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For now, I am recommending Supreme Photo; it is the only DAM product that supports properly Affinity files.

Per Karlsson’s “How I found my best Digital Asset Management (DAM) system” blog posting helped me in my research; I tried most of the products that he mentioned.

 

If Affinity will provide a free “DAM” delivered as part of their Photo, Designer, and/or Publisher products, it will probably end up being a glorified library similarly with what Skylum did in Luminar 3. However, if Affinity chose to implement a real DAM product that would be a viable alternative to Lightroom, they would not be able to give it away for free (as part of Photo, Designer, or/and Publisher) as such product would require costly initial and ongoing effort. 

 

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  • 8 months later...

I wanted to follow up on this thread

 

I just got the Trinity!

As a non professional editor but someone who does odd jobs that require /Photoshop/InDesign/illustrator/ and have had access to DS packages up to 5.5 I'm frustrated by the Adobe model

So Serif to the rescue!  I have a huge backlog of project files to open/edit/convert and Organize!

What's the DAM status? I crazily still use Aperture but am recognizing that's not tenable and also is limited to just photos.... What about other media like designer/illustrator style files

 

Should I look to Serif at all or is it a distraction from intended core competencies.

Is this photo supreme really worth it? I want to find something that is feature rich but ultimately just focused on core features (organization/basic processing/tagging) more that anything else.

I have tended to keep photos in the aperture bundle which I'm sure some frown upon....

Does photo supreme (or another recommended) offer just database organization of filesystem photos(eg just accessing the photos in folders) but also keep those things organized---eg if I move something in the program, will it move in the filesystem?

Thanks all!!!

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It looks like he's proceeding with the DAM aspects.

As for using Managed Libraries in Aperture ... most users didn't understand what this involved, or that Aperture offers the choice of both Managed and Referenced, with a fast and easy way of moving files from one to the other.  As any database developer would tell you, the golden rule is to have everything managed, otherwise the risk of damage/loss from things being messed up by human beings remains very real.  Aperture's Managed database is very good (and can be read in the Finder if you really want) and continues to be used with Photos.  Since the changes to the MacOS file system, with 10.14, all of these assets are much safer, because they are constantly tracked.  If Nik Bhatt's RAW Power can tap into the Photos database, as he believes he can, then he should be able to quite feasibly recreate the vital DAM aspects of Aperture.  The added bonus, is that Apple's RAW engine is very very good.

Edit:

(Of course, Serif will also be aware of the changes to the OS coming with 10.15, so they too could quite easily produce a DAM front-end for Affinity ... but it would only be for Mac)

Grumpy, but faithful (watch out all you cats)

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8 minutes ago, tnargs said:

@GFS that's great, but is there any means today, or possibility in the future, for a Lightroom user to go over to Photos without losing everything? At least keeping keywords/tags and star ratings? I appreciate that keeping Collections is probably a bridge too far.

cheers

 

I think this will depend on whoever and whatever apps, if any, take advantage of MacOS 10.15 giving developers access to the Photos database.  We just don't know yet.  It hasn't even shipped. (Another month?)  Obviously it would be in the interests of any developer to make a transition to their system as simple as possible.  I would imagine that Catalogs and Collections would be easy as they're essentially a database question.  Adjustments may be harder.

 

Grumpy, but faithful (watch out all you cats)

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14 hours ago, BLamb said:

I wanted to follow up on this thread

 

I just got the Trinity!

As a non professional editor but someone who does odd jobs that require /Photoshop/InDesign/illustrator/ and have had access to DS packages up to 5.5 I'm frustrated by the Adobe model

So Serif to the rescue!  I have a huge backlog of project files to open/edit/convert and Organize!

What's the DAM status? I crazily still use Aperture but am recognizing that's not tenable and also is limited to just photos.... What about other media like designer/illustrator style files

 

Should I look to Serif at all or is it a distraction from intended core competencies.

Is this photo supreme really worth it? I want to find something that is feature rich but ultimately just focused on core features (organization/basic processing/tagging) more that anything else.

I have tended to keep photos in the aperture bundle which I'm sure some frown upon....

Does photo supreme (or another recommended) offer just database organization of filesystem photos(eg just accessing the photos in folders) but also keep those things organized---eg if I move something in the program, will it move in the filesystem?

Thanks all!!!

@BLamb I dropped Photo Supreme; it is very modern looking and intuitively designed. However, it had serious problems with the feature of grouping files, and one of the most essential features in a DAM is the "versioning" (a form of grouping related files), which was lacking.

 

I moved to iMatch, which is not that fancy from a usability standpoint, but it is the real deal when it comes to DAM; I would say that this is the only actual DAM application available on the market. iMatch does have an import operation from Lightroom, but I didn't try it.

I'd suggest giving iMatch a try, and I would drop my hopes that Affinity would make a real DAM application any time soon. Maybe they will do something simple, call it "library" and package it for free with the Affinity products, as Luminar did. However, if Affinity would pursue doing a real DAM, it would be costly from a development standpoint, and if they will ever come to the point of completing and releasing a real DAM they would not give it away for free, as part of their main products, anyway.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/11/2019 at 8:41 AM, iBaloo42 said:

@BLamb I dropped Photo Supreme; it is very modern looking and intuitively designed. However, it had serious problems with the feature of grouping files, and one of the most essential features in a DAM is the "versioning" (a form of grouping related files), which was lacking.

 

I moved to iMatch, which is not that fancy from a usability standpoint, but it is the real deal when it comes to DAM; I would say that this is the only actual DAM application available on the market. iMatch does have an import operation from Lightroom, but I didn't try it.

I'd suggest giving iMatch a try, and I would drop my hopes that Affinity would make a real DAM application any time soon. Maybe they will do something simple, call it "library" and package it for free with the Affinity products, as Luminar did. However, if Affinity would pursue doing a real DAM, it would be costly from a development standpoint, and if they will ever come to the point of completing and releasing a real DAM they would not give it away for free, as part of their main products, anyway.

 

Ok, so I've gone further into checking on my options here, haven't found a definitive suggestion yet as to what might be best.  I still fire up Aperture for now (suffering the "This app will not be supported in future (>10.14) versions of OS X")

Here's what I've come up with so far:  --- Mac OS X options -- iMatch I realized is Windows only.

This is what I use and like about Aperture:
- Organization - ingest photos, store in contained library

    - organize into virtual folders/collections etc....

- Rate

- Add Keywords

- Crop

- Brush edits (blur / burn & dodge / clone)

downloaded Photo Supreme -- not impressed yet... seems too sluggish although most of the features as above.... others as below.  Have most settled on LR here?

ACDC Photo Studio for Mac 5 -- $35

Photo Mechanic 6 - $139

Capture One Pro 12 - $299

Luminar 3 (v4 2019 release?) - $99

 

I'll reference here for further discussion as well Thanks!

--

MBPr Early 2015 - 13" 3.1Ghz

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@BLamb Have you looked at Darktable? (It's like an Open Source Adobe Lightroom) 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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There are basically 2 kinds of users and 2 kinds of DAMs.

Graphic designers who must handle incoming graphic assets and maybe have large company archives. They need a real DAM.

Photographers who need RAW processor with catalogue functions. They should probably just cough up the dough and get C1.

The rest of us just get by with old (LR6) or inadequate (free or new apps) software and wait for better times.

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4 hours ago, Fixx said:

There are basically 2 kinds of users and 2 kinds of DAMs.

Graphic designers who must handle incoming graphic assets and maybe have large company archives. They need a real DAM.

Photographers who need RAW processor with catalogue functions. They should probably just cough up the dough and get C1.

The rest of us just get by with old (LR6) or inadequate (free or new apps) software and wait for better times.

Yes - I currently use LR6 and Affinity Photo much as I used Photoshop - using "edit in" but only if LR didn't have enough oomph to do what I needed. Such a pity, I'd much rather use AP as my main app for all my photos. LR6 is getting old now and already misses much new functionality CC users have. As long as Adobe have no perpetual licensing there will always be people needing to migrate and as long as there is no Affinity (or compatible preferably with LR) DAM they have other choices.

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14 hours ago, firstdefence said:

@BLamb Have you looked at Darktable? (It's like an Open Source Adobe Lightroom) 

I noticed that Affinity Revolution, producer of many excellent AFPhoto tutorials, is recommending DarkTable. They have a tutorial plus a course on its use.

Affinity Revolution tutorial on DarkTable:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5C5Bx8MOrk 

Their full course about DarkTable:  https://courses.affinityrevolution.com/p/replace-lightroom-and-edit-faster-in-affinity-photo

Disclaimer: I do not know the folks at Affinity Revolution, have never paid them a dime nor received anything from them. But their tutorials have been very helpful to me.

Affinity Photo 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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Just had a look at the darktable website and they seem to say that they will not be developing the file manager capabilities any further than they exist now. All efforts are going into the processing capabilities. So, it will be competing head-on with Lightroom. It makes me wonder how much attention to bugs  to correct the Filemanager System part of darktable there will be.

Just a thought .....

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Who else is tired of this?  While I am mostly happy with the functionality of AP,  I am very dissatisfied with the customer service and management.   When I first purchased AP in early 2018 I could not use it because the RAW  developer stopped working properly for several months.  I spent days trying to figure it out as AP hung everyone out to dry - no notifications or explanations of the issue (forum posts were not answered or severely delayed).   The amount of time I spent trying to figure it out could have paid for the Photoshoot price premium for years.  If I were depending on AP for professional purposes I would have been out of luck with absolutely no support and no idea when I would be able to get it.  If you need a dependable editor and customer support I would think carefully b4 investing in AP.  The forum is the ONLY way to get help, there is no manual and the in program help is very weak.  Note that AP in this thread led customers to believe that a DAM was in the cards in near future (but not likely b4 2017.  The latest I heard AP is not sure they are going to release a DAMAP customer management and support stinks, they are terrible at informing and supporting customers.   All of this can make using AP inconvenient and time consuming which I personally feel more than offsets any savings you realize purchasing AF.  AF needs to get more professional and support its customers better, if I find another editor before they do they will lose my business.   There are a lot of VERY attractive options out there to replace AP ‐ Luminar 4, Topaz Softwae Studio 2, On1 Software,  Capture 1.  I have already tried experimenting with some of these editors and I encourage anyone reading this to do so as well, I am willing to bet you will be pleasantly surprised.  I like AP software but I am tired of dealing with the inconveniences that come along with it.  I need reliable software and support.   BTW.  The justification that there is no DAM because AP is both a developer and editor is a lame cop out.  If anything being both editor and developer increases the need for customers to have a DAM and there is no excuse nor is it acceptable that customers have been communicating this need to AP for 4+ years, AP misled them about DAM development,  and AP has completely ignored its customers for 4 years on this issue.  It's time for AP to stop making commitments it has no intention of keeping!

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really can't agree with this, "AP in this thread led customers to believe that a DAMwas in the cards in near future". People might have misled themselves, but all I ever saw from Serif/AP years ago about DAM in Affinity Photo, was a statement that it was on a list of things that they might get around to looking at one day, but it was definitely not on their priority/action list, and don't expect anything any time soon.

As far as I can tell, it has never gotten onto their priority/action list, and they have never said that it has.

cheers

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Well, I have to say I just came along for the ride recently and had no expectation of a DAM, I mostly was happy to find easier to use versions of InDesig/Photoshop/illustrator tools with a traditional versioned licensing model.

Cant speak to the support offered. I’m ok with AP being just a replacement for PS.... that’s the idea.   But certainly the demise of Aperture is the turning point on the DAM front.

i checked out dark table and felt like it was too sluggish, though maybe the right features...

photoSupreme didn’t seem to meet my needs well... not seem less enough with workflow.

i want something fast that I can move through a collection, tag/rate, quick adjust and crop. Then gather up those into some named bundle(preferably a ‘smart album’ and either export in bulk, or edit in external editor AND ideally have the DAM maintain versions.  You know, Aperture :)

thanks for all the input so far

still looking through my list......

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2 hours ago, tnargs said:

really can't agree with this, "AP in this thread led customers to believe that a DAMwas in the cards in near future". People might have misled themselves, but all I ever saw from Serif/AP years ago about DAM in Affinity Photo, was a statement that it was on a list of things that they might get around to looking at one day, but it was definitely not on their priority/action list, and don't expect anything any time soon.

As far as I can tell, it has never gotten onto their priority/action list, and they have never said that it has.

cheers

 

@tnargs: On the second posting of this very thread MEB, which is part of the staff, posted the message below.

 
 
 
 
2
On 10/6/2016 at 3:58 PM, MEB said:

Hi amazme1,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Lightroom is not a photo editor but a RAW developer. It's editing tools are not up to what Photoshop offers. Affinity Photo is both a RAW developer and photo editor.

We already announced plans for an Affinity DAM software which will work seamlessly with Affinity Photo.

 

 

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1 minute ago, tnargs said:

"Plans" means nothing. You should see some of my plans!

Like I said, people might have misled themselves.

@tnargs: I disagree, my friend. Announced plans to potential customers are always interpreted by them as a promise of future value that they will obtain if they buy NOW the product, especially for free-upgrades products. I work in the software industry, and we are banning our customer-facing people, especially sales personnel, to use phrasing like the ones that MEB used. This kind of verbiage is so bad, that customers can take to court vendors that are using such verbal lures for large $$ deals.

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There might have been "plans" of Affinity to enter DAM business. But I gave up hope on it after they announced to also enter the Windows and the tablet scene. Windows and MacOS is also on the list of the usual suspects like Lightroom and Capture One, so whatever Affinity would come up with, it would be the same low usability standard as the others already offer.

Just look how poor their "intelligent folders" or "smart albums" work, not even a single button to send a developed RAW as JPG in a mail.

Aperture is (still, as MacOS Catalina also won't work with Capture One) deeply integrated in MacOS, uses the same GUI concept as other Mac desktop apps - it is impossible to make a DAM working on multiple OS like Aperture is working on one only.

It was a clever move by Affinity, to develop their Photo and Designer app first for the Mac users, make us very happy and then go into Windows business: more turnaround and more word-to-word PR as windows-users tend to ask people "who do something professional with photos and graphics" if they know a cheaper alternative to Adobe PS and AI. Yes, we Mac users helped them to make much more money and therefore it IS disappointing for the few of us who still miss Aperture. I still find old pictures much faster in Aperture than in C1 (if I find them there at all, because as DAM it supersucks). I am disappointed by Affinity and feel betrayed, as the DAM was announced to be in the making. But compared to how disappointed I was by Apple to give up Aperture, it's like one tear for Affinity and a bucket for Aperture! I can't blame Affinity to go on a broader set of platforms, as I experienced how rapidly, brutally and all of a sudden Apple can change their mind. Especially since this bloody clerk does everything making more money and nothing visionary at all.

But going for more platforms means developing at the lowest common function standards. Therefore it is not certain for me, if I'd buy into a new sort or kind of Photomechanic. Reorganinizing libraries which grew over the years to some ten thousands of files is not done in a day. I've experienced this once and I can't imagine how the little company Affinity would give me the security of being safe and reliable for the next ten years.

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4 hours ago, tnargs said:

"Plans" means nothing. You should see some of my plans!

Like I said, people might have misled themselves.

I agree, people read into statements what they will and then set their own timescales for how they think software production should go. In all likelihood the majority of these will have no concept of software development and the amount of time that goes into it. 

If affinity doesn't have something I would like to use I go an get it elsewhere. There are plenty of DAM's out there already, it's no big deal to use one of those instead, nobody is going to die because of it, people really need to get a handle on this and check themselves, it's wacko people are getting bent out of shape, I keep seeing in my minds eye are kids on the floor having a paddy because they aren't getting their way.

Until it's being put out for beta it doesn't exist.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Just now, firstdefence said:

...

If affinity doesn't have something I would like to use I go an get it elsewhere. There are plenty of DAM's out there already, it's no big deal to use one of those instead, nobody is going to die because of it, ....

Really? Maybe you have rather low standards about Digital Asset Management but so far I haven't seen the combination of a good RAW developer plus DAM and I guess you never learnt nor used Aperture, so you still think a DAM is a kind of a Windows explorer with keywords...

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Just now, JoJu said:

Really? Maybe you have rather low standards about Digital Asset Management but so far I haven't seen the combination of a good RAW developer plus DAM and I guess you never learnt nor used Aperture, so you still think a DAM is a kind of a Windows explorer with keywords...

Wow! 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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@firstdefence, don't feel offended. Picture browsers are also kind of DAM, but what I miss is another combination of RAW-developer and sophisticated picture management. And that goes way beyond of only keywording, no matter how fast it is.

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