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Lightroom is closed and comes from Adobe, so it was never on my radar. Being able to modify the software is a must: photos are only part of the problem, so any

Lightroom is closed and comes from Adobe, so it was never on my radar. Being able to modify the software is a must: photos are only part of the problem, so any solution must be open to integration with other sources of data. It would have been interesting to see how it organizes the UI, but there's no demo version for Linux :P

sideshowb 5y ago
Fair enough on the closed source thing! My take is that we have specialist requirements for photos that are probably better served by a photo specific UI. Lightroom's doesn't inspire me to say it's great, but it's adequate. Can search by metadata like camera or capture date, save previous search results as 'smart folders' (e.g. I have one for all pictures since I last had a book printed). It indexes thumbnails for quick scrolling. My ancient version doesn't do geosearch but maybe later ones do. You can clone pictures (like a hardlink) rather than copy into different albums. You can also clone pictures but apply different non destructive edits to the same source file. Almost all the edit operations I want are close at hand. Order is preserved in albums. Rate photos 0-5* and tag with different colours. As to how all that is organized, I'm sure it could be improved on. I've also yet to see a good photo solution for my parents who (like many non tech folk) still struggle to understand folder hierarchies and where they saved stuff. Picasa used to be ok-ish but discontinued. Google photos is a bit of a pain over their ADSL. Good luck with it anyway!
- dcz_self 5y ago
  Thanks, that's a great summary. It does seem it's most of the way there already. How does it handle removable storage? Ironically, the fact that a topic-specific UI is needed for topic-related tasks is another strike against closed software. Something open would have been a starting point for other sorts of views (email? PDFs?), but when there's no modification, there's no ability to do that.
  - sideshowb 5y ago
    Import dialog for copying SD card to wherever you keep your photos on disk. Different dialog for adding photos to the db without moving the files. I don't know how it would handle having your library on something removable, haven't tried.

sideshowb 5y ago

Fair enough on the closed source thing! My take is that we have specialist requirements for photos that are probably better served by a photo specific UI. Lightroom's doesn't inspire me to say it's great, but it's adequate. Can search by metadata like camera or capture date, save previous search results as 'smart folders' (e.g. I have one for all pictures since I last had a book printed). It indexes thumbnails for quick scrolling. My ancient version doesn't do geosearch but maybe later ones do. You can clone pictures (like a hardlink) rather than copy into different albums. You can also clone pictures but apply different non destructive edits to the same source file. Almost all the edit operations I want are close at hand. Order is preserved in albums. Rate photos 0-5* and tag with different colours. As to how all that is organized, I'm sure it could be improved on. I've also yet to see a good photo solution for my parents who (like many non tech folk) still struggle to understand folder hierarchies and where they saved stuff. Picasa used to be ok-ish but discontinued. Google photos is a bit of a pain over their ADSL. Good luck with it anyway!

dcz_self 5y ago
Thanks, that's a great summary. It does seem it's most of the way there already. How does it handle removable storage? Ironically, the fact that a topic-specific UI is needed for topic-related tasks is another strike against closed software. Something open would have been a starting point for other sorts of views (email? PDFs?), but when there's no modification, there's no ability to do that.
- sideshowb 5y ago
  Import dialog for copying SD card to wherever you keep your photos on disk. Different dialog for adding photos to the db without moving the files. I don't know how it would handle having your library on something removable, haven't tried.