Using a separate app like Photo Supreme (or Photo Mechanic) will let you keeping track of original photos and versions. They also support adding metadata like stars, keywords and more.

This could ease the use different postprocessors Aperture, Lightroom, Capture One, Photos(?) and others.

In Aperture I did not have a good workflow when I wanted  to use specific apps for Panoramas and HDR processing. I also had problems in Aperture with how to handle versions  of photos for web display or for printing on different papers and formats (I I sometimes left them in aperture but mostly I exported them and after a while lost track of the exports).

But I wonder  - is it really worth learning a separate product for cataloguing the photos? I have maybe 60 000 photos in maybe 5-6 Aperture Libraries. A couple of years ago I tried Photo Mechanic but did not get along well with its interface - but maybe I just tried it enough?. Recently I tried Photo Supreme which user interface looked quite nice but they did not have any real documentation. 

Any suggestions/opinions.