Q: Photos pix manager & LR etc. editor?

And since we now have both "extensions" and in particular the "External Editors" extension, I'm wondering why I shouldn't just use Photos for management and my "catalog," and some minor/quickie edits, and go out to any of the others I prefer to do more complex work.

That is what I have been doing since the editing extensions have become available.

My main reason to stick with Photos is iCloud Photo Library.  There is no other easy way to sync my Photos Library across multiple Macs.

I found that I do not need to fall back on the Photo editing extens too often. I am careful to take my photos in a way that they do not need much editingbeyond straighten the horizon lsightly, cropping, perhaps correct the white balance and adjust highlights and shadows. All that can be done in Photos.

I mainly use the extensions or external editors for a perspective correction, if it was not possible to take the picture with the correct perspective, for skin smoothing,  and for retouching. I try to avoid the extensions if the edit can be done in Photos, for two reasons:

• The extensions will create a new quasi master file, just like Aperture did. So they will break the lossloss editing.
• And they are not yet as stable as I could wish. For example, the Affinity extensions cannot edit some  panoramic shots, they may crop the edited section. And I am frequently getting an error message, when I try to save the edited version - for affinity extensions and MacPhun extensions, mostly, if I try to apply several extensions to the same photo.

Nothing wrong with your plan except to the extent that you do not understand the difference between a Photo management system (like LightRoom for example) and a Photo editor (like PhotoShop or PS elements)

You can use any editor with Photos - you can NOT use another Photo management System with Photos - it must have its own database (its own copy of every Photo)

And one wonders if you have looked at the full editing capabilities of Photos - it is not up to LR or Aperture but is darn good - have you opened up all of the editing tools ad the subtools within them?

LN

An application has to provide services as a photo editing extension.  The manufacture has to add the capability to the application. You will not get the full application as a photo editing extension, only the specific services that have implemented as a photo editing extension. For example, Affinity Photos is making these six actions available as a photo editing extension, by far not the full editing tools in that application:

This user tip is listing all photo editing extensions I tried:

  Photo Editing Extensions for Photos for Mac

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-9492

The external Editor extension is calling the full application.

But you can only call the applications, that the external Editor extension recognizes as photo editing editors.

if you are calling the specific external editor extensions provided by the applications, you are having the advantage that the graphical user interface will be similar for all extensions. They are having a unified look and feel.

Not sure what you find curious

once again any external editor can be used as an external editor - Photos manager like LightRoom can not be used as an external editor - which was your specific question

Photos pix manager & LR etc. editor?

Editors - Yes

Photos managers  - no

exactly what is it your find curious?

And since you have determined that you do not plan to use Photos anyway it is not at all clear why you are posting here at all

Now that I own all these others I'll probably end up using one of them and Google Photos, which is, in my experience, as good as if not considerably better than the iCloud option which I found much slower and more cumbersome to use, though I like the "automatic" nature of the thing.

LN

And I I hae explained twice - LR is in a class of software that can not be used with the external editors for Mac exertion - PSE is not a photo manager and can be used as an external editor

And what I mean is exactly what I said you are mixing two different classes of software into one - and one of the classes can not be used and one can - when you mix them you show your confusion and are likely to confuse others - unfortunately it seems that every time you post here you spread confusion and create controversy

Like for example this statement is totally incorrect

, Photos uses a "captive" catalog not accessible outside of photos,

Everything in Photos is easily accessible - you simply have to read the procedures and follow them

LN

Photos uses a "captive" catalog not accessible outside of photos, whereas the others tend to use existing OS X file folders

Another note on this in addition to Larry's comment:

Photos as a Photo Manager is in many respects very similar to iPhoto and Aperture. One reason why I like it. It is keeping a database of photos, and the photos are much more than the image files you imported. A file manager only handles files and file attributes without understanding the specific properties of photos.

So it would be futile to expose the files and folders with  the original image files to the user for access by a file manager. A photo consists of many items distributed across the library - the original image file, a history of edits that need to be applied, a history of metadata that need to be applied, different versions of the same image, the albums and smart albums it is in, etc. And the current versions of a photo live in limbo and do not exists as image files other than as previews or thumbnails. The image files for sharing the photo will only be created, when you need them. This way you will get the best results for the size and quality of the image file you want, because they will be derived from the original you imported. You could access the originals by poking around in the Photos Library package (not recommended!), but you need to use Photos to create the edited version of the photo in custom sizes. And if we are using iCloud Photo Library, the original image files are in iCloud anyway and there may be no copies on the Mac, if the library is optimized.

This lossless workflow is also the reason why I try to avoid external editors with Photos, Aperture, iPhoto. An external editor will return the edited version finalized with all edits burned in as a new quasi master file. We are not able to revert the external edits individually, only revert to the original. This breaks the lossless workflow and increased the storage used, because the new quasi master needs to be stored.