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Can we do software requests? possible Lightroom alternative?


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Long-term, I hope this is something Serif gets into, but for now, I'm pretty happy with Lightroom. Given that it's a much newer Adobe product, it has a more modern codebase and UI paradigm, and there are also still somewhat significant improvements in each new version.

 

All that said, Adobe doesn't have a fire lit under them anymore with Apple dropping Aperture, so we'll see if LR starts to stagnate or become a subscription-only product. And even if it does neither, I have no doubt Serif would do some pretty cool things with the DAM / nondestructive photo developer concept.

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Apple Photos happily imports RAW files and sorts them by shooting time and location (if GPS available). You can further group photos into albums/smart albums. It also allows you to hit "Edit in Affinity Photo." So since Macs already have a free DAM, the market for a dedicated DAM is small... Dev resources are better spent on Designer/Photo/Publisher.

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Apple Photos happily imports RAW files and sorts them by shooting time and location (if GPS available). You can further group photos into albums/smart albums. It also allows you to hit "Edit in Affinity Photo." 

No it doesn't? Not yet anyway. It looks like Serif need to make an extension for that first? Unless I'm missing something. :)

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Does Photos allow you to enter keywords (flat or hierarchical), IPTC data (contact info, content info, image info and status info), GPS data etc.? There is more to DAM software than just sorting and grouping. As far as market goes, Phase One added DAM capability to Capture One (think it was last year) and you have how many using Lightroom and MediaPro? I don't know what Apple was thinking when they killed Aperture which had how many users? DAM is not a niche market...

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Well I really hope that Photo matches Lightroom RAW development capabilities and image quality. Its not the case at this point, Photo's RAW processing is very basic and is far beyond LR or Capture One image quality wise (especially highlights/shadows recovery and clarity).

 

For photographers if you make RAW development as good as LR or C1 then many people will say goodbye to Adobe forever ;)

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I would really welcome a competitor to Lightroom and Capture One.

 

Capture One gets the file processing right, and I love how they have provided such finely controlled tools for skin color. But the user interface is terrible compared to Lightroom. And I really don't understand why they insist on forcing users into their sessions or catalogue workflow. I am not allowed to simply develop 2-3 photos from a folder by dragging and dropping onto C1, but have to import them into a session in C1, which is just plain silly.

 

Lightroom on the other hand has a lovely GUI but up until v6 was unusably slow, and the RAW processing quality just can't compete with C1 (I hear the argument over and over that files can be made to look the same in lightroom - but not without a lot of effort, and still not quite as good in my opinion). 

 

Would love to see Serif get both the GUI and file quality right.

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Apple Photos {...} also allows you to hit "Edit in Affinity Photo."

As already mentioned, Apple's new Photos app does not have an external editor option like the now no longer in development iPhoto did. Apple said in the press release for the new "El Capitan" OS X version due this fall that "you’ll be able to download third-party editing extensions from the Mac App Store℠ and access them directly within the Photos app," but that isn't the same thing.

 

As a workaround, you can use the OS X Media browser (available in the Finder sidebar) to open image files in the Apple Photos Library (as long as it is the designated "System Photo Library") directly from within Affinity products using the Open or Place menu items, or from within the Affinity Media Browser.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 4 weeks later...

I can certainly understand why Affinity isn't in the DAM/PIE business.

 

If you need something, try Mylio.

 

People often misunderstand it, and think it's a cloud storage application, but although it can do that, it's more about peer to peer synching. It basically watches folders, then syncs the results over several devices, so all have the same photos, or thumbnails or previews thereof.

 

So, with AP, you can use say ~/Pictures/Portraits on your desktop, and have thumbnails of those synced to your phone. It's referenced within Mylio, so you can open say "Bob" in AP, save in AP's format back to Portraits, and also export a TIFF there, which Mylio can see, edit, apply metadata to, and synch to the iPhone. It does its own raw processing, and can even apply color profiles from Xrite calibrated iOS devices on iOS devices.

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Like some others I'm trying to find the soft to replace Aperture in my workflow.

 

I'm very interested by DxO Optics Pro, at least when they'll integrate the profile for my EOS 750D, which should be done soon now.

It seems that the optics/camera corrections are very accurate and I'm very interested by the external module ViewPoint to correct perspectives.

 

 

I'm just wondering if the cataloging part is good enough with tags and intelligent folders for example.

 

Does anybody have some feedback about that application and its integration on a photographer's workflow ?

OS X 10.12 - AP 1.6.6 - AD 1.6

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  • 1 month later...

Have been very impressed with both Designer and Photos, so I'd be very interested in any DAM solution Serif work on. I'm happy with my current Aperture + Affinity Photos workflow, but I've got an annual OS update reminder that this is a solution that's on a limited lifespan.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Now that El Capitan is out. I'm waiting for Affinity Photo extensibility in Photos. In the mean time, I do have MacPhun's Intensify, Tonality and Noiseless which now support OS X Photos extension. I get the full editing capability of these apps in Photos so that bring photo editing/development on par with Lightroom!!!!!

 

I feel that I would have large collection of really awesome professional level editing capabilities centered around Photos as the dam. At least the editing will be awesome. Cross fingers Serif will extend Affinity Photo to OS X Photos!!!! Would love to have that.

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AP as an extension for Apple Fotos is already set for the next MAS version, it even works already with the current beta.

 

- sidetone - IMHO - I don´t see Apple Foto anywhere close to a serious DAM. It´s just not flexible by any means.

 

 

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About Darktable (http://www.darktable.org), I find Darktable to be great and extremely powerful in ways that others are DAM/raw editors cannot match. The learn curve is a bit steep but the key area to master are:

 

1)masks.

2)parametric mask (luminance masking, or based on color, tone, etc).

3) Equalizer adjustment which does CONTINUOUS frequency separation editing (continuous whereas Affinity Photo has 2 levels of high-pass and low-pass in 2 layers).

 

Once you master these three feature, Darkroom is extremely powerful and can do things that Lightroom and Aperture cannot. It's an awesome tool.

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I'm still really hoping Affinity Photo will have a complete OS X extension suite for complete photo development. I personally think it would be a good market for them because it would attract broader base of users beyond their current market of composition/design oriented professionals and prosumers. In addition to competing with Photoshop CC, it also puts Affinity Photo in direct competition with Lightroom.

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  • 1 month later...

I'd rather see logic similar to Aperture than LR or anything what smells like Adobe. It's not the 'holly' war, it's about the logic, usability, workflow, where LR is out. Integration to OS, unity, that's the most powerful thing. The cumbersome Bridge is parody for productivity..

And the fact Aperture is dead-meat - for me it's obvious - bring the other companies (like Serif) to platform is more valuable than keep it closed just for in-house & parody by name Adobe.

  I tried many DAMs & not only pure DAM (eg: CaptureOne has built-in functions), but NONE of them are close to Aperture - NONE. If has nice logic and pleasant UI, then it's missing catalog functions or vice-versa. Some of them don't even recognize some cameras (some - ridiculously iPhone) or they're simply slow when comes to processing things (I mean computing).

Please don't mention Darktable, ASP, DigiKam - please refrain from mentioning these as they belongs not to different league, but to completely different competition - it's waste of time even when installing nor comparing to true DAM.

I am perfectly ok with using 2-3 SW as workflow (DAM with some basic-limited build-in functions / external RAW editor/filters), but with OS integration. Not like current Photos => any-editor => Photos  - that's pretty inconvenient..

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  • 1 month later...

Another Aperture orphan here. Already tried Capture One Pro and Lightroom and unfortunately the modular interface and poor UI/UX made me continue to use Aperture hoping for something better. I am really looking forward to see what Affinity can come up with on this territory.

 

Rafael

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since this thread seems to have been effectively pinned as the future DAM app feature request thread, I'd like to copy what I posted earlier on two occasions, which never got any response.  I guess I could sum up both of these by just saying "do it like Aperture did it", but here they are for reference.

 

 

Two things: 

 

1) Please make the DAM application, as well as its utilization of Affinity Photo as an "external" editor, as non-destructive as possible.  At its best, AP would not even be considered "external" at all, but just another editing instruction set that doesn't touch or duplicate the original file.  This is a top priority for me.

 

2) Those of who cite Bridge as the superior due to its "in-place" approach to file management, both Aperture and Lightroom (and Capture One) can do the same type of "referenced" management.  Bridge is a god awful mess of an application.  I hope nothing is modeled after it where DAM is concerned.  Libraries/Catalogs have come a long way since iPhoto started hiding originals years ago.  They're not a bad idea anymore.  But it's always nice and necessary to allow files to remain unmanaged (just not the way Bridge does it).

 

 

And this way back in Feb '15

 

 

Posted 11 February 2015 - 07:08 PM

 

Perhaps the greatest need goes beyond Photo editing, and beyond what Affinity Designer is doing.  Think bigger.  The weak spot in any workflow is Digital Asset Management (DAM).  Hierarchical Folder organizing is terribly inefficient and outdated.  Adobe Bridge tried to solve that but .xmp sidecar files are messy.  Lightroom is the king of photo DAM now that Aperture is being phased out.  But Aperture had DAM right.  It was the absolute best at organizing, sorting, rating, version stacking and keyboarding, and while its RAW engine was mediocre, it made up for it with the best roundtrip editing workflow out there.  It was totally under appreciated except by those who dug in and used it to the fullest, and now there's a huge gap to be filled.  We need something to compete with Lightroom, and it needs to be database driven.  Forget sidecar files.  If you can come up with a way to truly manage digital assets - not just photos, but video, vector files and (god willing) your future replacement for InDesign files, you'd blow Adobe and its cloud subscription service out of the water.

 

Please please consider an application to manage our files.  The Finder just doesn't cut it.

 

(I'm not sure what type of integration will be possible with the new Photos app that's "replacing" iPhoto and Aperture, but word is you can't do star ratings or stacks, and it might never be up to snuff)

 

 

 

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Does Photos allow you to enter keywords (flat or hierarchical), IPTC data (contact info, content info, image info and status info), GPS data etc.? There is more to DAM software than just sorting and grouping. As far as market goes, Phase One added DAM capability to Capture One (think it was last year) and you have how many using Lightroom and MediaPro? I don't know what Apple was thinking when they killed Aperture which had how many users? DAM is not a niche market...

However much I liked Aperture, I switched to Capture One for raw conversion, and then started using its DAM features. It rocks, and I don't intend to switch unless something comes along that is far better. Its raw conversion would be hard to beat, but there might perhaps be advances to be made on the DAM side. Multi-user capability would be great so that both me and my assistant could work on the same library at the same time, for example.

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  • 2 weeks later...



Hey,

 

Thanks for Affinity products

 

+1 on this thread

 

Tried http://apple.com/osx/photos/ and http://darktable.org/ since boycotting Adobe products last year (e.g. http://adobe.com/products/bridge.html )


 

Currently, https://www.phaseone.com/en/Products/Software/Capture-One-Pro/Highlights.aspx appears to be filling the gap nicely. Can't believe I managed DAM (digital asset management) with Apple Preview for so long during the interim period

 

Hope this is useful

 

Regards




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