Replace Lightroom with Photos?

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Level 1

20 points

Replace Lightroom with Photos?

For the past 3-4 years, I have been using Adobe Lightroom for all my photo needs. I found I don't use that many features. I do edits with exposure, highlights, shadows, etc. I do like Lightroom mobile, as I can edit photos on my daily commute, but Lightroom may be overkill for my needs.

I was thinking that the new Apple Photo app may be all I need. It would save me the $10/month Adobe subscription fee too, even if I ended up paying for more iCloud storage.

However, i ran into a few issues when testing Photos. First, I have a MacBook Air. My library file would be huge if I import all of my photos and may not even fit with the available space. In Lightroom, only my catalog is stored locally, the photos themselves are on an external drive. I would prefer this setup in Photos as well for this space constraints.

I did read about external/referenced files in Photos where you leave the photos in another location outside of Photos library. This sounds promising but then they do not sync via iCloud, which I would want so I can edit photos on my phone during my commute. They only sync if stored in the actual library file.

Does anyone else have a similar setup? If so, how did you work around it, or should I just stick with Lightroom?

Posted on Sep 10, 2015 8:15 AM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Sep 13, 2015 1:41 PM in response to basleyb

Photos does have a referenced capability similar to LR but it is not well implemented and does no have the necessary tools to effectively use it and generally is not a good idea - see iPhoto and File Management which although is about iPhoto is still the same with Photos except Photso does have ne feature that iphoto did not which is the ability toe convert a referenced library to a managed library

You can run Photos with the entire managed library on an external drive - that drive much be formatted Mac OS extended (journaled), Connected with a fast wired connection like USB, FireWire or ThunderBolt and must always be available before you launch Photos

LN

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Sep 10, 2015 8:34 AM in response to basleyb

You have several options:

Keep your Photos Library on your system drive and use iCloud Photo Library, but enable "Optimize Mac Storage". This way only small previews will be ket locally and the originals are in iCloud. "Optimize" can shrink your library down to about 10% of the original size. But you will always need an internet connection.
Make your library referenced to an external drive, and a subset of your photos managed to be able to upload them to iCloud. That is a potentially confusing, risky setup.
Use two Photos Libraries, a small one managed on your internal drive to upload to iCloud. and a second library with finished projects on an external drive.
Or keep your complete library on the external drive and make that your iCloud Library, but you will always need to connect the external drive to access the photos with the Photos.app. If the drive is not available you can access the iCloud Photo Library using the web interface on your iCloud page www.cloud.com.

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Answer 3

basleyb Author

Level 1

20 points

Sep 10, 2015 7:42 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks. I didn't try moving the entire managed library to the external drive yet. I'll give that a try this weekend to see how it performs. Plugging it in before opening Photos isn't that much of a comprise, especially since I need to do that now to access the photos from the Lightroom catalog.

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Answer 4

basleyb Author

Level 1

20 points

Sep 10, 2015 7:43 PM in response to léonie

I think your option 4 may be the best option to try. Will give it a go this weekend and see how it performs. The other options seem to be, as you say, either risky or confusing.

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