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Are these applications really adding so much value that it's worth it with their proprietary catalogs? My personal solution for photo storage is a normal direct

Are these applications really adding so much value that it's worth it with their proprietary catalogs? My personal solution for photo storage is a normal directory tree with files. I have Piwigo set up to catalog those so that I can browse by shooting date and tags, but the file hierarchy stays untouched. I can pull files from there to edit with any application and there's a lot of proven tools to keep the files in good shape and backed up.

teekert 5y ago
If you're in the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone, some iPads and a Macbook, you sort of roll into it. Is it worth it? Not sure, it's sure easy and just works. But you're on your own when you try to interface with your data in "non conventional" ways. I myself use NextCloud for everything, I recently moved from Android to iOS and it's nice to see most things working... except that NextCloud has issues making previews from .heic pictures (or I should say heic picture containers containing heif images coded in hevc :s), and so the drama starts again. It's always plug and pray outside the Apple ecosystem, always ymmv.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  I like your quotes around "non conventional", as everything about storing files in a directory is the traditional and conventional way to store files.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Haha, yes it felt wrong subconsciously to call it non-conventional. Now that you mention it, I totally agree that it is Apple who in the games of doing things the non-conventional way. The opposite of the Unix philosophy. "Take all things, throw them together and make sure they only work in one, blessed, linear way."
    - MereInterest 5y ago
      Every once in a while I'll make an external backup of my parents' photo collection. Every single time, it's a royal pain to figure out where Apple has decided to put the iPhoto directory. There's no UI that points to it, no settings to configure the save location. It's like you're supposed to forget that these are your pictures to access as you please, and instead treat them as iPhoto's pictures, only to be accessed in the blessed interface.
msh 5y ago
I love that I can quickly click on a person and then get all the photos with that person. The same for a location. The "memories" slideshows that iPhone or gphoto generate are sometimes also very nice to see. The search functionality also comes handy once in a while. So that I can search for pictures of certain things. For sharing photos the shared albums are also very easy to work with. Both to create and the receiver to import any interesting photos to my/their library.
q-rews 5y ago
Giving up the file system is difficult but it’s a godsend. I hated losing the Events when moving from iPhoto to Photos, but in practice no one wants to organize photos and I certainly did not enjoy it, as anal I as I was. Nowadays we don’t have events anymore, it’s just a continuous flow or random photos that may or may not belong to a specific event. The great part is that photos are always in chronological order and I never have to deal with “files” (copies, same names, etc). The only exception are professionals and Photos.app definitely isn’t intended for them.
- Maakuth 5y ago
  I too prefer chronological order instead of some "organized" collection of directories. My point is that this is something that a photo indexing app of some sort (Piwigo in my case) should do and leave the files be.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
No. The only filing system you need is... the file system. These companies (Apple especially) love to pretend that nobody had anything organized until they came along. Don't store your important media in proprietary formats, or "the cloud."
puppet-master 5y ago
Yes, definitely. In the case of Lightroom, it is preserving your original input photo along with a list of edits and workflows you've applied to it. It also manages a database of preview images, so browsing full resolution albums is fast There are no destructive edits in Lightroom unless you really go out of your way to cause the destruction It also has client-side face recognition / clustering which relies on a local database, indexing by geographic location for GPS-tagged images, etc. Essentially nobody needs Lightroom until they try it, after which it easily becomes impossible to live without and there is no replacement
- hanklazard 5y ago
  > Essentially nobody needs Lightroom until they try it, after which it easily becomes impossible to live without and there is no replacement I’ve tried Dark Table, but I’m afraid you may be correct. Trying to switch after 7 yrs of LR feels really challenging.
  - petepete 5y ago
    I've used Capture One Pro for a similar amount of time and anything else (LR included) feels like a step down. Probably mostly inertia and familiarity by this point.
    - hanklazard 5y ago
      Yeah, my goal is to be able to run my next photo software natively on a linux box, and to my knowledge Capture One is only available on MacOS and Windows. It does look like great software, though.
      - petepete 5y ago
        Yeah, it and Affinity Photo are pretty much the only reason I keep a Windows partition now. I think Darktable looks like a contender but I'd prefer to be able to make it just use Adwaita and look normal.
- 5y ago

teekert 5y ago

If you're in the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone, some iPads and a Macbook, you sort of roll into it. Is it worth it? Not sure, it's sure easy and just works. But you're on your own when you try to interface with your data in "non conventional" ways. I myself use NextCloud for everything, I recently moved from Android to iOS and it's nice to see most things working... except that NextCloud has issues making previews from .heic pictures (or I should say heic picture containers containing heif images coded in hevc :s), and so the drama starts again. It's always plug and pray outside the Apple ecosystem, always ymmv.

MereInterest 5y ago
I like your quotes around "non conventional", as everything about storing files in a directory is the traditional and conventional way to store files.
- teekert 5y ago
  Haha, yes it felt wrong subconsciously to call it non-conventional. Now that you mention it, I totally agree that it is Apple who in the games of doing things the non-conventional way. The opposite of the Unix philosophy. "Take all things, throw them together and make sure they only work in one, blessed, linear way."
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    Every once in a while I'll make an external backup of my parents' photo collection. Every single time, it's a royal pain to figure out where Apple has decided to put the iPhoto directory. There's no UI that points to it, no settings to configure the save location. It's like you're supposed to forget that these are your pictures to access as you please, and instead treat them as iPhoto's pictures, only to be accessed in the blessed interface.

msh 5y ago

I love that I can quickly click on a person and then get all the photos with that person. The same for a location. The "memories" slideshows that iPhone or gphoto generate are sometimes also very nice to see. The search functionality also comes handy once in a while. So that I can search for pictures of certain things. For sharing photos the shared albums are also very easy to work with. Both to create and the receiver to import any interesting photos to my/their library.

q-rews 5y ago

Giving up the file system is difficult but it’s a godsend. I hated losing the Events when moving from iPhoto to Photos, but in practice no one wants to organize photos and I certainly did not enjoy it, as anal I as I was. Nowadays we don’t have events anymore, it’s just a continuous flow or random photos that may or may not belong to a specific event. The great part is that photos are always in chronological order and I never have to deal with “files” (copies, same names, etc). The only exception are professionals and Photos.app definitely isn’t intended for them.

Maakuth 5y ago
I too prefer chronological order instead of some "organized" collection of directories. My point is that this is something that a photo indexing app of some sort (Piwigo in my case) should do and leave the files be.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

No. The only filing system you need is... the file system. These companies (Apple especially) love to pretend that nobody had anything organized until they came along. Don't store your important media in proprietary formats, or "the cloud."

puppet-master 5y ago

Yes, definitely. In the case of Lightroom, it is preserving your original input photo along with a list of edits and workflows you've applied to it. It also manages a database of preview images, so browsing full resolution albums is fast There are no destructive edits in Lightroom unless you really go out of your way to cause the destruction It also has client-side face recognition / clustering which relies on a local database, indexing by geographic location for GPS-tagged images, etc. Essentially nobody needs Lightroom until they try it, after which it easily becomes impossible to live without and there is no replacement

hanklazard 5y ago
> Essentially nobody needs Lightroom until they try it, after which it easily becomes impossible to live without and there is no replacement I’ve tried Dark Table, but I’m afraid you may be correct. Trying to switch after 7 yrs of LR feels really challenging.
- petepete 5y ago
  I've used Capture One Pro for a similar amount of time and anything else (LR included) feels like a step down. Probably mostly inertia and familiarity by this point.
  - hanklazard 5y ago
    Yeah, my goal is to be able to run my next photo software natively on a linux box, and to my knowledge Capture One is only available on MacOS and Windows. It does look like great software, though.
    - petepete 5y ago
      Yeah, it and Affinity Photo are pretty much the only reason I keep a Windows partition now. I think Darktable looks like a contender but I'd prefer to be able to make it just use Adwaita and look normal.
5y ago