Photo library strategy

[MikeB]

As a new user I appreciate the capabilities of Affinity Photo. However having gotten used to the ease of importing into my Lightroom library I am seeking advice  on an alternative for downloading and organizing images. At present I am trying an all "manual " approach with each 

import being named by date/subject(s) then place into a master folder of images. Would love to hear your thoughts on how you do it. Of course I can continue to use my Lightroom Library but switching to an all Affinity workflow is my goal.

 

Mike B

[manu schwendener]

> switching to an all Affinity workflow is my goal

 

Mine too, but you'll need to be patient. The Affinity DAM is planned, but no date announced (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10410-common-feature-requests-index).

[anon1]

There's one thing though that I don't really get

"There is NOT a vote system in place. Adding +1 to those topics will NOT affect their priority nor imply their implementation. That’s mostly dependent on time and development goals and constraints. Thanks."

 

I mean, yeah it's all dependent on developement goals.... But these goals depend on the users needs, right? That's what we're talking about all the time, which feature is useful or which needs (the most) improvements....

So +1 is somehow an indicator of how much a feature is needed and should thus influence the developement goals, right?

[manu schwendener]

Once something is on the roadmap (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10075-affinity-photo-feature-roadmap) or on the common feature requests list I know I don't have to ask for it in the forum because it's already planned or has been acknowledged as a feature request.

[barninga]

MBd, i guess that the team is aware of how many topics and "+1" there are about a feature: they can realize how much a feature is important for their users from there and raise its priority even without a vote system. on the other hand, a high score in a vote system would not be, i assume, the only driver to set the developers' priorities anyway. there's a number of reasons why a "not-so-much-wanted" feature could be implemented first...

[anon1]

Yea it clearly is more complex than just taking the features with the most votes first.

But on the other hand I find MEBs advise a bit strange cause it does´t quite cut it either IMO....

[barninga]

MikeB, i am currently following an approach that appears to be similar to yours.

i have a tree on my disk, where i keep my photographs divided into two sub-trees: one for general shots, and one specifically for the photos i take at live concerts.

in the "general" subtree there is a folder for each year, and within each year there are multiple subfolders, one per event.

in the concerts tree there is a subfolder for each show. 

subfolders' names start with the date.

 

i also defined two iPhoto libraries, one for the general shots and one for the concerts.

 

i download the raw files from the camera, edit them as needed, and when i'm done i store them in the appropriate subfolder. then, run the appropriate instance of iPhoto and drag the subfolder onto it.

 

any subsequent editing will be done loading the images directly from the filesystem, not through iPhoto's facilities.

[conrad2k]

I have used Lightroom for years, and will continue to use it until Affinity releases a similar Digital Asset Management cataloging system.  I am ready to make some sacrifices to escape Adobe.  They have lost my confidence and loyalty since they started there "Creative Cloud" monthly subscription fee program.  The release of version Lightroom 6.2 was disastrous, causing many users to have to reinstall the program just to get back to version 6.1.  To compound their greed, and push users to the subscription model, they have started including features in the Creative Cloud version that they do not include in upgrades to the old fashioned licensed copies.  

[barninga]

i never used adobe's software, and i have been carefully keeping far from it since i've read of their recent changes in licensing policy.

before i started using a mac, i was a happy linux user. i used to keep my photo collection ordered and catalogued under an open source program whose name escapes me now. when i switched to osx, i had to do all the classification work from scratch, and lost quite a bit of information (i did not have the time to retype everything and could not find a conversion program from that software to iphoto). lesson learned, i am keeping the classification information at a minimum now, and trying to avoid a harsh lock-in effect is also the reason why i don't rely upon iphoto to store my shots and manage my archive by hand at the filesystem level. i hope that a future migration to photo will be plain and easy.

[ldexterldesign]

BUMP

 

https://twitter.com/ldexterldesign/status/690966573629231104

 

Hope this is useful

 

Regards

[jedorme]

As a Mac user who switched to Aperture after becoming frustrated with the non-intuitive operation of LR, I now use Aperture for my file organization & storage but Affinity Photo for all of my editing.  Aperture also has a feature that allows you to select Affinity Photo as an external editor by going to Preferences & selecting the Export tab; under that you press the Choose button to select the External Photo Editor & pick Affinity Photo.  For the External File Format you can select Tiff (8 or 16 bits as you prefer).

 

Then when you want to edit an image from those stored in Aperture, you right-click on the image & select Edit with Affinity Photo App.  Affinity Photo will start with the image loaded & ready to be edited.  Then to return the edited image to Aperture for storage, select File > Save - a dialog will appear saying the image contains non-pixel elements - Select Save Flattened to flatten the image before sending it to Aperture.  That's it; the edited image will appear in Aperture alongside the original.

 

Hopefully Affinity will soon have its own storage & organization of images so it will no longer be necessary to involve Aperture in this DAM function.  But for now at least, I find this to be a very easy & straightforward way to use Aperture with Photo.