Apple Photos + Affinity

[stacy4free]

I'm an Aperture user and since Apple no longer supports Aperture I'm looking at Affinity.  I'd like to know what others who use affinity use for organizing photos.  I have not used Apple Photos, but heard that it can work fine.  I am a professional photographer that specializes in portraiture and am looking at something simple to use.  Photoshop and Lightroom look a bit overwhelming after having used Aperture for the last 5 years..

 

Any suggestions appreciated.  Thank you!

[R C-R]

I am just a hobbyist & while Apple's Photos is OK for my needs, I seriously doubt it would be considered "fine" by pros who need something capable of professional level media organization & management. For one thing, Photos lacks the ability to edit all but a few very basic Exif settings, & unless you go through a tedious 'export original' step, it will not make RAW format files in its Library available to other apps.

[Guest]

I consider myself a semi-pro. The photos I sell are predominately for the websites I design. As an ex-Aperture user, I am using Apple Photos to organize. I then export raws to Affinity to develop, and sweeten. Sold/developed Photos are stored in client folders. 

 

This works fine for me... but if I sold hundreds of photos/month and wanted to save various versions of each, it would get very tedious very quickly. 

 

So it really depends on your workflow and volume. While I hate to point anyone to huge corporate juggernauts like Adobe, if you work with a lot of photos it may be the best thing. Of course you could wait it out with Aperture or Photos until Serif has their catalog management app out the door... have no idea when that may be though.

[Geminitiger]

Scott as you are a user of photos app plus AP can you remember if from the Photos menu list there used to be an option to edit in AP,im sure i used to do that but since the extensions cant find it?

Thanks

Chris

[R C-R]

Geminitiger, you are probably thinking of iPhoto, which had a preference setting to allow editing photos in a designated external editor. When Apple introduced its Photos app, it did not have that option, just (as of El Capitan) the capability of using extensions within its own editing environment.

[Geminitiger]

yes that must be it,it seems such a time ago that i used i photo but that must be it,thanks,i can sleep peacefully now knowing I'm not going nuts lol

[Guest]

When Apple introduced its Photos app, it did not have that option

 

And another thing they removed (maddeningly so), is "Show in Finder". Now you have to export a copy of the file, but only if they are stored in the PhotosLibrary. If they are imported "By Reference", Photos will provide a "Show Referenced FIle In Finder" option.

 

And there is the issue with the Media Browser in AP with respect to raw files; it will only open the default jpg conversions that Photos creates (not the raw file they were rendered from). Since most of my shoots are raw, this is my workflow for managing the keepers...

 

1.) I'll import shoots into Photos. If they're for a client, I export low rez jpgs, and upload them to a shared album in Google Photos. Then the client can pick the ones they like best for development. After ascertaining the keepers, I export them Raw to a new folder on an external drive I use for photos, or to a client folder.

 

2.) Then I delete those photos from Photos, and reimport them "by reference" from the aforementioned folder(s). This leaves them in place, and just renders a jpg in Photos for cataloging purposes. None of the pics that I "keep" end up being stored in the Photos App's library. They're all in appropriately named folders, and simply referenced in Photos.

 

Depending on the nature of the picts (Vacation photos for instance), I'll skip the initial Photos import to the Library, copy the SD card's content straight to a folder on one of my drives, and then import them to Photos by reference.

 

If old captures are to be archived (a state where I will rarely access them going forward), I'll even delete their referenced images from Photos (I can always import them again if I need to down the road).

 

Hope this gives you some additional ideas.

 

Photos has the ability to create Smart Albums for display of photos stored in the app's library (local), and the ones that are imported by reference, so it is easy to keep that aspect of the workflow well managed.

[R C-R]

And another thing they removed (maddeningly so), is "Show in Finder". Now you have to export a copy of the file, but only if they are stored in the PhotosLibrary. If they are imported "By Reference", Photos will provide a "Show Referenced FIle In Finder" option.

The most likely reason for that is the internal structure of the Photos Library.photoslibrary package(s) can be corrupted if users modify anything in it directly -- thumbnails may no longer match the current edited or original photo in the library, the wrong photo may open when double-clicked in the app, or some internal database info for the file may be wrong, potentially causing corruption of files & data loss.

 

Some users have reported similar problems in iPhoto when they have directly modified a file in the iPhoto Library.photolibrary package that they used its 'Show in Finder' option to find, but it is unclear if that was really the cause, or which versions of iPhoto it applies to.

[Guest]

The most likely reason for that is the internal structure of the Photos Library.photoslibrary package

 

Possibly, or just more dumbed down opacity Apple is famous for. With that said, it was never an issue for me with raw files in iPhoto... of course they weren't modified. 

 

In any event, the above described workflow works fine (for me). I do like the fact that Photos, when "copy to library" is turned off in prefs, is smart enough to import by reference when the target is a directory, and imports to the library when it's an SD card.