2019 Apple Photos or alternative image catalog and editor

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Level 1

8 points

2019 Apple Photos or alternative image catalog and editor

I am an amateur photographer who takes lots of family, travel and life pictures. I need a new image processing/editor. I have researched many programs and these are my favorites right now—Affinity Photo (AP), digiKam, Mylio with AP or DxO. I have used Adobe Elements and it crashes on my Mac (always has) so I have not uploaded pictures from my SD card in awhile. My old workflow (10K+ images) was to upload to files on my hard drive, organize by year, month and event. I take RAW and jpegs on a Lumix G9. I also take pictures on my iPhone so those are in Photos. I'm afraid of combining all images into Photos b/c I'm afraid of the ramifications of having a large catalog and slowing it down. I'm also afraid of losing the organization that I'm used too. HELP! I need to make a decision, move on and clean this mess up! Would you go with Apple Photos and use DxO/AP as your editor? I know they work together. Or am I correct in being hesitant about putting all my images in Photos and use one of the other image organizers/DAMs. I do like to search on events, people, favorite images, travel, etc. I want to be able to share my images. I'm adept at learning software so not shy there.

Posted on Mar 13, 2019 8:29 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

195,391 points

Mar 16, 2019 1:41 AM in response to m1andrews

Why do you use both Aurora HDR and Luminar 3? Are there specific functions that you like in each? I read about DxO—it was recommended in an article to use with Photos app.

Aurora HDR and Luminar support different things.

Aurora HDR 2019 can combine exposure brackets into HDR photos and has many presets for acne types. But I am limited to the presets for the adjustments. I cannot add filters individually. And the retouch tool is missing.
In Luminar 3 I can combine the filters and look-up tables freely to define my own presets. It offers a great retouch tool. Luminar 3 even has support for a photo library. It keeps the library in the Finder, so you can create albums by arranging the photos in the Finde rin folders.

I am using Photos to manage by libraries (because of the support for iCloud Photos) and Aurora HDR to develop my HDR brackets, Luminar 3 for advanced editing. DxO Perspective is the easiest tool to get the perspective distortion corrected.

My main reason for using iCloud Photos is to keep my Photos Library in sync across my Mac and my iPhone. I am not using it to save storage on my Mac, because I want all photos stored locally as well. When I am traveling abroad I am finding myself frequently without a reliable or fast internet connection, but I want to have immediate access to my photos.

Another reason why I do not want to use iCloud Photos with the "Optimize Mac Storage" option is, that it is nearly impossible to backup an optimized Photos Library as a library, if the library is large. If you are using "Optimize Mac Storage", your Time Machine backups or clones of the library will be incomplete, because not all original files are stored locally. You need a second version of your Photos Library on an external drive, that is syncing with iCloud, but is not optimized. You can then backup the complete copy on the external drive. But even for my moderately sized Photos Library (50000 photos and videos) it takes a full week to switch between two libraries as an iCloud Photo Library and get them in sync and updated with iCloud. That is clearly not feasible for a larger library to keep switching the iCloud Sync between your working, optimized library on the internal drive and the full version on the external. Having regular Time Machine backups and occasional clones as an archive of my libraries is very important to me, so the "Optimize" option is out of question for me.

The following link explains how to move the Photos Library to an external drive.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

208,253 points

Mar 13, 2019 10:24 AM in response to m1andrews

With Photos 4.0 you can use any of the image editors you mentioned from within the Photos library:

Or go into the Edit mode and use this menu:

This post by Terence Devlin is an excellent treatise on organizing photos with iPhoto: Better way to organize my images?: Apple Support Communities. It also applies to image management in Photos.

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Answer 3

m1andrews Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2019 8:22 PM in response to Old Toad

Thank you for your advice. I read a lot more about Photos the past few days.

Upload/Import — What do you recommend for raw+jpeg? I have a Lumix G9 and I save both.
I have a few choices on how to organize. Either I can use Albums and set up a hierarchy which I'm used to. Or I can set up Smart Albums by using keywords/tagging. I saw some of your posts regarding this topic.
What photo editor extension do you recommend for Photos?
Any advice on workflow for raw files? We have a trip coming up where I'll take tons of pics.

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Answer 4

m1andrews Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 20, 2019 9:29 AM in response to Yer_Man

Lots of research and completed a full circle… Any input on the following is very much appreciated!

Great to know that the jpegs on Lumix G9 are fabulous from a photographer's POV. Thank you! I thought so too but have read that you can do so much more by taking raws so I'm trying it out. I will be more mindful of switching it out depending on the pics I'm taking. I take great pics already and want to be a better photographer—I really enjoy it!
I have a hard drive space constraint issue. I currently have 190GB of pictures on HD (not including Apple Photos iPhone pics) plus I have about 1,000 on SD card waiting for download. I have studied the options of where to save pictures—HD, external drive or cloud. As of last night, I realized that since I'm starting a new set up anyway which will require lots of work regardless, I am considering the option of moving my photos to the cloud and cloning to an external drive. It seems like this is where storage technology is going. When I buy new computer in the future, then I can move that file back to my HD (if I want). What are your expert thoughts on this? Do you see any issues that should be considered?
I like the following: Mylio and Lightroom CC. If I upload my images to iCloud Photos, it looks like I have to select Optimize Storage. I am hoping you can use it like Dropbox where I can upload all of my SD card image files and then Apple Photos pulls from iCloud drive. I'm not certain that's how it works and I'm trying to find the answer.
Lightroom CC--I didn't want to go with Lightroom originally b/c I thought it was too expensive per month. CC version has 1TB of cloud storage and some cool AI features. It allows you to edit and view files from any device. Lightroom isn't going away anytime soon so my files seem safe. CC is easier than Classic to learn. I am competent in Photoshop and can get by with the types of edits I do. I do enjoy making the sky brighter, less darkness in images, healing brush, and taking extra people out of my photos that are at the beach near my kids. It seems like I can do that with CC. At the Apple store, one person said he didn't like CC but maybe he tried it earlier when it didn't have the new features… If you used it before, I realize most will want Classic but it's new to me. PC Mag gave it 3.5 stars. I don't want to pay $20/month to have all of the goodies when I won't use them so either CC will work (hope for new features to be added) or it won't.
Mylio is a very cool app! I like that it works with files on HD, external drive or cloud and love that you can access them on any device via an offline organizer. I do like that part of Apple Photos too since I have an Apple set up at home. Seems like it gives you most of what I like about Photos app (except the Smart Albums) and I can get another app for editing. My only hesitation is that Mylio is a smaller company and will they be around for awhile?? If I choose it, I would start with the free version and move to the premium when I needed to.
Apple Photos — will still be using Apple Photos for my iPhone pictures. I have a lot to figure out with my old Adobe Photoshop Elements/hard drive file structure to mess with iPhone pics yet.
I also looked at ACDsee (limited share, PC Mag 3.5 stars) and Capture One (PC Mag 4 stars, no online sharing or face recognition) briefly yesterday. Both are great apps but don't think they fit what I want. It seems to me I only have access via my computer to view my pics. Maybe I'm wrong…
Lastly, I relooked at Adobe Photoshop Elements and it has a lot of nice features, like slideshows and collages. You can see the images on your computer and share to other sites. Ever since I got my Mac, the version I had before always crashed so I stopped using it and wasn't planning to go this direction again.

Thank you so much for all of your advice so far! It's been extremely helpful in helping me to think through what I need. With all of these great apps out there, it was nice to see the Apple Photos had a place b/c of ease of use, on every device, able to download editor of choice, etc. I didn't really look into it as a serious contender until this past week.

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Answer 5

Mar 13, 2019 9:03 AM in response to m1andrews

These kinds of decisions are pretty personal, but I can tell you that I have over 30,000 images on an external drive and Photos is still pretty snappy. I like Photos, and there are scripts to help you re-create your organizations by importing the photos and creating albums.

Photos has all kinds of tools to help with organization, in fact, you don't need to organize much at all if you don't want. I basically just create basic keywords, "Disney", "Family", "Nature", "Museum", etc, and let Photos do the rest. The keywords are a quick thing to do upon import, and support my basically lazy nature. 8^)

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Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

195,391 points

Mar 13, 2019 10:36 AM in response to m1andrews

I agree with Keith. Photos can cope with large libraries. It is just a little bit slow, if you import thousands of photos at once. Then it will need to do a lot of processing to prepare the photos -scanning for categories and faces, for example.

I am sticking with Photos because I am taking more and more photos with my iPhone, when I am too lazy to take my Lumix with me.Photos is perfect to work with the Portrait Mode photos of my iPhone X and the Live Photos. I am using Affinity Photos as a photo editing extensions, mainly the "Retouch" and the "Haze Removal" extension. For most other edits I prefer Aurora HDR and Luminar 3. But Photos makes it easy to have all external editors ready and to switch between them. One of my Favorites is DxO Perspektive.

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Answer 7

m1andrews Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2019 8:25 PM in response to léonie

Why do you use both Aurora HDR and Luminar 3? Are there specific functions that you like in each? I read about DxO—it was recommended in an article to use with Photos app. At this point, I just need to move on and get these pictures off of my camera so I don't lose them! :-)

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Answer 8

m1andrews Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 16, 2019 11:30 AM in response to léonie

Thank you! Currently, Apple Photos only contains IOS images. When I download my camera, I will set it up on external HD. I was wondering about that bc the raw files will take up too much space on OS HD.

I read something about reference files last night so I need to better understand that. The reference file can be in Photos or the external HD and it matters which way you import.

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Answer 9

léonie

Level 10

195,391 points

Mar 16, 2019 11:38 AM in response to m1andrews

Referenced files are not as well supported in Photos as they used to be in Aperture. You need a professional application if you want to go referenced. The general idea is great - you are keeping the photo library small by storing the large original files on external drives. Referenced files are working well, as long as the drive with the referenced files is working. But if the drive starts failing and you need to replace the drive, you will have a hard time to move the photos to a new drive and to reconnect them. Photos has no tools to help you to connect the over originals again to the versions in your Photos Library.

With a basic application like Photos it is much easier to move the complete Photos Library to an external drive.

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Answer 10

m1andrews Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 16, 2019 3:32 PM in response to léonie

I have about 110GB available on my Mac HD out of 500GB (next computer I will need larger HD). Do you think it's feasible to use Apple Photos and save to HD. With raw and jpeg files being saved that's about 3,500-4,000 images (assuming 25Mb/raw file). I have roughly 1,000 ready for upload from the past year. I'll be out of room in 2ish years… If other photographers can have libraries of 30-50K, then I'm missing something.

Do you take all your pictures in raw+jpeg? Do you upload all raw image files to Apple Photos? Maybe more experienced photographers have a better process that I should consider. TIA

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Answer 11

léonie

Level 10

195,391 points

Mar 17, 2019 2:24 AM in response to m1andrews

I am not taking all photos as RAW files, only the landscape and scenery photos, where I want to merge exposure exposure brackets as a HDR photo. For family snapshots and other non-HDR photos the JPEGs from my Lumix cameras are so good, that I do not bother to take these snaps as RAW files. And I never use RAW&JPEG. It is just to tedious to split the pairs in Photos and keep just the RAW file, after I looked at the JPEG.

The library on my internal drive has currently a size of 228GB, this library is syncing with iCloud . This size is ok on my Macs with the 1TB system drive and even fits onto my iPhone with the 256GB storage. I have a couple of small, portable 3TB drives, so I can carry the archive of all other photos easily around. The 3TB drives are getting full, however. I will soon have to replace them by larger drives.

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Answer 12

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,558 points

Mar 17, 2019 2:43 AM in response to m1andrews

Couple of thoughts:

Shooting Raw+Jpeg is pretty redundant. That setting is mostly aimed at pro shooters, like photo journalists, who need a quick copy of the image to send out immediately. Pretty much any workflow that imports a Raw create a Jpeg preview anyway, so you have effectively three version of the same shot, which is just a waste of disk space.

DxO is a far better raw processor than Photos, but then you get what you pay for.

If you want to use a Referenced Library then don't use Photos. Among the apps that will manage a referenced library successfully are Lightroom Classic, Mylio, CaptureOne and OnOne Photo Raw. These will also allow you to import your images into your preferred folder organisation.

Your preferred folder organisation is probably pointless if you use a Photo Manager, like the ones named above. The purpose of these apps is to allow you to organise in the application window, not in the Finder. Those some, like LR Classic, will allow you to arrange the files on the disk as you prefer - including moving and renaming - as long as you do it in the Application Window.

There are other ways to sync your images across your Mac and iOS devices than Apple Photos. These include the basic (and free) Google Photos, and on to things like LightroomCC and Mylio.

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Answer 13

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,558 points

Mar 21, 2019 12:05 AM in response to m1andrews

Some thoughts on your numbered sections:

2: LRCC will do this: your primary images are stored in the Cloud, but it can automatically sync copies back to wherever you choose - an external HD, for instance. Regardless, there is no need to move your Library from an external HD to your internal these days. There is no discernible performance difference.

4: Adobe say they aim to bring feature parity between LR Classic and LRCC over time.

5: Mylio is indeed a very cool app. And while no one can predict the future, I think they fact that they've been subscription driven from the beginning gives them a good chance of survival

6: ACDSEE abandoned the Mac platform before (and so may do again). Their Mac version is not as feature rich as their Windows version. CaptureOne is an amazing app, and in an entirely different league from apps like ACDSEE and Mylio. But it has a steep learning curve, and is probably not as flexible an organiser as Lightroom or Mylio. But there's not much in it. Heck of price difference tho.

7: Photoshop Element is an editor primarily. It's not really an organiser.

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