What is the basic structure set up of Affinity Photo?

[DiederikvdS]

I am new to the Affinity community. I am frantically going through all the tutorial videos. Lapping it all up like a spunge. But, what I haven't found yet, is an explanation of the basic setup rules of the app. It feel slike everything is geared towards users coming from PhotoShop, or at least people that are very familiar with the tools and interface of PhotoShop. So lots of explanantions are set up as a guidehow to do your familiar things, but now within Affinity Photo. I haven't come accross a tutorial for newbies that have no PhotoShop background at all.

I come from Aperture. I have trouble understanding how Affinity deals with importing photo's from my memory cards, how to set up my storage, what is the overlaying line of thought about the work process Affinity suggests me to follow? I don't seem to be able to find a basic introductory video about that. Or am I looking in all the wrong places? I was used to having a library for each year within which I had many projects. I would import (and simultaniously back up, also a great feature!) my NEF-files and take it from there. If needed I would export JPGs for sharing, publishing or printing. But in general everything would be neatly together and relatively easy to find. I'm sure Affinity has a similar, but different structure and line of thought that is build in to accomodate photo management in some way. I'd just like to know what way.

Can anyone help? Either point me towards a tutorial on this topic, or otherwise explain how Affinity sees photomanagement so I can familiarise myself with that and happily work with it?

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Best regards, Diederik

 

[v_kyr]

APh doesn't include a real photomanagement tool (a DAM) or the like per se. Thus you usually use what your OS privides here (Photos on MAC or Win etc.) or some other third party app and then use APh for finetuning certain selected/choosen images via interoperation. So image organization and workflow is more or less leaved in your hands or the way you want to work individually with things. - Other parts of the software like the UI and shortcuts etc. are partly customizable via preferences and settings, so you can adjust things to your individual needs.

[DiederikvdS]

Ah, many thanks. So for data management I'll stick to the Finder on my Mac, as Photos has the very irritating habit of interpreting what I would want to do with my photos. It lists them in all kinds of very unwanted ways. (this is another nail in my moving away from Apple, but it will take me a few years I'm afraid). It will mean extra handling as Aperture had the nice feature of copying to the work folder AND the backup folder (on my external disc) simultaniously when importing from memory card. I will search for an app that can do just that. That would speed up things dramatically.

Customizable UI is probably very nice, once I get the hang of it. I have very limited needs as I always try to shoot first time right. It's just perspective and some lighting adjustments that I am interested in. Especially the perspective tool is the reason for switching to something else but Aperture (and the fact that is discontinued). Haven't found it yet, but I didn't expect that right away in the first hour of exploring this massively powerful application :-)

 

[v_kyr]

There are also ways to customize or enhance Apple Photos into that direction (to make backup copies or store external too etc.) but that needs a little bit more of try and error, Photos setup and customization or scripting and the like. IOW it's not that easy and nice solved as it was with Aperture.

However, via Automator something like the following might work for Apple Photos image folders, you can give it a try ...

1) Run Automator
2) select a Folder Action from the template chooser and click Choose
3) Select the folder into which you put your files from the "Choose folder" pulldown (Select "other" and choose your folder)
4) Click on "Files and Folders" in the Actions sidebar
5) Drag the "Copy Finder Items" action into the pane on the right
6) Select the folder on your external drive to which you want to have the files automatically copied
7) Save the Automator action

That should do it. Automator will attach that workflow to the folder as a Folder Action, and then anything you drop in the first 
folder from then on will automatically be immediately copied to the other folder. 

Further you can access Affinity Photo also from inside of Apple Photos, APh has hooks inside of it for certain tasks, though I can't say how good the interoperation works here, since personally I don't use APh this way.

[v_kyr]

Forgotten to mention that there is also a printed (hardcover) Affinity Photo Workbook available, which is until 24.10. about 40% cheaper available. Maybe this helps and tells certain things in that direction too (?).  You should look through it's online table of contents and a sample chapter (if available?) in order to decide if it might be helpful for you or not.

[DiederikvdS]

Many thanks again. I really appreciate your efforts. I will however stay away from Apples Photos as it will grab my photos and attach all kinds of unwanted rubble to it like face recognition, places, times, type etc etc which one cannot get rid of. A very strange way of forcing people in how they want to view their photo's. I'd rather keep it to my self really. And as for different areas of photos I work with I have different external disks or at least different folders, it would need almost as much attention to set it up and use for each different area, that just using the finder and copy it twice from memory card to another location is probably easier, more foolproof anyway. :-)

 

I hope to find though an understanding on how APh expects me to think about personas and developing. At the moment those are the two things that are the most unclear to me. I suspect it makes sense to those of us already fully used to PhotoShop, but as said, I'm a novice here.

 

Thanks for the tip on the printed manual (when everything else fails, read the manual ). I will definitely have a look into that. Unfortunately flying out tofday to Ireland for 10 days of travelling, so I wont be able to order it in time to take with me as holiday literature. A gift for when I get home...

 

 

[DiederikvdS]

8 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Forgotten to mention that there is also a printed (hardcover) Affinity Photo Workbook available, which is until 24.10. about 40% cheaper available. Maybe this helps and tells certain things in that direction too (?).  You should look through it's online table of contents and a sample chapter (if available?) in order to decide if it might be helpful for you or not.

Err, it seems to be only available in German. I do understand and speak German, but it would not be my language of choice for this kind of read.... I seem to be unable to find the publication in English (it's grayed out on the link you provided )

[v_kyr]

Personally for image management purposes I too use own folder structure setups and backups of those among external storage disks. So to say first of all a manual organisation automated with scripting tasks for personal needs. I also don't use the APh or Apple RAW engines for image setup and conversion here, since as a Nikonian there are other RAW converters which do IMO a much better job in this regard. So I use APh more or less for image tweaking and manipulation purposes and not for RAW conversion development or the like.

[v_kyr]

10 minutes ago, DiederikvdS said:

Err, it seems to be only available in German. I do understand and speak German, but it would not be my language of choice for this kind of read.... I seem to be unable to find the publication in English (it's grayed out on the link you provided )

No it's main language is English and you can choose the language when you buy that one. It shows you german there since the LINK I supplied defaults to my browsers and OS main language, I couldn't change the Webpage language to english before posting that link. - So go to Google search for "Affinity Photo Workbook" and follow the link to Affinity Serif in english instead! - You should get then an english language Webpage where you can order that book in english too!

[DiederikvdS]

7 minutes ago, DiederikvdS said:

Err, it seems to be only available in German. I do understand and speak German, but it would not be my language of choice for this kind of read.... I seem to be unable to find the publication in English (it's grayed out on the link you provided )

got it, via a long rerouting process, but it's ordered now.

 

Ah, and now you got me interested in your RAW converters I might be interested in as well! Nikon D750 and D7000 here... I expect to have the same purpose for APh here.

[v_kyr]

I still get the best image results for a D7000 and D3s with Nikons own Capture NX2/NX-D software. Beside that the DxO RAW converter, Lightroom and Phase One (Capture One Pro) converters also produce quite good results when setup accordingly. From the Freeware screne, Rawtherapee and Darktable are also usable.

 

[DiederikvdS]

Great! I'll delve into that. Many thanks indeed.

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, DiederikvdS said:

I will however stay away from Apples Photos as it will grab my photos and attach all kinds of unwanted rubble to it like face recognition, places, times, type etc etc which one cannot get rid of.

FWIW, Apple Photos can be set up so it will not "grab" any of your photos, or set up so that you have full control over which ones it does. Besides, it is probably your camera or smart phone that is attaching some of the metadata to your photos, so don't blame the app for all of it.