Editing More Than One Photo from Apple Photos at One Time and Organizing Photos

[DianeF]

I've noticed that if I have opened, in Affinity Photo, a photo that resides in Apple Photos, using the "Edit In Affinity Photo" extension, I am not able to open a second photo in AP, as another document ,while the first file remains open. Is this a limitation of the interaction between Apple Photos and Affinity Photo, namely that only one photo at a same can be worked on through this Edit extension? I know I could probably place another file into my first file, but that's not what I want to do here.

 

If this is a limitation, is there another way to access Apple Photos so that more than one photo file can be opened directly in AP without going through Apple Photos? All of the Apple Photos are hidden and not easily accessible in the normal way.

 

Related to this is a bigger question: At the moment, I have over 5000 photos on my computer. Some are Iphoto files from when I used to use IPhoto. Others are Apple Photos. And then there are a lot of images in the picture folder on my Mac that I took with my camera. I'd like to find a way to consolidate all of these photos into one place so that I can tag them all and more easily work with them. I used to use Lightroom, but my copy no longer works with my upgraded OS, and I don't want to subscribe to Lightroom. I'm willing to use another piece of software as a DAM if this would help, but it has to be something that can easily import new Apple photos since more and more I'm using my Iphone to take pictures with instead of my camera.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice and help on these topics.

[DianeF]

I did a little more research after making my initial and discovered where my Iphotos and Apple Photos are stored on my computer and how to access them directly. But I still can't figure out if there's a way to combine all my photos that are stored in various places and then add tags to them. At the moment, it's a huge amount of work to have to go to each folder and subfolder within the larger folders to find specific pictures I might want to use in my work.

 

And, I'm still not clear about the first part of question in my previous post, namely, whether it is possible to edit more than one photo through the Affinity Photo extension.

[R C-R]

It is not a good idea to open files in AP directly from the iPhoto or Photos library folders & then save them back to any of these library folders. (That is why they are normally hidden.) Doing so won't update the internal iPhoto or Photos support files & internal pointers that these apps use to keep track of edits & photo metadata. This can lead to significant problems with these apps, including data loss.

 

I don't think it is possible to edit more than one file at a time in Photos, & I believe this limitation also applies to extensions. 

[Scungio]

DianeF,

Since you are on a Mac I recommend Pixave. Just this past month I bought Pixave for the desktop ($15) and Pixave for iPad ($8). They are also working on Pixave for iPhone too but it hasn't been released yet.

 

Back in the day my favorite DAM was iView Media Pro but then Microsoft bought it and then it was acquired by Phase One and is now Media Pro. Sure, would be nice to have but I don't want to pay $189. So, I went on a quest and it led to me settling on Pixave.

 

Here are two videos from Elaine Giles on Youtube:

 

 

 

 

I have an iCloud account with more storage so I use the iCloud sync to set up my libraries. Whether I am on iPad or my Mac Pro I can add files, make changes and it all updates flawlessly so far for me. Will be even nicer when the iPhone app is available. I use Pixave to manage, organize my files, to make it easier to find things, tag things, etc. Pixave is not Lightroom and you will not use it to edit the file, perform image editing on it etc. Anyway, as I said, spent $23 instead of $189 for Media Pro and pretty happy with the results so far.

[DianeF]

Thanks for the responses.

 

R-C-R, I'm not clear what the problem would be opening files from the Library folders. When you dig down enough, they are just jpgs organized by date. If I were to open one of these in AP or even copy it to work with and then use a Save As to save the resulting work as an Af.photo file or export the resulting work of combining and manipulating images as a jpg file, why would it affect the original photo in the Library folder? It seems to me that as long as I leave the original file intact and use a Save As command for any edits, there shouldn't be a problem. Would you disagree with this logic?

 

Scungio, thanks for the suggestion of Pixave. I started to watch the video and will continue to do so as I have time. Since you are using this app, can you tell me whether it will find all the files that are currently part of IPhoto and Apple Photo libraries, as well as other image files scattered throughout the computer, and bring all of this into the organizational structure of the program? If so, then this app would meet my needs and help me organize everything in one place. Of course, one would then hope that the program would not be discontinued, like Aperture, or made into a subscription, ike Lightroom.

[R C-R]

21 minutes ago, DianeF said:

R-C-R, I'm not clear what the problem would be opening files from the Library folders. When you dig down enough, they are just jpgs organized by date.

If you dig down into the Photos Library.photoslibrary file structure, you will see among other things a very large Masters folder with subfolders that may be organized by year, month, & a long hash number at progressively lower levels, with the lowest level folders containing one or more jpg, mov, and/or various RAW format files. But you should also see a database folder, a private folder, & a large resources folder also organized into subfolders with some of the lowest level ones also organized by long hash numbers. (The exact structure varies by Photos version.)

 

The content, creation, & naming of all of these subfolders are interrelated. They are managed together by the Photos app to store & link together original media items, edits to them, & their related metadata. Not all of it is stored in any one subfolder, nor is there any guarantee that all of it will be updated correctly if library items are not passed to or from other apps using the OS frameworks designed for that purpose.

 

So for example, if everything is not updated correctly, Photos may lose track of what album(s) a photo is in, which thumbnail or cached full-sized image files to display for it, or even where the original file is stored.

[MEB]

Hi DianeF,

While loading (reading) the files directly from Apple Photo's Library shouldn't pose problems, Apple really recommends to not mess with them. If you need to get them why not simply export them from Apple Photos as originals. Select the files you want clicking on their thumbnails (or shift click to select a bunch) then go to menu File ▸ Export ▸ Export Unmodified Original For X Photo....Even for a large number of photos it should be relatively quick and don't pose any risks. Regarding you other question, no, there's no way to open more than one file in Affinity Photo using the Apple Photo's extension.

[DianeF]

Thanks, R-C-R and MEB for the additional comments. Messing with originals doesn't seem like a good idea, and exporting photos, without a categorization system, doesn't solve my basic need.

 

Given how I want to use my photos--often combining and layering more than one at a time for making digital collages and other digital artwork--I really needed to find a solution that would allow me to easily find what I need and organize the files in file structure, with tags, that would be more usable than what I have now. On the advice of a couple of people on this forum, I tried out and then bought a program called Pixave. I am slowly importing my photos into it, arranging them by year and month, and then tagging them all with keywords. The search function on this program is very good, much more robust than that of Apple Photo, and the process of creating and applying keywords is also better. Doing this import and tagging process is going to take a long time, but I think it will be worth it. It also allow me to include photos that I took before I started using Apple Photos. The program is well integrated with Affinity Photo so I can edit a photo in AP just by right clicking it and choosing AP to open it with. I can also edit more than one photo at a time in AF from this program and I can copy a photo from it to place as another layer in a photo I've already opened in AP. So, it gives me great versatility than Apple Photos. The only downside is that the program's Help files are incomplete and not well written.