Q: What is the purpose of Avalanche ?
Avalanche is designed to convert catalogs of photographs from one application to another. For example, if you wish to move your pictures that are currently catalogued in Apple Aperture to another app, such as Adobe Lightroom, Avalanche will do exactly that.
Avalanche migrates as much information as possible from the source catalog to the destination: metadata, organization hierarchies such as albums, stacks, groups of albums, etc.
But Avalanche goes one step further by attempting to migrate all the adjustments made to images into the destination catalog.
Q: How does Avalanche work ?
Avalanche will scan your attached drives to find all the catalogs it understands.
Once you have selected a catalog, Avalanche will parse its content and let you know how many masters, versions, videos, faces, and albums it found.
When you choose to export, Avalanche will read all entities in your source catalog (masters, versions, albums, keywords, etc.) and convert them into the destination.
Q: Can Avalanche migrate pictures into an existing catalog?
Currently, Avalanche migrates the photographs from your source catalog into a new, initially empty, catalog it creates.
When exporting to Lightroom, you can then use the Lightroom catalog merging feature to merge that newly created catalog into your master catalog if you have one.
Q:Does Avalanche understand virtual copies?
Yes, Avalanche fully understands versions (in Aperture) or virtual copies (in Lightroom). Once you choose to export to a new catalog that also supports virtual copies, those will be transfered as expected.
Q: Why is the application named "Avalanche for Lightroom"?
Avalanche comes in different flavors, depending on the destination app it can export to.
Avalanche for Lightroom is the first flavor of Avalanche that supports exporting to Adobe Lightroom Classic.
The upcoming flavors of Avalanche will let you export to other apps.
Q: Are there different versions of Avalanche?
Several versions are planned.
Currently, Avalanche for Lightroom is the only version available.
Q: Is there a version of Avalanche that runs on Windows
No. Avalanche requires macOS X.
Q: I am using different photo applications. Will there be a version of Avalanche for me?
We are planning to support new destinations soon :
- Luminar
- Capture One
- Apple Photos
We will also add more source type as time goes by:
- Apple Photos
Q: Will Avalanche support older cataloging apps such as iView Media Pro?
We will be looking into it in 2020 and give a better answer after we review what is really feasible.
Q: What are the limitations of the Demo version?
The demo version is limited to exporting 100 masters images and 100 vidéos.
Q: Why does Avalanche require macOS 10.14? Do you plan to make it run on older versions as well?
We plan to support macOS 10.13, but do not plan to support older versions.
Q: Is Avalanche compatible with Catalina?
Yes
Q: I already migrated to Catalina, and my version of Aperture does not launch anymore. Is it too late for me to convert?
No.
Avalanche does not require Aperture to run on the Mac. It can read the Aperture Catalog format natively.