Aperture to Photos.app - preparation

I despise Apple in general and Tim Cook in particular. I wasn’t always that way. In the 00s I was kind of fond of Apple.  That ended with the way Cook killed Aperture in 2014. Apple could have provided an exit, but they didn’t.

Being unable to leave Apple has not improved my mood over the past six years. The exit cost is too high. On the bright side my Apple resentment has made it easier to resist the Apple watch. So I have a bit more time in my life for family, bikes, skis, and CrossFit. Thanks Tim!

I’ll still be on Aperture into 2020, three years beyond my original plan. The Catalina catastrophe has made staying on Mojave more agreeable. I’ll have to switch sooner or later though, almost certainly by 2021. So I’m working on a list of what I need to do prepare. I’ll update this post with items I think about:

1. Eliminate all stacks. I have hundreds of unwanted stacks created by Apple’s original hacked up iPhoto to Aperture migration (that was horrible). I need to edit each of the stacked images and remove the duplicate.
2. Flatten the keyword hierarchy (the marvelous hierarchy is from a time when giants walked the earth).
3. Regenerate images from RAW (this will take eons and is high risk).
4. Be sure image locations and face recognition (never worked) are turned off.
5. Simplify all smart albums not supported by Photos.app.
6. Create an empty shell of current Library, then use that to import all images from past Library. Confirm everything is correct.
7. Rebuild database to confirm no errors.
8. Per Apple’s migration directions, create full-sized “previews”.
9. Ensure iCloud is empty of images and that Photos.app destination library is empty with no iCloud sync. Disconnect from network.
10. Import into Photos.app
11. Validate.

This project will take many months, many backups, and purchase of at least one other 1TB SSD.