Apple has told 9to5Mac that that the company will be ceasing development of Aperture and iPhoto, offering Photos for OS X as a replacement, which was first shown at WWDC.

With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X.

Apple says libraries will be able to migrate across to the new application when the application ships. Apple is working with Adobe to offer a upgrade path to Lightroom. As noted by TechCrunch, Apple will offer a Yosemite compatibility update for Aperture, but otherwise development has ended.

The new Photos app will include some of the features contained within iPhoto and Aperture, but also offers the big advantage of syncing with iCloud Photo Library, which will sync every photo you take when iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite ship later this year. On the other hand, the lack of many of the professional-oriented features from Aperture will be a disappointment to an important market.

As part of the statement, Apple has given TechCrunch a new image of what the Photos app looks like. It largely reflects what Apple demoed at WWDC, but does show a new thumbnail bar on the left-hand side. Features familiar to Aperture users, like histograms, can also be seen in the screenshot.

The state of iPhoto on iOS is currently unknown, but its outlook doesn’t seem good given the retirement of the application on the Mac. iOS 8 doesn’t let the iPhoto app even open, likely confirming it has also been discontinued. ‘t is important to note that development on Apple’s other ‘professional’ software, Logic and Final Cut Pro, continues as normal.

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