Affinity Photo Catalogue

[barny]

Hi,

first off, Iv'e checked the forum but cannot see if this question has already been asked, so apologies in advance as I cannot see anything related to it.  

Does the new Affinity photo/publisher/design contain a catalogue within it whereby I can see and access my photo image files via "Pictures" on my Imac. That facility is available within On1 2022, and would complete the excellent editing facility if it was now available within Affinity.

Many thanks

[v_kyr]

NO, but you can use an external third-party one (like Apple Photos) and then drag'n'drop (access) images from that into APh etc.

[barny]

Many thanks for that. If it was available, it would complete an excellent editing facility, making it an independent standalone entity too. 

Thank you

[dominik]

46 minutes ago, barny said:

Many thanks for that. If it was available, it would complete an excellent editing facility, making it an independent standalone entity too. 

Thank you

Just a tip. What you are looking for is the search term DAM (digital asset management). There is a lot of discussion and information about this here in the forum.

d.

[_Seb_]

But this should work better! If you drag a picture from Apple Photos to the Desktop, the size doesn't change. If you drag a picture from Apple Photos into AP-document (Version 2.4.2), the picture size gets reduced compared to the original. No message showing the downsizing. By zooming in, you can discover this easily.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, _Seb_ said:

No message showing the downsizing.

I am running Catalina so it may be different with other OS versions but I do get a message telling me that the file has been imported at a lower resolution & to use the full resolution version I should export the file to disk. The message goes away after a few seconds so it is easy to miss, but if I click on it while it is visible I am taken back to an Export dialog in Apple Photos.app so I can either cancel or export it & from there.

I think it would be better if the message did not automatically disappear & had OK & Export from Photos buttons instead.

[_Seb_]

33 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am running Catalina so it may be different with other OS versions but I do get a message telling me that the file has been imported at a lower resolution & to use the full resolution version I should export the file to disk. The message goes away after a few seconds so it is easy to miss, but if I click on it while it is visible I am taken back to an Export dialog in Apple Photos.app so I can either cancel or export it & from there.

I think it would be better if the message did not automatically disappear & had OK & Export from Photos buttons instead.

My problem is not the missing message. I want full resolution, when I drag and drop pictures from Apple Photos to Affinity Publisher. I need thousands of pictures for photo books from the 90s till now. The import-window in AP cmd+shift+m and selecting "photos" library is so slow. Would be so cool, if you could directly drag and drop from app to app. And from Apple Photos to Finder or Mail or some other apps, it IS working already like a charm. So it's on Affinity-team to get it work in AP as well, or am I wrong?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, _Seb_ said:

My problem is not the missing message.

So are you saying that you do see the message, seemingly contrary to what you said before about there being no message, or only that you want D&D to place full-resolution versions?

If the latter, that request probably should be posted to the Feedback forum, if thet has not already been done.

[_Seb_]

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

So are you saying that you do see the message, seemingly contrary to what you said before about there being no message, or only that you want D&D to place full-resolution versions?

If the latter, that request probably should be posted to the Feedback forum, if thet has not already been done.

In macOS Monterey I don't see this message. It's like I said. I just don't care about this message. This is not my problem nor my request. I just would love to get the photos in original quality, ideally linked from Apple's Photos Library from the storage location in the Finder.

Under this post I just wanted to mention, that you don't get, what you expect to get, if you D&D. You should be aware of this behavior before you get bad results from the print shop.

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, _Seb_ said:

ideally linked from Apple's Photos Library from the storage location in the Finder.

Your screenshot doesn't show a Finder window. If you drag the image resource indeed "from the storage location in the Finder" it will be placed in full size (according to the current Affinity document resolution). Possibly you need to 'ignore' Apple's Photos app's proprietary storage management and instead point in the Finder to the folder that contains the high-resolution images.

[R C-R]

21 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Possibly you need to 'ignore' Apple's Photos app's proprietary storage management and instead point in the Finder to the folder that contains the high-resolution images.

If you mean the folder "originals" in the Photos Library.photoslibrary package, I would not do that because (I think) if you made any changes to it in AP & saved it, that would replace the original with the modified version in the library, which could cause problems with the Photos database.

Anyway, Apple advises not to make any changes directly in the *.photoslibrary package because of that possibility.

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If you mean the folder "originals" in the Photos Library.photoslibrary package, I would not do that because (I think) if you made any changes to it in AP & saved it, that would replace the original with the modified version in the library, which could cause problems with the Photos database.

Good point. If I understand right it would work as long the user doesn't modify a resource in this folder from Affinity?
(honestly the proprietary, intransparent and partially redundant image file management of Apple's Photo app made me avoid this feature from its beginning)

[_Seb_]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Good point. If I understand right it would work as long the user doesn't modify a resource in this folder from Affinity?
(honestly the proprietary, intransparent and partially redundant image file management of Apple's Photo app made me avoid this feature from its beginning)

That's the point! You should not interact directly with the Photos Finder folder. THAT'S WHY I MISS THE POSSIBILITY OF DRAG AND DROP DIRECTLY FROM APPLE PHOTOS APP INTO AFFINITY DESIGNER APP. Hihi. And stop telling me about workarounds. I know them all. Keep it simple guys, just finally make it work easily. Thanks.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

If I understand right it would work as long the user doesn't modify a resource in this folder from Affinity?

That's the way I understand it too, but I am by no means certain about it.

@_Seb_, there is no point in asking the developers to change the D&D behavior here in the Questions forum, because the developers will probably never see it (because they do not spend their time combing through the thousands of topics here).

Instead, as I already mentioned, post your request to the Feedback forum if a topic about it has not already been started, or if it has then add your support for it in that topic.

BTW, all caps is generally regarded as the online equivalent of shouting, which is often considered rude or childish, so it is a good idea to avoid it if possible.

[dvoth]

From the "Open" window there should be a "Photos" folder under "Media" that should provide you access to your photos in Apple Photos. Did you try opening from there?

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, dvoth said:

From the "Open" window there should be a "Photos" folder under "Media" that should provide you access to your photos in Apple Photos. Did you try opening from there?

I think that has the same problem mentioned above: it opens the original file in the the "originals" folder in the Photos Library.photoslibrary package, so editing & saving it back to the same location would replace the original with the edited version. (You can check this via the File > Reveal in Finder menu item.) Long ago, I suggested that this should not be possible, that it should only open a copy of the file or not open it at all, but that never seemed to get any attention from the developers.

However, it may be that the D&D only places a reduced resolution version of the original to avoid that issue, but only the developers could say for sure why it does that. A quick check with the reveal in Finder command shows what D&D opens is (at least in my version of Apple Photos) in a subfolder of the derivatives folder, which may be some sort of stopgap effort to avoid possible corruption of the Photos database, although not a very good one.

It is old & possibly out-of-date, but https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destructive-editing-in-photos-for-mac-and-ios/ was written by one of the Apple developers explains some of the nuances (& issues!) of working with external editors for photos stored in Apple Photos.

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, _Seb_ said:

Keep it simple guys, just finally make it work easily.

It appears "simple" is a missing attribute of Apple's Photo's file management, not of forum or Serif guys … while the Photos Library.photoslibrary package as a proprietary file format is 'simply' and 'by design' not accessible for others than the Photo app.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

… while the Photos Library.photoslibrary package as a proprietary file format is 'simply' and 'by design' not accessible for others than the Photo app.

Except that it is in the Media > Photos menu in the Open dialog of the Affinity apps (V1 & V2), Apple Preview.app, & probably others.

EDIT: FWIW I opened a JPEG formatted photo from my Photos Library.photoslibrary package in Apple Preview.app via that app's Open > Media > Photo option, & made some edits to it using the Tools > Adjust Color... menu item. When I did that, I immediately got the popup warning shown below.

I think that something similar should happen (with or without a warning) to files from the photoslibrary that are opened or placed (including via D&D) into an Affinity document, so they can be added ideally at full resolution without creating any issues.

[_Seb_]

@R C-R, yes I know, Caps. Sorry. I did not want to shout, I'm just tired of workarounds. And you are right, it's the wrong place here to ask for changes in the app, but I'm already active in Feedback-Forum as well. I just found this post about D&D but there was no indication that the image size would be reduced. So I pointed it out here.

@dvoth That's the way I do it all the time. It's the best way so far, but it would be much much better if you could just drag and drop directly from Apple Photos. And you should not link the images, but embed them! Because Apple changes the file structure of the Photos library from time to time, all images will then disappear. That already happened to me when I switched to a new computer with Monterey. Luckily I still had my old machine with Mojave running and then embedded the images there. And I'm not talking about 5 lost pictures, but about 5 photo books with around 2000 pictures. That wouldn't have been funny.

@thomaso That's crazy, I know. But other apps manage to get the full resolution pictures out of Photos by D&D. And Apple likes Affinity apps! I'm sure they could find a solution, If the wanted. Maybe they just haven't recognized the need for this yet? 

[_Seb_]

 

Drag and drop pictures in original quality from Apple Photos into Affinity Publisher works - while holding the shift-key!
Update*: It is advisable to embed the photos after successful drag and drop.

I upgraded from macOS Monterey to Sonoma. And guess what, the import window via "File > Place..." doesn't show Apple's Photos albums any longer. So i tried to drag and drop again directly from Apple Photos. As usual, this reduces the image size. So I tried something new. While dragging and dropping I hold the shift key. And surprise surprise, I got the full resolution image directly from Apple Photos into Affinity Publisher. I checked Window menu > Resource Manager. Indeed: File name and size are exactly the same as in Apple Photos! Even when I select multiple images in Photos, dragging and dropping still works. Yay!

*Update May 19
Affinity Publisher starts to "forget" the location of the images from the Photos Library after some time. I guess it's because of the incomprehensible way Apple Photos handles the file management and maybe changes folder names from time to time within the Finder Library file. So it's probably better to embed the photos after importing them.
 

[MacGB]

@Seb

Great tip, tried this too and works fine.

Just one problem (for me) most exif data is lost this way (camera, lensinfo etc.) that is a pitty.

 

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, _Seb_ said:

I upgraded from macOS Monterey to Sonoma. And guess what, the import window via "File > Place..." doesn't show Apple's Photos albums any longer.

I'm still using an older macOS version (Catalina) so I'm not sure about this but does this mean in the sidebar of the Affinity File > Place dialog there is no longer a "Media" item, possibly at or near the end of the sidebar items with a "Photos" item? 

[_Seb_]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I'm still using an older macOS version (Catalina) so I'm not sure about this but does this mean in the sidebar of the Affinity File > Place dialog there is no longer a "Media" item, possibly at or near the end of the sidebar items with a "Photos" item? 

I still can see the "Media" item with the "Photos" item below in the sidebar. And I have access to my Apple Photos Library. But to all pictures. I no longer can select albums within this dialog. It seems like a bug, the dropdown menu behaves strangely.