[DAM] Photoshop or Lightroom point of view

[d.k]

First of all, I'm most impressed by both Affinity Designer and Photo. My hope that one day there would be a real Adobe alternative has come true when both were made available also for Windows. And the price is ridiculously low.

 

Though, for Affinity Photo my enthusiasm is slowing down a bit when watching the software from the Lightroom point of view, not from Photoshop. The Lightroom workflow is indeed fantastic for working with lots of images and going through a high-quality but effective and quick raw development process. On the other hand, Photoshop is not at all that handy, non-destructive and time-saving when it comes to raw development, but of course it offers the complete image manipulation potential that Lightroom is missing.

 

So why not bring both together? I'm sure Adobe would if they could and if they didn't want one software to cannibalise the other. At the moment Affinity Photo is more or less imitating the Adobe Photoshop approach without making use of the (newer) Lightroom operating philosophy.

[MEB]

Hi d.k,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Affinity Photo wasn't designed to manage libraries like Lightroom or Aperture. It's a RAW developer/converter and photo editing app comparable to Photoshop only. We will have a DAM (digital assets management) product later which will work seamlessly with Affinity Photo for these functions.

[d.k]

Hi MEB,

 

Thanks for your reply!

 

I think the separation of Photoshop and Lightroom as two separate products predominantly has historic reasons. When the first Lightroom version was released in 2007, photographers liked the innovative GUI and workflow concept especially compared to Photoshop, and some people couldn't wait for Photoshop (which dated back to 1990 and has become a big old lady since) to profit from this fresh Lightroom approach as well.

 

Adobe has not really done that, instead the basic, complicated principle of ACR within Photoshop remains - fine from a graphics designer's point of view, but unfortunately from a photographer's point of view.

 

Without Adobe's historic "ballast" it would certainly make sense not to stick to the Photoshop concept too much but instead find a way to serve both groups of users with a single piece of software without having to swap between two programs. That would be revolutionary!

[Fixx]

There is certain sense with d.k. post. I routinely have to decide if I import AP (or PS) edited images back to LR – and often I do not. Those images end being a separate project folder in Finder and they are not in LR anymore, they are not "photography" anymore. It would be better if all images would be handled by catalogue and closer relation of catalog and editor would help here.