[[Poll] Do you need a DAM? And what should it be like?]

Having had my interest in this topic re-lit as it were, I have been doing some searching across the net for an alternative to Lightroom. Judging by the number of variations on this question and the number of reviews of possible contenders, plus the lack of a clear recommendation for a competitive alternative, it's obvious that Lightroom has a very strong market position , despite the existence of numerous also-rans - a very good reason for Serif to want to compete with it. But if they are to compete, their starting point is not likely to be to listen to what we, the current users of Affinity, have to say about how we would like the thing to work. Rather it is to figure out how many Lightroom customers they could drag away from the subscription model, and how many photographers they could drag into the Affinity orbit. So the thing to consider first is the marketing strategy. What is needed to appeal to the widest possible market? That in turn will drive the overall design goals, which may well result in something that does not please you or I. Software should always be conceived top-down rather than nuts-and-bolts-up. But that's how it should be, if you are a Serif shareholder. Lightroom is successful for a reason. Maybe they have the best i.e.most widely appealing design. If that's the case, then Serif have to copy it, but in doing so, make it better. I only wish they would get on with it.

 

Good thing this isn't twitter, 'cos I feel some potential differences of opinion coming my way...

 

 

[[Poll] Do you need a DAM? And what should it be like?]

Yes, I definitely need a DAM. As an amateur snapper who got hooked into Aperture long before I converted to shooting raw, I do really appreciate the productivity improvements that can be made when importing, flagging, renaming and storing away files. Yes, yes, I know you can be ultimately flexible using operating system tools, but what a pain! I have lain Aperture aside to die peacefully, and have longed for a decent replacement, but it would have to include functionality to handle raws, edited Affinity files and jpegs/tiffs separately, so that one didn't fill up the ssd with files that essentially belonged in an archive. For me, subscription mode is out, but I have been hanging on for years now waiting for Serif to come up with their own 'front-end' to Affinity Photo, a project which has been promised for some time. I'm beginning to loose faith, but it's encouraging to at least see it being talked about again.

[Early Experiences with HDR]

John - thanks for your reply.

 

I had in fact abandoned the set of photos, so in order to answer your questions, I have retrieved them and re-run the HDR tone mapping.

 

Would you believe it? The strange behaviour of Photo 'inventing' colours not there before was not replicated, and I managed to get a quite usable image. All the same, many thanks for your helpful response.

[Early Experiences with HDR]

Hi Guys

 

Let's start by saying that I'm a newbie not just to HDR, but to Affinity Photo itself, so go easy on the sarcastic remarks.

 

I have just tried out the HDR functionality by taking a tripod-mounted set of five exposures on my Sony A72, ranging from -2 to +2 stops.

They were recorded as jpegs.

 

Now in all the exposures, the sky has very little discernible tone, and in the +1 and +2 versions, none at all.

 

When I create an HDR set, the sky is depicted not as a region of no tone, but more like a simulated picture of the northern lights, with successive bands of pale blue, lavender and white. Completely unusable.

 

The likelihood is that I'm doing something wrong. The possibility is that HDR is failing to make something out of nothing.

 

Anyone else had this experience?

[Adobe Lightroom/PS -vs- Affinity Photo]

Hi Wingshooter

 

I can quite understand why you are puzzled and maybe a little confused in making comparisons between the Adobe products and AP.  I too have been puzzled and very confused in doing the same comparison.

 

For me, the crux of the issue is not price, but functionality. (Though I do have serious issues at just how damned intrusive the Adobe cloud suite is).

 

So, again for me, the most pertinent replies you have got so far are from Keith Reeder and Redbaron, who both point out that the design goals of the products are different. In order to find that out, I too did a trial download of Lightroom and one of AP, and decided to go for AP, even though it totally lacks any form of digital file management. Now that I have a few months of experience of AP, I think I know where I am. I love the incredible range of pixel editing tools, but just hate the necessity to hand-manage the numerous files involved. Not only do I resent it, but it's also unbelievably time consuming. 

 

Coming home from a shoot, I might have two or three hundred images, some in raw, some jpeg. Many are alternate images of the same landscape. So the first job is to view all of these images, maybe six at a time, and eliminate the duds. Forever. I don't want to see them again or have them hanging around in my folders. Now I want to compare the remaining duplicate images to pick out the best shots, working maybe two to a screen. I want to select these, and leave the unselected ones to the side for a while. Now I want to work on the selected images with the image adjustment tools and finally commit them to my library. The unselected ones can now be junked if they are not needed.

 

I used to work in Aperture, which was perfect for providing me with the database management tools for doing this job, even if it's editing capabilities were very limited compared to AP. I could wrap up a day's shooting in a couple of hours or less. Lightroom would be just as quick, I guess, and it's editing capabilities superior to Aperture. But now that I am using AP, I am finding myself spending hours and hours in this image processing exercise. I even have to keep track of what I am doing using a pen and paper!

 

So for you, I would say that you have first to settle on your priorities. Do you want to take lots of images and be efficient in their management, (Lightroom) or do you want to be more selective in your images and have a lot more scope in their editing, (AP)? 

 

Now, Serif have already announced that they are working on tools for image management, but so far I have not seen a projected release date for the new features/new product. But it's going to be a complicated tool if it's going to be efficient. Imagine you have a 50Mpixel camera and take a couple of hundred images. Loading that lot would overwhelm most computers, so for selection purposes, you could work at (much) lower resolutions, only loading the whole file when it comes to editing. That's not how AP does things currently, so their new product may be a good solution for me, or maybe it will not.

 

What do I do in the meantime? Well, I'm still trying to decide. Perhaps I will go back to Aperture until the new Serif product appears. Perhaps I will learn a better workflow from some more experienced AP user? But one thing is for sure. I do not wish to consume whole days in sorting and editing photos.

 

good luck with your decision.

 

julian

[Workflow Strategy for Photos]

I'm yet another refugee from the Apple Aperture camp. I have looked at Lightroom, and found it excellent, but cannot abide the Adobe Creative Studio add-in software, which practically takes over your machine. I've also looked at DXO extensions for Apple Photos. Now I have bought into Affinity, with the intention of creating a workflow in which I first load raw files into Affinity, to take advantage of the editing power, and then export the results as jpegs for loading into Apple's Photos, which will form my primary library. I use Apple Airplay to display images on the TV, and iCloud to share with other members of the family, so the last thing I need is a non-Apple-compatible DAM system. (I understand that you in the process of developing a home-grown Digital Asset Management system). I do not require to manage the original raw files, which I shall progressively discard as storage becomes limited.

 

So the nub of my question is, how do I go about designing a work flow that is efficient, and ends up with my edited jpegs in Apple's Photos?

 

I have consulted the Help application and watched many of the videos, but I'm unable to see an efficient way to proceed. For example, I might take 10 shots of one subject, and dozens of subjects in a day. First off I want to view all shots of the same subject and select the most promising for Developing. Now I want apply some general presets to every selected image. Then I will go into individual images to perform specific edits. Finally I shall want to export the edited jpegs and then import them into Photos. The videos and the Help text do not seem to give me this sort of overview, as they concentrate on performing edits one photo at a time.

 

I'd be grateful for any pointers that you can give me.