Affinity Photo DAM

[Fixx]

13 hours ago, drmoss_ca said:

What I want in a DAM is integration with the Finder and with the image editor. LR got that part just about perfectly. If Affinity Photo let me browse my folders and then edit a selected photo the way LR did it would be wonderful.

LR integration with Finder is not really very good. LR replicates kind of folder view of imported photos but it is very clumsy. Browsing is only for imported folders, not freely all Finder available folder system. If you want to browse freely you use import dialog and well.. importing may take a while.

[Ron P.]

In LR when browsing, you are browsing just what the catalog has reference to. Your images are still on your hard drives in their original locations. LR constructs a catalog reference to them. So you can't just freely browse, through LR, all images on your system, unless you have imported (the reference to) all of them.

[drmoss_ca]

9 hours ago, Fixx said:

LR integration with Finder is not really very good. LR replicates kind of folder view of imported photos but it is very clumsy. Browsing is only for imported folders, not freely all Finder available folder system. If you want to browse freely you use import dialog and well.. importing may take a while.

That wasn't an issue for me, as I keep my photos in folders by year. I just had all the folders imported into the sidebar of LR.

[KC Honie]

On 8/7/2020 at 8:31 AM, photoShooter said:

Affinity announced about five or six years ago that they were making a DAM. Then they recanted and said they were not. Then they announced that they definitely were making a DAM. However, after five years and no product, one has to wonder how committed they are to making a DAM. I understand that Affinity would like to avoid being tied to a release date, but it would be nice to get updates on occasion as to what they are doing. Many people, including myself, have postponed investments in other DAM software in the hopes that Affinity would produce something, but people cannot wait forever.

I agree with some of the comments on here that the lack of a DAM prevents many from committing entirely to Affinity products. It would be nice to have the entire photo workflow go through Affinity software as it would be a seamless process instead of using software from multiple manufacturers. At any rate, some acknowledgement from Affinity management would be a proper courtesy to its customers and fan base.

I seriously doubt that Serif is going to produce the two products necessary to replace LR, 1) a DAM, and 2) a RAW Photo Developer. [Affinity Photo is a Photoshop competitor, not a Lightroom competitor]

I ditched Adobe years ago for Affinity Products and Capture One Pro, and I am quite happy with with the transition.  My digital asset library is 99.9% photos so managing them in C1P and Finder is not a major issue. If I had a much more comprehensive list of file types I was using then a proper DAM would be sorely needed.

I use C1P to develop the majority of my RAW images and when I need to do more to photo or group of photos, then I will add Affinity Photo to the mix.

There is absolutely no way that a photographer shooting hundreds or sometimes thousands of images during a shoot can use Affinity Photo as a primary RAW developer. (That is not what Affinity Photo was designed to do)  

So, Serif will have to create, 1) a lightroom clone, or 3) a DAM that works with most of the RAW Developers apps out there.  

Edit:  More random thoughts...

Serif is in a bit of a quandary.  Photographers that are using the LR/PS pairing don't have a reasonable path out of the Adobe ecosystem.  I would love for Serif to partner with Capture One to recreate the tight LR/PS linking and to create a proper DAM. (there by creating a reasonable path from Adobe)

The challenge would be if Serif partnered with one of the lesser RAW Developer software companies.  Pro's and high end enthusiasts are overwhelmingly going to use LR and C1P not the lessor products that I will not name here.

The other option is to fork Raw Therapy or Darktable, but I am not sure how they would monetize that.

I would love to be a fly on the wall during Serif's strategic planning and product development meetings

I suspect what Serif is (or is it are) going to do is recognize that the photography segment is dramatically shrinking and will ignore both the DAM and Raw Developer spaces.

***********************************

As an aside I made the switch to C1P several years ago and am very happy with C1P (there are things that I can do in it that I only dreamt about in LR).  I now have tens of thousands of RAW images developed in C1P and there is absolutely no way at this point that I would switch Raw Developers. For me to switch to a Serif RAW Developer, it would have to be completely compatible with C1P and LR developed images...

Serif's first product salvo should have been two products released simultaneously:  Affinity Photo and Affinity Developer followed shortly with Affinity DAM, then Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, then they would not be backed into the corner that they are now in.

But time will tell

 

[drmoss_ca]

Do you not find the RAW module useful at all? I confess I haven't played with it as I'm a film photographer and I'm importing scans of negatives as large TIFF files.

[KC Honie]

23 hours ago, drmoss_ca said:

Do you not find the RAW module useful at all? I confess I haven't played with it as I'm a film photographer and I'm importing scans of negatives as large TIFF files.

I assume this question is for me...  The raw module is extraordinarily useful and it is the equivalent of camera raw in photoshop.  Adobe's camera raw is the RAW developer in both PS and LR.

Neither PS nor Affinity Photo was designed for high volume production work.  Lightroom, Capture One Pro, et al. were designed with the working photographer in mind.  When I do a shoot and come back with several hundred or a thousand images, Affinity Photo never crosses my mind. I cull the images in Fast Raw Viewer and catalog and develop with Capture One Pro. If there are images that I want to manipulate further, then I use Affinity Photo.

 

Edit:

Serif has created a bit of a pickle for themselves.  At this stage I really don't care how brilliant of a LR/C1P product they develop, I am now locked in to C1P with tens of thousands of RAW files developed with C1P, some utilizing styles that I have created and nearly all of them utilizing multiple layers (unless the edits are 100% compatible, then I might consider it).

I also think Capture One's Raw converter is superior to both Adobe's and Serif's...

I would love to see Capture One/Phase One and Serif collaborate but I suspect that is just a pipe dream...

[stuartbarry]

I agree with the points made in your posts and have similar issues with high volume workflow. I have been testing the Affinity Photo + NeoFinder combination and made some notes on the attached file, in case people want to read about my experiences.workflow affinity and neofinder.pdf

[KC Honie]

39 minutes ago, stuartbarry said:

I agree with the points made in your posts and have similar issues with high volume workflow. I have been testing the Affinity Photo + NeoFinder combination and made some notes on the attached file, in case people want to read about my experiences.workflow affinity and neofinder.pdf

Wow, nicely articulated!

Serif, are you paying attention?

[PMThomson]

On 8/12/2020 at 7:33 AM, stuartbarry said:

This is a very difficult subject and everyone has their own workflow and valid opinion. Nevertheless, I am going to risk wading in and give some of my experiences. I am not making a recommendation, just saying what I think is important and what works for me.

I was a full time professional photographer and latterly videographer for 10 years. I have closed my company but have a back catalogue of 100,000+ photos and videos. I still actively submit work to Alamy. During those years I largely worked on PCs, but a few years ago switched mostly to Macs, which I now much prefer. But I have data and programs on both platforms. In catalogue terms I started using a small PC program about 10 years ago and gradually moved to MS Expression, Media Pro, the original beta Lightroom then versions of Lightroom up to CS6. I have the entire CS6 production suite and updated every new release, but once Adobe switched to a subscription model with no backward compatibility I vowed never to touch an Adobe product again. Lightroom is the last program to be turned off - and I am getting there.

For several years I have used Lightroom 4,5,6 as an essential tool in cataloguing and initially processing my images. All my images from about 2005 onwards are Canon RAW, converted to DNG, and since I take care to get most things right in the camera I can do about 95% of my processing only in LR Developer and leave the RAW files untouched, with few jpg or psd copies. I have produced books, albums and prints directly from here, so a huge productivity gain.

I have now been using Affinity Photo and Publisher for some time and they are both fantastic products. I have for a long time kept my eye open for a LR replacement and in the last few weeks actively tried lots of them. I finally (and with some difficulty) found NeoFinder (same product on Windows with a slightly different name). You can have a free version or, for a modest charge, an unlimited version. Within minutes I had imported loads of files from various network drives (something severely limited in LR). I could easily jump directly into Affinity Photo or Publisher for editing. But here is the missing link.

With RAW processing the viewer changes the view of the image, but nothing changes on file. So NeoFinder and APhoto cannot write back changes. Those changes are the things that LR or Apple Photos stores, and you can easily revert original - the beauty of RAW. This gives me an awkward workflow. If I process the RAW image in aphoto I have to develop and save as aphoto, jpg, psd or whatever, increasing my storage and file viewing complexity. I also have to jump in and out of APhoto. Interestingly, Apple Photos is tightly integrated with APhoto. You can do basic image corrections through Apple Photo with APhoto, and Apple Photo then represents these changes in the latest view. In this respect the system works a little like LR.

If only Serif would create the same integration with NeoFinder as with Apple Photo my problems would be solved. I'd have more or less the equivalent of LR, but with far more extensive searching capability and some extra good bits with Apple Photos sharing images in iCloud if I wish. They would save a lot of development time and be able to tap into a good DAM almost like a plugin.

As things stand I'll probably continue with NeoFinder (handles all file types including video with metadata), does not create sidecar files (other than with aphoto format). Since I can almost simultaneously import a folder into both Neofinder and Apple Photos I'll use this approach so that I can quickly go through all my RAW images using the Apply Photos interface, then use the power of Neofinder for finding, geotagging, things with Apple Script and so on.

Sorry it's such a long post but I have used many generations of DAM and my experience has led me to where I am - still searching.

 

Stuart, do you get photo previews of afphoto files on NeoFinder.  I cannot seem to get this to work correctly.  I am using Affinity Photo 1.8.6 and I have enabled the save thumbnails with documents option but no luck on getting NeoFinder to show the preview.  If I could find out how to fix this, I think it would work great as my DAM for now.  Thanks for any ideas.  Paul

[harrym]

Just want to throw another thought into the mix on this. I'm not sure that photographers (the majority that seem to be calling for DAM) are the main users of AP. Actually I'm not sure serf see that user group as their main sales target. (Ref develop module) Maybe it's just not worth the effort.

[Jonah9000]

1 hour ago, harrym said:

Just want to throw another thought into the mix on this. I'm not sure that photographers (the majority that seem to be calling for DAM) are the main users of AP. Actually I'm not sure serf see that user group as their main sales target. (Ref develop module) Maybe it's just not worth the effort.

Who is the main user group? 

[gizmo2501]

I would love whatever DAM they (hopefully) do release to also work well for video as a video library.

[harrym]

20 hours ago, Jonah9000 said:

Who is the main user group? 

I don't know but going by the show your work off section graphic designers seem to have a big if not main influence in the direction of this software.

I'm not saying I'm correct just throwing a thought into the mix.

[DigitalVisuals]

As windows and AP user, I use AbeMedia as DAM, way... It let me see all my raw files, nef, cr2. And I can open them directly in AP.  For my its not needed to update my Raw files I want them so they are for later edit if I want it.
AbeMedia has the option to set tags for every photo, images or other.  So  quit easy to search fast thru all the images. If I search on special data its possible. 

[pwjohnson]

I use CaptureOne 20 for Fuji as a DAM, and Affinity Photo to further edit my photos. I have not figured out how to make those softwares work together. Could it be through RAW editing in Affinity Photo ? I also find a lot of redondancy to those 2 softwares. I prefer the way Capture One presents its tools, but A Photo has more functions in terms of layers, etc.

[KC Honie]

On 12/27/2020 at 10:26 AM, pwjohnson said:

I use CaptureOne 20 for Fuji as a DAM, and Affinity Photo to further edit my photos. I have not figured out how to make those softwares work together. Could it be through RAW editing in Affinity Photo ? I also find a lot of redondancy to those 2 softwares. I prefer the way Capture One presents its tools, but A Photo has more functions in terms of layers, etc.

Go to Paul Reiffer's youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/Paulreiffer/search?query=affinity

You will have to search for round tripping to Affinity Photo, but it is covered in one of his video.

The thing to remember is C1P and AP are tools designed for two completely different scenarios.  No different than LR and PS other than LR and PS share the same raw converter (Camera Raw).

Most photographers primarily use either C1P or LR (or one of the lesser applications) to develop their images.  For example a production wedding photographer will only use AP for a handful of shots all the others will be developed in C1P.

Once you really dig into C1P and AP you will be disappointed by APs raw converter, it is not bad, it is just not in the same league as C1P...

[Mamilou]

I am ready to exit Photo Supreme to another DAM. My question to Serif is how and with what existing DAM’s will they accept migration. Based on this I would be svle to hang in there (a little longer) or change for anither DAM that the new Serif DAM program would recognize 

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, Mamilou said:

My question to Serif is how and with what existing DAM’s will they accept migration.

That is not a question that Serif will answer, in my experience.

[stuartbarry]

I have a solution or workaround that may suit some people.

I use NeoFinder in the normal way to catalogue all types of files, including photos. I keep new photos in a simple folder structure on an external hard drive. Once they are there Neofinder can index them as normal, and I import them into Apple Photos. Photos is set up to use links to these files rather than importing them into its own package. That way I only have one copy of the original files, although there are 2 catalogues. But I only have to maintain one set of metadata or file names through Neofinder and Photos picks this up.

For initial, simple editing I can quickly work my way through a batch using Photos. It has roughly the same controls as Lightroom and is also non-destructive. I leave the files in their original raw format and export to another format for specific purposes. I can revert to the original with one click. For complex editing I click on one of the Affinity Photo links built into Photos. Once finished I just exit and Photos remembers what I have done. Viewing the photo through Photos gives me the latest edited version.

If I wish to search for a specific file for later processing I use the extensive search facilities in NeoFinder. Once I have brought up the file I use an AppleScript that I have created. With a single click it opens the file in Photos and I can edit as above. Here is the script (feel free to use).

-- This script takes a selected image name from NeoFinder and opens that image in Photos. No error checking -- is done at this stage. It is assumed that the image exists in Photos.

 

tell application "NeoFinder"

activate

end tell

 

-- Copy selected text from the active app to clipboard:

tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using {command down}

 

tell application "Photos"

activate

copy (the clipboard) to inputname

set searchList to search folder "library" for inputname

spotlight item 1 of searchList

end tell

I am just starting to use this approach extensively and may yet hit some problems. But it does give me a reasonably smooth workflow. My catalogues are effectively backed up in 2 different places and I have separate editing facilities, so can swap different components of the workflow if I wish. One bonus is that Apple Photos is well integrated with many applications. When adding an image to a document Apple Photos is often the first option that is given.

[drmoss_ca]

That's interesting. I've swapped from using NeoFinder to using Photos, and the only drawback for me is that .afp files aren't stored in Photos. But I generally import to Photos, click an image there, use Cmd-Return to open it in the last used external editor - Affinity Photo - and when I'm finished there, flatten it and save, thus overwriting the original file in Photos (I could Save As... and leave the original, or I could plan ahead and duplicate the original in Photos before editing it, but mostly that isn't necessary for me. If I want to keep an .afp file I have to save it outside Photos. All photos are backed up to networked drives before being imported to Photos. Since Apple can save Photoshop layered files in Photos, it would be easy for them to do the same with .afp files. I'd encourage everyone to leave feedback asking for this at https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

[tallrob]

The point of a Digital Asset Manager isn't just organizing files. Every OS has a native method of doing that. The reason we need a DAM is to facilitate non-destructive editing. This is where LR and Aperture (rip) excelled, and why people latched on to them. Before LR there was Bridge, which was good for the time but you could easily stack up many GBs of "versions" that shared 99% of the same bits. True DAMs solved that problem by storing master files and saving versions as editing instructions to be applied on export. Aperture was the king of DAM for photography, and happily stored whatever files you threw at it. It could even handle multilayered psd files with ease. C1P is pretty good but lacks Aperture's stacking and album features, plus it's slow as molasses with large libraries. I can't speak much to LR anymore since I haven't used it in ages.

The other critical feature of a DAM is culling. That means ratings and filters. This is where amateur applications like Photos fall short. You can "love" a photo, but it won't do star ratings (honestly I would have used Photos if not for this lacking feature because the plugin implementation is pretty decent).

I think it's really difficult to invent a method of storing any and every type of file while still allowing for a roundtrip non-destructive workflow.  It's not impossible, but there will always be compromise. 

[calliope]

I've been using Affinity Photo since beta. It has entirely replace Photoshop for me. I've been using Alien Skin Exposure X since X3 (now X7). Although it's sometimes been a frustrating ride, each version has seen improvement. For those not familiar with Exposure X, it is a non-destructive editor with a feature set similar to Lightroom and performs cataloging using your file structure. Exposure X has replaced Lightroom for me and allows me to do most of my image editing there.

But if I need heavy lifting I need Affinity Photo. Fortunately Exposure X allows integration of external editors within its workflow. With a couple of clicks within Exposure X, I can export an image into Affinity Photo, with or without the edits I performed in Exposure X, do my work in Affinity Photo, then return a TIFF or JPEG file from Affinity Photo back into Exposure X, which is revealed in Exposure X right next to the image file I started out with.

If you want you can save the Affinity Photo native file to the same folder before returning to Exposure X. The afphoto file will not appear in Exposure X so you would have to edit that file outside of Exposure X and export new/replacement files as needed so they are revealed in Exposure X.

FWIW, Exposure X allows you to have multiple external editors. I frequently use Silver Efex Pro and have the same Exposure X workflow as I do for Affinity Photo. 

I am definitely NOT trying to sell Exposure X! I just wanted to say I found a workflow that works for me and allows me to stay out of an Adobe subscription. I hope you all find something that works for you as well.

 

[MaartenTummers]

I think the DAM should come with overal improvements to the RAW engine so it isn't as clearcut as 'just make a DAM bro'. (per example -> hightlight slider doesn't really bring details back but rather tones the highlights to darker tones etc).

[kirk23]

No DAM, 3d painter or any other detours  please.    There are a number of sufficient  open source and cheap options.      If they  start to do DAM  we wouldn't see any advancement in PHoto or Designer at all   and they are so far from what Adobe offers yet.       

[Slowbiex]

Annual check-in: is there any chance to get a DAM from Affinity in the forseeable future and to finally kick LR et.al. from my Mac?

Thanks!