YES. It was an integrated part of an everyday DSLR workflow.

So much so, that I too eventually stopped with DSLR after losing it.

I was a huge Aperture fan myself, and have since moved to DxO. They put out a new version every year that has an upgrade fee, but there's no issue staying put for as long as you like. And it's 100% filesystem-based, so it's much easier to work into whatever backup workflow you like; cloud or otherwise.

I actually like it so much, that I even use it since I switched to Linux recently. I have a Windows VM with one app installed that I boot up every month or so to process photos.

Just learning about DxO for the first time. I purchased another app called Luminar that I tried once and wasn't totally blown away by. What I'm looking for is a sane workflow and lightning quick navigation, hopefully with some basic edits and tight photoshop integration.

One of my favourite things about Aperture+PS was being able to spawn an edit process that, when you save the file in PS, created a duplicate version with the changes back in Aperture. The more I think about it, this was the secret sauce. Is this replicated in DxO?

Oh, I have no idea about that, sorry. Don't use Photoshop myself. I just need to do some cropping, lighting/color/contrast adjustments and noise reduction, then I move on to the next family photo. :D

I literally was that photographer before DSLRs got affordable. I love film and still own some extremely expensive film kit, but it is still a hassle. And when it’s not my job and real life kicks in, the fact remains that there used to be a digital workflow that “just works” for me, and Apple killed it.

Photos.app was a joke and Adobe was in the process of flushing their entire suite down the cloud, and shipping horrific bloatware for everything else. I probably should look into Lightroom but at the time it was just not an appealing option.

And the self-pity interpretation is off, but whatever. I guess we all like to be mad at the people we post at.

If Aperture is that valuable, have you considered just keeping an old Mac around dedicated to Aperture?

(You don’t even have to go that far yet, since you can still get Aperture working in Catalina, and Mojave and High Sierra are still viable options. But, for the future.)

I certainly could still run it, but it’s just not worth it to me anymore. Over time I gradually stopped caring because it wasn’t a rewarding way to spend my time anymore. This thread just jogged some really old memories.

Don't bother with Lightroom. It's also been shackled to the cloud at this point. I think if you dig enough you can still find a perpetual license version, but it's years old at this point and doesn't work with newer cameras.