3 ms·

What is considered the best DAM (digital asset manager) for photos?

by caseyf7 6y ago

dewey 6y ago
Adobe Lightroom for a lot of people.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Adobe Lightroom is only okay/good enough at management (same for Capture One. Picasa was the best I had used, unfortunately it's dead.
formerly_proven 6y ago
I haven't seen anything open source that comes close to Lightroom, even if you only consider LR versions from ten years ago. Although LR used to have the habit of getting really slow with larger libraries, it mostly just works and doesn't get in the way, while stuff like darktable is just... weird. Darktable has similar issues to GIMP, as in, that it hypothetically has a lot of features, but the usability is pretty poor overall, and it lacks some pretty vital things. GIMP only did 8 bit color until recently and a lot of operations are comically slow, while darktable has a very low legibility UI and keyboard shortcuts that don't make a lot of sense (e.g. navigation keys are different between modes), it isn't good at actualling keeping a library of photos, and crucially it has no way to quickly go to 100/200/400 % magnification (in LR you could hold the middle mouse button to instantly snap to 400 % iirc, extremely useful, completely absent in darktable). Overall photo editing with open source software is kind of a drag. The features are more or less there, the UX isn't.
- flo123456 6y ago
  Very sad, but true. I’m still using LR6. Even though the map view doesn’t work any more and it cannot handle anything shot with my phone it is still the best option. I wonder why the state of open source alternatives is so sad and what can be done to improve the situation.
- takeda 6y ago
  How about RawTherapee? How does it stack against darktable and LR?
  - tuxcall 6y ago
    RawTherapee and Darktable is simply the Develop part of Lightroom.
    - takeda 6y ago
      So RawTherapee/Darktable + Digikam would cover lightroom areas? I never used lightroom, so I don't know what I might be missing.
- tuxcall 6y ago
  Lightroom classic is good, the new one is complete trash as far as UI and performance goes, same with all other new Adobe products. Illustrator, Photoshop. I guess they moved to web tech on the desktop, too.
  - user_error 6y ago
    I agree with the sentiment on the new Lightroom being trash, although I do think something nice came out of Adobe's efforts of the past few years. One thing that kept me from post-processing a lot of my pictures was the necessity of doing it on the desktop. I'd come back from holidays and didn't really make the time, I guess it can be attributed to laziness. Nowadays however, I have a subscription for Lightroom and can import the photos on my iPad and edit them on the go, or from the comfort of my couch. I love it. When I fire up Lightroom classic on the desktop, it downloads everything (originals) I've uploaded on the iPad from the Lightroom cloud. Although this has some inconveniences - it's just dumped into a folder without any regard for organisation - it prevents a complete vendor lock-in. Without that feature I wouldn't have considered this approach. I love to take pictures, but post-processing is not exactly my favourite activity. I feel that all the tricks I used to get me to develop more on the desktop (e.g. getting a midi board for editing) didn't really get me anywhere, but the Adobe cloud + iPad just did the trick for me.
mceachen 6y ago
I'd say PhotoStructure. (Disclaimer: I may be biased).
- Proven 6y ago
  Of course you are biased otherwise you wouldn't have an opinion

What is considered the best DAM (digital asset manager) for photos?

dewey 6y ago

Adobe Lightroom for a lot of people.

StavrosK 6y ago
Adobe Lightroom is only okay/good enough at management (same for Capture One. Picasa was the best I had used, unfortunately it's dead.

formerly_proven 6y ago

I haven't seen anything open source that comes close to Lightroom, even if you only consider LR versions from ten years ago. Although LR used to have the habit of getting really slow with larger libraries, it mostly just works and doesn't get in the way, while stuff like darktable is just... weird. Darktable has similar issues to GIMP, as in, that it hypothetically has a lot of features, but the usability is pretty poor overall, and it lacks some pretty vital things. GIMP only did 8 bit color until recently and a lot of operations are comically slow, while darktable has a very low legibility UI and keyboard shortcuts that don't make a lot of sense (e.g. navigation keys are different between modes), it isn't good at actualling keeping a library of photos, and crucially it has no way to quickly go to 100/200/400 % magnification (in LR you could hold the middle mouse button to instantly snap to 400 % iirc, extremely useful, completely absent in darktable). Overall photo editing with open source software is kind of a drag. The features are more or less there, the UX isn't.

flo123456 6y ago
Very sad, but true. I’m still using LR6. Even though the map view doesn’t work any more and it cannot handle anything shot with my phone it is still the best option. I wonder why the state of open source alternatives is so sad and what can be done to improve the situation.
takeda 6y ago
How about RawTherapee? How does it stack against darktable and LR?
- tuxcall 6y ago
  RawTherapee and Darktable is simply the Develop part of Lightroom.
  - takeda 6y ago
    So RawTherapee/Darktable + Digikam would cover lightroom areas? I never used lightroom, so I don't know what I might be missing.
tuxcall 6y ago
Lightroom classic is good, the new one is complete trash as far as UI and performance goes, same with all other new Adobe products. Illustrator, Photoshop. I guess they moved to web tech on the desktop, too.
- user_error 6y ago
  I agree with the sentiment on the new Lightroom being trash, although I do think something nice came out of Adobe's efforts of the past few years. One thing that kept me from post-processing a lot of my pictures was the necessity of doing it on the desktop. I'd come back from holidays and didn't really make the time, I guess it can be attributed to laziness. Nowadays however, I have a subscription for Lightroom and can import the photos on my iPad and edit them on the go, or from the comfort of my couch. I love it. When I fire up Lightroom classic on the desktop, it downloads everything (originals) I've uploaded on the iPad from the Lightroom cloud. Although this has some inconveniences - it's just dumped into a folder without any regard for organisation - it prevents a complete vendor lock-in. Without that feature I wouldn't have considered this approach. I love to take pictures, but post-processing is not exactly my favourite activity. I feel that all the tricks I used to get me to develop more on the desktop (e.g. getting a midi board for editing) didn't really get me anywhere, but the Adobe cloud + iPad just did the trick for me.

mceachen 6y ago

I'd say PhotoStructure. (Disclaimer: I may be biased).

Proven 6y ago
Of course you are biased otherwise you wouldn't have an opinion