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What steps to take now for eventual migration from Lightroom to Affinity DAM


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I am currently using Lightroom which I will drop it once the Affinity DAM is available. Is there anything I should be doing now to prepare for the change once Affinity DAM is available?

 

My current workflow is:

 

  • copy my SD card to my desktop
  • select photos
  • copy photos to a folder on my iMac using this folder structure for example: Pictures > Lightroom Photos > 2016 > 2016-03_description_of_event > filename.jpg (2016-03 indicates the year 2016 and the month of March. Filename.jpg is the camera generated filename. Sometimes the file is a .jpg other times it is a (panasonic) .rw2 file.
  • assign Lightroom keywords when importing into Lightroom
  • delete the photos I don't like and eliminate them from Lightroom and move the original image to the trash.
  • tweak the files I like, keeping them in Lightroom
  • export .jpg files only when I need to upload them to my blog or when I want to post them to Facebook or instagra, make a print etc.

My concern is that when I switch to Affinity DAM I will lose my keywording. Also I will not be able to access the finished image since it is stored in LR. I guess I should have been exporting .tiff files of my favorite photos but hesitated to do so since .tiff files are huge.

 

Do you have any suggestions on how I should improve my Lightroom workflow now to prepare for the change to Affinity DAM in the future?

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Hi DanATF,

 

Welcome to the forums.

 

The Affinity DAM application is not going to be released anytime soon, we have other things in the pipeline we want to release first. So I don't think you need to be making any changes for the moment as its features haven't been specified.

 

It's nice to plan ahead, but I think it's a bit too early. :)

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I think any new RAWdeveloper/catalogue/DAM should have keyword import. Otherwise users are not too keen to switch.

Another question is that if ADAM will be powerful enough RAW developing platform or will it be more like traditional DAM. Old style DAM would not replace LR.

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Does the Affinity DAM need to be a native RAW developer too, like Lightroom is? I rather have the DAM just be a really good DAM, i.e. it just manages / catalogues digital assets better than anyone else, including Adobe Bridge - which the Affinity DAM should resemble more closely in terms of functionality, in the market.

With that said, this DAM can, however, harness Photo's RAW and image editing capabilities (or even leverage on Designer's / Publisher's strengths) to edit assets from within the DAM itself (roundtripping may not be required) for seamless workflow. 

In other words, users will need to have licenses to both DAM and any of the other software in the Affinity range, in order to have cataloguing and other creative tools at their disposal.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I rather have the DAM just be a really good DAM, i.e. it just manages / catalogues digital assets better than anyone else, including Adobe Bridge - which the Affinity DAM should resemble more closely in terms of functionality, in the market.

 

Adobe Bridge is no DAM ;)

Bridge is basically a better file system browser. There are many of these around already, for Windows, Mac and Linux.

 

Do you know some real DAM software, e.g. products offered by companies like Canto, FotoWare, Extensis, Asset Bank, Widen, Daminion etc.? I think Adobe has a high-price DAM for enterprise-level users as well.

 

The feature set of a real DAM by far exceeds what Bridge does. Or what Lr does in that department.

 

I develop a DAM software myself (which I of course did not mention it in the list above) and about 50% of my users use Lr, DxO, C1, SilkyPix, another RAW processor or Ps to process and edit their images. My users manage between 50,000 and 500,000 files with my software, spanning 10 or 30 years of images!

 

Independence from any software, superb metadata support, open and documented file formats, support for common metadata standards like IPTC, EXIF, GPS, XMP, ID3, Office, OpenOffice, audio and video formats, many import and export functions, no lock-in principle etc. is what you should expect from a proper DAM.

 

Selecting a DAM is important because it usually has to outlive multiple generations of editing or RAW processing software. And it should never lock you in so you can switch horses if required.

 

Some of my users recently started testing Affinity Photo. I use Affinity Designer myself. Great product.

I'm currently looking into supporting Affinity Photo and Designer in my DAM, at least displaying previews for the files and support for reading and writing metadata.

 

I just asked about Affinity file format documentation and ways to get previews for .afdesign and .afphoto files on Windows. Let's see if this is possible and if the metadata format is documented.

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