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Has anyone tried Pixave?


BatteriesInc

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Hi,

 

I just came across the Pixave app which seems to be a cataloguing facility with some impressive tricks up its sleeve if the video on the website is to be believed (and why not if it indeed got a "best of 2105 app" tag).

 

It's not dramatically expensive, but I was wondering if anyone has used it already.

 

Cheers, P

Regards, Binc

 

Warning: dark, twisted sense of humour.  Do not feed after midnight.

Wheat and BS intolerant.  Only use genuine Guinness to lubricate.

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Hi

 

I'm so looking forward to getting away from the photos app that I just bought Pixave.

 

First impressions:

 

- They seem to be evolving fast, so I hope they'll add what I'm missing soon.

 

The good:

- Customizable

 

The bad:

- Zooming with the trackpad gesture doesn't seem to work. I won't really use it until this is added

Edit: this is possible now

 

The ugly:

- There is a frame around the previews that apparently can't be turned off yet. Argh! :(

Edit: there's a chance it will become optional: https://twitter.com/PixaveApp/status/733906989625970688

post-5549-0-00517600-1458424627_thumb.png

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Ah, OK (or in your case, Danke Vielmals :) ).  

 

What I found interesting in the video is that it even seems to directly support Affinity applications - you can see both AD and AP fly by at 0:19", and even OmniGraffle (think Visio on steroids).

 

I think I'll grab it anyway.  I'm sinking in a quagmire of a LOT of graphics and images with no sensible way to tag and organise them (certainly since Photos did away with the iPhoto organisational structure and turned it into something horrid), and this seems to have at least the sort of intelligent thinking behind it that also typifies Affinity.  I just hope it imports Photos, although I'm at a point where I'm quite prepared to export the lot if it gets me better organisation..

 

Next up: anything to easily manage EXIF.  exiftool rocks, but I need to come up with some sort of integration.

 

Noch ein schönen Abend  ;)

Regards, Binc

 

Warning: dark, twisted sense of humour.  Do not feed after midnight.

Wheat and BS intolerant.  Only use genuine Guinness to lubricate.

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  • 2 months later...

Downloaded the latest update yesterday and can say this app is getting impressive. It does work with AP and the resolution is very good. I wasn't impressed at the beginning so I would update but not bother to take a look but yesterday I did.

 

Have been using bridge but this app puts bridge to shame.

 

The other thing that is impressive is the colour pallet that accompanies each image.

 

You can now zoom AP so the little image can get larger without resolution problems. Take a look. It's impressive.

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as I´ve read in the MAS, Pixave does not recognize the pictures when you just put them into the folder in the finder, you have to import them so that pixaves data base recognizes them. (This happens frequently if you have to transfer photos from MB to iMac e.g., in C1 you can use Sessions and in bridge you can just copy the files) This double process makes it really hard to use as a fast image browser like bridge but it´s lack of pro features makes it also unusable as a DAM for a photographer (missing RAW development for anyone shooting more than a dozen fotos is the first no-go).

 

I also don´t see what´s the big deal in browsing afphoto files, they´re huge and RAW development of many photos in a row is unusable so you won´t have many afphoto files per project anyway. (Maybe it´s great for afdesigner files though). In the future you´ll get layered TIFF with embedded afphoto stream so every DAM or viewer like C1 or bridge will display full res afphoto files.

 

Pixie 5mb download size also really makes me suspicious about the feature richness/ how their´re implemented.

 

I highly doubt that it can be any faster than bridge (which again, is totally free), if anyone can prove this in video I´d like to know.

 

The tagging though drag´n drop looks nice, I´d like to see that in an Affinity DAM as well.

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

as I´ve read in the MAS, Pixave does not recognize the pictures when you just put them into the folder in the finder, you have to import them so that pixaves data base recognizes them. (This happens frequently if you have to transfer photos from MB to iMac e.g., in C1 you can use Sessions and in bridge you can just copy the files) This double process makes it really hard to use as a fast image browser like bridge but it´s lack of pro features makes it also unusable as a DAM for a photographer (missing RAW development for anyone shooting more than a dozen fotos is the first no-go).

 

I also don´t see what´s the big deal in browsing afphoto files, they´re huge and RAW development of many photos in a row is unusable so you won´t have many afphoto files per project anyway. (Maybe it´s great for afdesigner files though). In the future you´ll get layered TIFF with embedded afphoto stream so every DAM or viewer like C1 or bridge will display full res afphoto files.

 

Pixie 5mb download size also really makes me suspicious about the feature richness/ how their´re implemented.

 

I highly doubt that it can be any faster than bridge (which again, is totally free), if anyone can prove this in video I´d like to know.

 

The tagging though drag´n drop looks nice, I´d like to see that in an Affinity DAM as well.

As a file viewer it is actually pretty good, but lacking in some areas, you can't update real metadata or IPTC/XMP data, which is a little bit of a bummer.

The import is a little painful but once over and done with it's actually pretty damned fast, though my use case is more  general DAM/organisation/file viewing rather than specifically photography.

 

Kyno is an interesting alternative to bridge, I'd wager it is faster (Chokes a wee bit on raw files, but it is about 5 minutes old) but again it's going to be a bit insubstantial for a full on photography guy. I'm dreaming of something with the features of lightroom and the file compatibility of Pixave (Sans library)

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As irony would have it (as I started this thread), I bought it but haven't used it much either.  My challenge is that it wants to create its own picture store which thus unhelpfully doubles the amount of space that my images take, and it's not good enough to act as sole repository.  I like the idea of choosing on colour, but first of all it doesn't really allow you to change colours of select "nearness" of colour, and I need a bit more than just a sole selection criteria when I'm choosing images.

 

At present, I tend to load in a set of images I want to work with and zap the library afterwards (it's not the software's fault I'm short of local storage, of course, but it's unhelpful  ;)  ).  

 

So much for a "best of xxx" tag, must have been a boring year  :P .

 

The search goes on..

Regards, Binc

 

Warning: dark, twisted sense of humour.  Do not feed after midnight.

Wheat and BS intolerant.  Only use genuine Guinness to lubricate.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, AD 1.5 pretty much dealt with the one feature I liked about Pixave: creating a colour palette from an image is now built in..

 

It'll take me weeks to work out what all the new stuff does, but I'd call this a real upgrade :).

Regards, Binc

 

Warning: dark, twisted sense of humour.  Do not feed after midnight.

Wheat and BS intolerant.  Only use genuine Guinness to lubricate.

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  • 1 year later...

I'm considering Pixave on the advice of another forum member and wonder what people who bought it didn't like about the application or were disappointed in.  Also, I think the program has been updated since 2016.

 

What I'm looking for is an application that will allow me to organize and label all the photos on my computer and have them visible in one place. Currently they are stored in IPhoto libraries, Photo libraries, and various other folders. The IPHoto and Photo libraries use their own architecture and it's difficult to find photos that are buried in those libraries, especially older photos that were not taken with the IPhone. I would then like to be able to search for photos by keyword, such as "trees" and find all of my tree photos. I'm not interested in an application with will do file processing for me since I'm already doing that in Affinity Photo.

 

If Pixave doesn't do the trick, is there something better that is not a subscription model and that works with the Affinity suite?

Affinity Photo, V 2.3.1    Affinity Designer, V 2.2 Affinity Publisher, V 2.3.1

Mac Book Air, Sonoma, 14.2.1

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I bought Pixave today after playing with the trial version. So far I like it except for the poorly written Help files. It's come a long way in its latest versions from a few years ago.

 

It's very easy to integrate it with AP. You just right click on a photo and then choose Open with Affinity Photo. Unlike with Apple Photos, you can open more than one photo in Affinity Photo for the purpose of editing them.

 

When I went to Media Browser, I did not see any way to link it to Pixave, but that doesn't mean that it isn't possible. I'm going to do an Internet search to see if there's a setting for this. Instead, Media Browser links to the original places where the image files are stored. I believe that what Pixave does is make copies of all the original photos on your hard drive according to the file structure that you set up on Pixave. As far as I can tell, this is not an automatic process but must be done manually. The files still exist in their original homes, and MB appears to point to those original homes.

Affinity Photo, V 2.3.1    Affinity Designer, V 2.2 Affinity Publisher, V 2.3.1

Mac Book Air, Sonoma, 14.2.1

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Yeah, as I said to DianeF in that other thread, Pixave is NOT going to replace Lightroom. I know people want some magical combination of say Bridge and Lightroom, etc, but I just don't see that happening.

 

Also, for me, it is a matter of finding something close enough, not perfect and making it work. I have a lot of software but there isn't one app that is perfect. Each one usually requires some type of workaround at some point.

 

It all boils down to this for me with Pixave, having an iPad app that works seamlessly with the desktop app. I have Affinity Photo for iPad, and I hope to soon have Affinity Designer for iPad, I have Procreate, I love using Lumatouch's LumaFusion, just started to play with Clip Studio Paint for iPad. The professional apps are coming to the iPad at a blistering pace now and I needed a DAM to make life easier and also to be available and accessible with my iPad. Pixave fits the bill perfectly for me. Can't install Adobe Bridge on my iPad Pro, can't install Phase One's Media Pro on my iPad Pro either, but I can install and use Pixave, and they have plans to make an iPhone version as well. 

 

Here is an example of different ways that I use Pixave, web capture and ePub generation:

 

 

5a14f52851fec_ScreenShot2017-11-21at10_43_58PM.thumb.png.a6e23479dbe7a44ea944a1a6ca9786a9.png

 

I love the Etherington Brothers work and Lorenzo has this series of How to Think When You Draw series of mini tutorials. So, use Pixave to web capture those tuts and then use the ePub export to create a file to easily digest all of that goodness in iBooks, which I can view on my desktop or iPad Pro:

 

5a14f5d465798_ScreenShot2017-11-21at10_53_54PM.thumb.png.979e05f8f4cf1d026f0e28a1bc833d5e.png

 

When I come across tutorials that are of great quality I usually give them this treatment, it allows me to organize and structure that learning. Pixave for me offers advantages and conveniences that I just don't get elsewhere, but you need to take the time to learn it, explore it and discover how it may benefit you.

 

 

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Scungio, I agree with you about Pixave. It's a partial solution. But I think it will be good enough for my DAM purposes. Its tagging and search functions seem very good.

 

As for its web capture and other functions, I sure wish I could figure out how to access them. The Help files are awful, and I can't find anything about the process or the tools that are related to Web Capture.  I've search on the web, but there are very few videos that show how to use the program except for a very long one that didn't really help. Could you briefly explain that function to me? I don't know if there's a way you can send me a PM rather than continuing in this forum. If not, I'd welcome a couple of sentences here that would allow me to explore the program further on my own. Thanks.

Affinity Photo, V 2.3.1    Affinity Designer, V 2.2 Affinity Publisher, V 2.3.1

Mac Book Air, Sonoma, 14.2.1

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