photo catalog

[RPbySC]

I do not want to get PS and LR on the subscription plan.  I have LR5 and it has a great photo catalog.  How do people on Affinity store their photos?  I want to be able to see my photos with edits. Thanks.  I'm on a MacBook Pro and want to upgrade to Mojave but it doesn't support LR5 or PS5.

[firstdefence]

Welcome to the forum,

There are quite a few posts on this subject but a lot of people use XNViewMP a big reason for this is XNVeiwMP displays Affinity File previews

 

[R C-R]

I am not sure if it was mentioned in the @Poohbear topic, but XNViewMP will display previews for both Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer documents, but to do that, in XNViewMP's General > Settings options, the "Show all graphics formats" option must be ticked.

As things stand now, it will not display previews for files in the Affinity Publisher public beta format (those with the .afpub file extension) but it will display them for the Designer & Photo 1.7 version customer betas.

The app also includes a configurable "Open with" feature that works well with the Affinity apps. On my Mac I have it configured as below:

I think any app can be added via the "Add..." button. It does not perform any 'sanity checks' of its own, but if you choose to open an Affinity 1.6 document in an Affinity beta app, you get the usual warning about 1.7 files not being openable by 1.6 apps with the option to open a copy, so that isn't a problem.

[RPbySC]

Thank you.  I will look these up.  Can my Lightroom catalog be imported into any of these other options?  My LR5 will not be usable when I upgrade to Mojave, I'm told.

Also, I'm assuming I can export from these DAMs to Topaz Studio and back, which I use a lot?

My recent photos are .DNG because LR5 doesn't recognize my newer camera.  Would that be a problem importing?

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure if it was mentioned in the @Poohbear topic, but XNViewMP will display previews for both Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer documents, but to do that, in XNViewMP's General > Settings options, the "Show all graphics formats" option must be ticked.

As things stand now, it will not display previews for files in the Affinity Publisher public beta format (those with the .afpub file extension) but it will display them for the Designer & Photo 1.7 version customer betas.

The app also includes a configurable "Open with" feature that works well with the Affinity apps. On my Mac I have it configured as below:

I think any app can be added via the "Add..." button. It does not perform any 'sanity checks' of its own, but if you choose to open an Affinity 1.6 document in an Affinity beta app, you get the usual warning about 1.7 files not being openable by 1.6 apps with the option to open a copy, so that isn't a problem.

NG

[Ron P.]

16 hours ago, RPbySC said:

 Can my Lightroom catalog be imported into any of these other options?  My LR5 will not be usable when I upgrade to Mojave, I'm told.

NG

Simple answer, No they can not. The only program that is able to read a adobe LR catalog file is LR.

[Fixx]

I use LR6 in Mojave, PS CS5 has proved to be unstable and I have to use PS CS6 instead. I do not usually bother to add PS/AP edited photos to LR catalog. 

[v_kyr]

On 3/27/2019 at 4:37 PM, RPbySC said:

Can my Lightroom catalog be imported into any of these other options? ...

That's no easy task and there are also pitfalls in taking all these things over to another software. - Here is an article about the workflow and problems when migrating over to another software ...

• Synchronization between photo development tools, or the migration from Lightroom to open-source alternatives

[RPbySC]

9 hours ago, Ron P. said:

Simple answer, No they can not. The only program that is able to read a adobe LR catalog file is LR.

So what do people do with their LR photos if they no longer can use the program?

[RPbySC]

So what do people do with their LR photos if they no longer can or want to use the program?

[Fixx]

14 hours ago, RPbySC said:

So what do people do with their LR photos if they no longer can use the program?

Migration between DAMs is interesting topic. I believe some DAMs can read some catalogue content from LR but I have not studied topic.

[John Rostron]

21 hours ago, RPbySC said:

So what do people do with their LR photos if they no longer can or want to use the program?

By "LR photos" are you referring to the LR catalog? Or do you mean your original image files? Your original image files will still be there plus sidecar files whilch LR  (or ACR) will have used in translating raw files into other image formats (such as tiff). AP will not be able to utilize the sidecar at present. When I ditched LR I was able to use the 'developed' files (tiff, jpg etc) and to read my raw files without any LR adjustments. None of my files were lost, just the sidecar edits.

If you mean the LR catalog, there is no way that AP can utilize this.

John

[v_kyr]

On 3/28/2019 at 9:28 AM, Ron P. said:

... The only program that is able to read a adobe LR catalog file is LR.

Not overall correct, since LR catalogs (*.lrcat) are SQLite based databases. So you can open and read them with SQLite, though you need some SQL knowledge to make use out of it, and the whole is of course best done on a copy of the corresponding catalog file then.

[RPbySC]

5 hours ago, John Rostron said:

By "LR photos" are you referring to the LR catalog? Or do you mean your original image files? Your original image files will still be there plus sidecar files whilch LR  (or ACR) will have used in translating raw files into other image formats (such as tiff). AP will not be able to utilize the sidecar at present. When I ditched LR I was able to use the 'developed' files (tiff, jpg etc) and to read my raw files without any LR adjustments. None of my files were lost, just the sidecar edits.

If you mean the LR catalog, there is no way that AP can utilize this.

John

So if I apply the lrcat metadata to my LR originals (dngs, tifs, and jpegs) it will be embedded and not xmp sidecars.  Would that be able to be imported to a data management system like Photo Supreme or XnViewMP and then  read by Affinity, with the editing?

[Ron P.]

What LR says about Saving Meta Data to File. I exported a couple of RAW (CR2) files to DNG, then opened them in AP. None of the edits in LR were included. Those settings are kept in the lrcat file, and/or sidecar files. I'm not sure what Photo Supreme or XnViewMP will be able to do with the Meta Data Info. I know for my tests, the images were basically RAW, not processed.

[RPbySC]

3 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

What LR says about Saving Meta Data to File. I exported a couple of RAW (CR2) files to DNG, then opened them in AP. None of the edits in LR were included. Those settings are kept in the lrcat file, and/or sidecar files. I'm not sure what Photo Supreme or XnViewMP will be able to do with the Meta Data Info. I know for my tests, the images were basically RAW, not processed.

There is a way in LR to attach the metadata in the catalog (lrcat) to the dng files in my LR library.  It doesn't create .xmp sidecars, but apparently embeds the editing information in the dng images.  I guess I'd need to ask someone at Photo Supreme or XnviewMP or some other data storage program if the metadata would be imported since it's not a separate sidecar. 

[Ron P.]

Yes in LR, use the command Save Metadata to file. Other than camera raw files, the metadata will be embedded in the file, which is what I done.

[Tourmaline]

On 3/30/2019 at 12:39 AM, Ron P. said:

Yes in LR, use the command Save Metadata to file. Other than camera raw files, the metadata will be embedded in the file, which is what I done.

You have two options:

save to file, this will include the file and save as a sidecar file, wich will save the file in a different format next to your image format.

[Tourmaline]

On 3/27/2019 at 12:20 PM, R C-R said:

I am not sure if it was mentioned in the @Poohbear topic, but XNViewMP will display previews for both Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer documents, but to do that, in XNViewMP's General > Settings options, the "Show all graphics formats" option must be ticked.

As things stand now, it will not display previews for files in the Affinity Publisher public beta format (those with the .afpub file extension) but it will display them for the Designer & Photo 1.7 version customer betas.

The app also includes a configurable "Open with" feature that works well with the Affinity apps. On my Mac I have it configured as below:

I think any app can be added via the "Add..." button. It does not perform any 'sanity checks' of its own, but if you choose to open an Affinity 1.6 document in an Affinity beta app, you get the usual warning about 1.7 files not being openable by 1.6 apps with the option to open a copy, so that isn't a problem.

For previews in Windows Explorer have a look at my solution in this thread:

Both .afdesign AND .afpub work!

see screenshot in the thread...

 

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, Tourmaline said:

For previews in Windows Explorer have a look at my solution in this thread:

For Macs, as long as the Finder window is set to show icon previews (which can be set differently for different windows) previews are shown for all three Affinity apps, whether beta or not.

But even if I add the Affinity Publisher file extension to the XNViewMP Browser > File list preference as a "Master extension" and/or as a "Companion" file, that app will not show previews for Affinity Publisher documents.

[Tourmaline]

23 minutes ago, R C-R said:

For Macs, as long as the Finder window is set to show icon previews (which can be set differently for different windows) previews are shown for all three Affinity apps, whether beta or not.

But even if I add the Affinity Publisher file extension to the XNViewMP Browser > File list preference as a "Master extension" and/or as a "Companion" file, that app will not show previews for Affinity Publisher documents.

True, I did try that solution in XNViewMP as well, with no results.

I will use Windows Explorer anyway so for me the problem is solved. I can set Explorer to open the respective file formats with the 3 apps...