like project, album and folder are used with different meanings in Aperture, C1Pro and the Mac itself. I'll try and be explicit about which I mean, unless it's clear from the context.

I think I mentioned that these days I'm primarily a film photographer (though I have and have had little digital P&S cameras for family and snapshots). This has informed my basic organisational unit, which is the film roll. Every roll is a separate Aperture project. I've grouped these by year within camera type using Aperture folders, and the project title gives information about the roll. This is applied in a slightly different way to uploads from my digital cameras. A film roll (and hence Aperture project) could sometimes span many months, or sometimes there might be several film rolls for a single day., so I use Aperture albums to bring together images from different film rolls and even different cameras (including digital) that relate to a specific event. So the structure looks a bit like this:

Screenshot Aperture 2021-01-20 at 14.49.19.png

Now Aperture lets you see all the images in a project, album or folder just by clicking on it (and also apply filters to that selection). So this gives me the ability, say, to search for all 5-star images in a particular album, or taken with one of the Pentaxes in a particular year, which ould help me find the image a portion of which is shown here.

As mentioned in previous posts, I've imported images into my (temporary) C1Pro catalogues in two ways. The largest catalogue was created by importing directly from my Aperture library (or more correctly, from temporary subset Aperture libraries). That gives and organisational structure a bit like this:

Screenshot C1Pro import from Aperture 2021-01-20 at 14.52.25.png

The Catalogue Collections line at the top (collapsed) simply shows a list showing all images, or a list of recent imports. The User Collections area in the middle left mirrors my Aperture folder/project structure. Annoyingly, you can't see any images by clicking on these C1 folders or projects. The 2018 folder inside Pentax New has a list of projects; the first project is expanded to show a C1 album of the same name. Clicking on that gives you the display of (terrible) images shown to the right.

There is another area in the C1Pro window lower down (not shown above) of C1 Folders that apparently exactly matches the actual folder and file structure on my Mac. Clicking on a bottom level Mac folder in this hierarchy will show previews of the images in that folder, but clicking on any of the higher level folders do not.

Anyway, with this structure, I can see previews of all the images, or previews of the images in any particular film roll. I think I can probably re-create topical albums, but I haven't tried that yet.

Now, as if all that wasn't confusing enough. this is where it gets complicated. In the next temporary catalogue, I imported a Mac folder of several film rolls from 2019 (all in one import), and later a new folder of scans of my first roll this year. The resulting structure looks completely different. Unfortunately I added a few albums before taking this snapshot, but it currently looks like this:

Screenshot C1Pro direct import 2021-01-20 at 14.55.49.png

All the 2019 images went into one album in User Collections, with no reflection of the film roll structure reflected in the Mac folder and file names. (The latter do appear under the Folders section, when expanded.) I can't see any way to create a structure in User collections related to the one created by importing from the Aperture library! (This means if I start from the latter, but do direct imports, I'd be creating a different structure, AFAICS.)

So, I am confused! I'm also a bit blocked, as I feel I need to settle on a structure before committing all my images to it. Hopefully that structure would allow me to view image previews at a higher level than a single film roll, but more granular than "All images".

Can anyone suggest a way forward, please?
 
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