Please advise me on processing and library software (Mac OSX Big Sur)

[billtils]

That does make things a bit difficult when trying to decide on the tools you need to do the job. Let me give you a high level view of my workflow:
....

Twp comments:

1: That's a logical and efficient workflow Manfred.

2: It reinforces the concept that what you do is more important than how you do it (despite what the popular song says) for the simple reason that there are several more or less equivalent solutions that could be applied to each step.

[Adrian]

UPDATE

Having tried Skylum AI for a few days I have binned it and requested a full refund.

Reasons:
There is no rating tool within the library. Whilst I don't intend to use the library for storage, having no ability to sort photos makes the software amateurish.
Marketing spin lags behind reality. They are still on software version 1 with no upgrades despite marketing that refers to upgraded backgrounds.
Some of the AI tools do not work. For example, the app to add mist effects is completely useless. (The Sky replacements do work though and the masking is clever).
They are discontinuing support for Luminar 4 in a year. This is such recent software (which cannot be migrated to AI) that I think it bodes badly for future AI support. So I don't trust them.

The actual image processing is simple enough and works well. Not dissimilar to LR really: sliders for all of the usual things.

[Manfred M]

The subscription model benefits the company greatly. It gives them very predictable annuity income for almost no additional cost. The hook is "upgrades" but these are often marginal, or forced by competitors trying to steal their clients. Usually there is little that is new or even so worthwhile that you can't live without it.

And as time wears on your dependence is increased: especially if you are locked into a library system and doubly so if you are dependent on their cloud storage. This makes the perceived (which may be different to actual) risk of change higher as time passes.

And the costs mount up. Adobe photographer is circa £10 a month or £120 a year, but that just gives 20Gb of storage I think it is about 50% extra for 1Tb of storage in the plan. In five years I would have spent between £600 and £900. If I go with purchased software and treat it as I do, where everything is kept compatible by not radically changing the operating system, I can do it on two computers using (say) Luminar AI for £59. In total. Over 5 years.

Storage is so cheap now that I can easily have multiple very secure backups. I use 1 Tb portable SSD drives (I have several) the size of a credit card. And a desk top hard drive. Plus I also have a big RAID array that I use for my work projects. I can back up several times for next to nothing and have no cloud dependence (though I also use iCloud - not so much as a back up but because sync is handy across multipe computers and it is very cheap).

Microsoft have gone in this direction with a subscription model for what was MS Office then Office 365. It locks people in and is exceedingly disruptive in terms of file compatibility if you wish to move away from it and have thousand of weird files and Excel spreadsheets. For me it is unwise to become dependent on US companies, running through Amazon or other US servers, for data that I wish to own and control. I will accept some compromises if necessary (in fact there are few if any) in order to avoid dependence.

That is one view, but there are benefits to the subscription model as well for those of us that tended to upgrade regularly. My Creative Cloud and Office 365 subscriptions cost me roughly the same as when I bought the upgrades that came out every couple of years.

Are the upgrades worth it? That is something only the end user can decide. I tend to migrate to some of the new functionality in Photoshop soon after it is released. Their new "Neural Filters" are part of my work flow, as is the Sky Replacement function (which in my testing works better in my workflow than Luminar's. Some of the new functionality is so good, I will likely save money as I will not be renewing my Luminar software. Just as an aside, Topaz is using a bit of an annual subscription model as well for their newer "AI" products; one buys the product, but updates stop one year after the purchase date unless one pays them more money.

I totally agree that my needs will be different than someone else's. I also hesitated to jump on the subscription model bandwagon when Adobe and MS introduced them at first. Historically, software was leased up until the time that personal computers started to roll out, so the business model is not new.

Let's also be clear about the Cloud aspect of what these software companies sell. These are essentially designed for development teams where employees or contractors in different parts of the world can work on different parts of the same project. For those of us who don't, the cloud can be a convenience. I use it when teaching at different photo clubs as I can pull up materials on site, rather than having everything on my laptop hard drive (or attached portable drive). I do use the storage that comes with the package, but have not felt the need to buy additional storage. As you have mentioned, storage is cheap and most of my backups are on a couple NAS units at home.

[xpatUSA]

Adrian, I am of the opinion that you should consider divorcing the choice of library software from the choice of editor.

Instead use the Industry-Standard meta-data system known as IPTC.

https://www.iptc.org/std/photometada...specifications

In this way, you free yourself from trying to find an app where you are satisfied with both the editing and the asset management.

For sorting by quality, I would consider abusing the Category and SubCategory tags discussed in section 8.5 and make up my own Priority codes. Then use XnView or equivalent to search by those tags. XnView can show you a "contact sheet" with thumbnails for every pic marked, say, "A--" in addition to searching by EXIF values e.g. Camera Model ...

In the Contact Sheet you can do minor edits, culls, saving as, adding/editing meta-data etc. ad naus.

A steep learning curve but, in the end, YOU control how it all works.

Perfect subject for a lock-down evening ...

[xpatUSA]

For sorting by quality, I would consider abusing the Category and SubCategory tags discussed in section 8.5 and make up my own Priority codes. Then use XnView or equivalent to search by those tags. XnView can show you a "contact sheet" with thumbnails for every pic marked, say, "A--" in addition to searching by EXIF values e.g. Camera Model ...

I just edited a JPEG's Category in XnView with "A++" and it took it and I found it with the search function in Tools. It didn't take the SubCategory I entered though ... Maybe because "A++" is not a defined category in IPTC.

[xpatUSA]

I just edited a JPEG's Category in XnView with "A++" and it took it and I found it with the search function in Tools. It didn't take the SubCategory I entered though ... Maybe because "A++" is not a defined category in IPTC.

P.S. in "the perfect editor" you can view/edit Categories and sub-categories:

[Adrian]

Thank you.

I think for me there are four types of library. Firstly there is my own. This is the most important and is 100% in my control and organised into folders as above. Every image I have ever taken is in there and is backed up twice as well as in a cloud arrangement under my control.

Secondly there is my iCloud back up of Photos. Every album in current use is copied into there and automatically updates with iPhoto shots from myself and my wife, as well as all folders I copy into it as albums, and this is then available wherever we are on any laptop, iPhone or iPad. It can be searched by album, date, file name, type, face recognition, event etc. Its OK and very simple.

Thirdly there is a local library that I use to process current project material. This needs to be embedded in the processing software for convenience. It MUST enable photos to be ranked so that my wife and I can agree on what is worth processing and what might be suitable for our websites etc. Only the good stuff is processed and then that is exported back to both my main library and iCloud. The rest is deleted.

Fourthly and trivially I keep a cloud based library of images that we are using on our web sites. This is just for convenience for editing web pages and is no big deal if it is lost as I have the elsewhere.

The really big snag with my system is that I cannot easily search by camera, lens or other data embedded in the images. I could stick everything in a MySQL database and write some scripts, but that is a mammoth task and I really can't be bothered. So for example, if I wish to find a certain image from our 2013 Japan trips (two lots of 3 weeks) then I have 9,780 images in the library and to find the pictures of, say, the big hanging bell at Hiroshima, then I need to guess which date in the trip and scroll enlarged thumbnails. I can truncate this a lot if I just use the "processed" folder as this will only contain 5 star images, but maybe a Bell was not categorised as such. It's not ideal. However, cataloguing was screwed up really once I realised that Adobe rearranged all the data categorised in Aperture.

I am very unlikely to pay much for library software. Especially as in my horizon at some point is moving away from Canon. This will happen if and when we embrace FF mirrorless. I will not necessarily stay loyal to Canon at that point.

[pschlute]

The really big snag with my system is that I cannot easily search by camera, lens or other data embedded in the images.

For that you need to develop your own system. If you can you write a program that can search for the exif info you are there.

[xpatUSA]

The really big snag with my system is that I cannot easily search by camera, lens or other data embedded in the images.<>. So for example, if I wish to find a certain image from our 2013 Japan trips (two lots of 3 weeks) then I have 9,780 images in the library and to find the pictures of, say, the big hanging bell at Hiroshima, then I need to guess which date in the trip and scroll enlarged thumbnails. I can truncate this a lot if I just use the "processed" folder as this will only contain 5 star images, but maybe a Bell was not categorised as such. It's not ideal.

I know the feeling ...

May I ask what type of images they are? In other words, do most of them have EXIF?

I forgot to mention that XnView's Search Tool can be selected to search all sub-folders of a selected folder. That helps me a lot.

Not sure if your response is a rebuttal or not, but I would recommend you to bite the bullet and go through all those 9780 images and at least update the EXIF, allowing you to search by camera, lens and "other data". As for searching for particular scenes, IPTC is still the way to go because that's what it was designed for. Also, IPTC keywords are most useful and you can roll your own hierarchy or use one of the many on the 'net.

I've been going through and updating/editing all my images' meta-data for some months now and it has paid off many, many times already.

I am very unlikely to pay much for library software. Especially as in my horizon at some point is moving away from Canon. This will happen if and when we embrace FF mirrorless. I will not necessarily stay loyal to Canon at that point.

XnView is free, although you may not regard it as "Library Software". I use pay-once Photo Mechanic for updating/adding IPTC - it's a little easier once you've saved a base set and created a keyword structure. It's search engine sucks, though ...

Please realize that I am not pushing XnView but rather trying to ensure that you are aware that there are several ways of accomplishing what I believe to be your goal.

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by Adrian The really big snag with my system is that I cannot easily search by camera, lens or other data embedded in the images.

For that you need to develop your own system.

As can occasionally happen, I beg to differ, Peter.

Plenty can be found on the 'net. Such as:

[DanK]

You've made it clear that you don't want to use Adobe products, and I have no interest in trying to persuade you otherwise, but what you list--ratings and sorting by camera, lens, and other exif information--is provided by Lightroom Classic. I just discovered a new search feature in LR: if you go to any folder, you can select by edit status as well as ratings and EXIF. It also has two rating indicators--stars and colors--so two people can rate a given folder. If Lightroom offers this, there must be other DAMs that do as well.

[xpatUSA]

I just discovered a new search feature in LR: if you go to any folder, you can select by edit status as well as ratings and EXIF.

If it can search by more than one tag, that would indeed be most helpful ...

[DanK]

Yes, it can. I haven't explored enough to know whether it can do Boolean searches, but it can at least do a Boolean AND. For example, you can filter a directory for images taken with a specific combination of body and lens. I just haven't played around with the CAM functions enough to know what the full range is.

[Adrian]

Thanks all. Ted - I am not in any way dismissing your suggestion. I will look at it. But I fear I have misled you. The 9800 images is just one project. I have dozens of these. There are tens of thousand of saved images from trips and projects and business and scans that date back 35 years. I have no desire to re-catalogue or sort through most of that lot. Mainly I am focused on current and recent projects taken full frame in raw and jpeg (me) and just jpeg (wife). These all have exif data obviously. I don't care about 99% of the iPhone pictures.

Dan, thank you. I know LR Classic has those features as I used to use creative cloud in my last business for many years. But LR Classic reputedly does not run on OSX Big Sur and will increasingly fall behind operating system changes. I can run and code Linux but I am trying to simplify my life!

I will try the other recommendations as and when I get time. The website build is taking me much longer than I expected as my wife keeps thinking of new things she wants. I have enough processed images for that to last me until March, when we will have a season change. I am more focussed on image processing than library at present, but whatever I choose must integrate well with my system, and convince me that I can live with it for 5 years and probably a transition into mirrorless.

[DanK]

I don't use a Mac, but Adobe says that LR CC is compatible with Bug Sur: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cl...atibility.html

[xpatUSA]

Ted - I am not in any way dismissing your suggestion. I will look at it. But I fear I have misled you. The 9800 images is just one project. I have dozens of these. There are tens of thousands of saved images from trips and projects and business and scans that date back 35 years.

Was not misled - I suspected that might be the case.

I have no desire to re-catalogue or sort through most of that lot.

Again, I know the feeling.

Mainly I am focused on current and recent projects taken full frame in raw and jpeg (me) and just jpeg (wife). These all have exif data obviously.

So the basic step of going through even those images is probably not envisaged. It is a pain, I know. Maybe there's something out there that can do it by some magical means.

Good luck!

[davidedric]

I'm one of those with Lightroom at the centre of my workflow.

I actually don't make a lot of use of the DAM facilities themselves. However, once you are using Lightroom, as you'll mostly know, the Catalogue drives a lot of Lightroom functionality too. Most obviously it contains the edits and edit history, but also virtual copies, collections, snapshots, proof copies and I'm sure much more besides. To me, it makes sense to have all of that in one place.

[Adrian]

I don't use a Mac, but Adobe says that LR CC is compatible with Bug Sur: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cl...atibility.html

Sadly this is not the case. I already checked this out. The compatibility they claim is with M1 chip. On my desktop (high spec iMac graphite pro) I am running 10 core Xeon W chip at 4.5GHz. I have tried it with my application saved copy of LR Classic running on a legacy machine as well, and it crashes repeatedly or fails to load on Big Sur. After the compatibility claims for LRC, adobe go on to say this:

"Are legacy versions compatible?

No. Unsupported versions of Lightroom Classic were not designed or tested to work on macOS Big Sur (version 11).

Older versions use 32-bit licensing components and installers and will not be able to be installed, uninstalled, or activated after upgrading to macOS Big Sur."

The reality is that as OSX moves forward, stand alone versions of LR will not run and users are forced down the subscription route. This is unsurprising as I am sure Adobe don't want people using stand alone software and have no interest in making old software forward compatible as it will generate no revenue.

[DanK]

Yes, I meant that they claim that the current version is compatible, not the old versions.


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[Adrian]

They appear to claim it only for the very new M chip. Either way, I am now trailing DXO4 and started a new thread.

In other good news, Luminar processed my refund request within 24 hours and I have already been refunded to my payment source. That is honourable behaviour.