3 ms·

Photos are probably the most valuable digital files quite everyone has. And as with all things that are precious, there comes (or at least should come) caution.

by mcbetz 12y ago

Photos are probably the most valuable digital files quite everyone has. And as with all things that are precious, there comes (or at least should come) caution. There is nothing that I fear more than loosing my photos, my visual biography. That is why I am super conservative when it comes to software that wants to handle my photos. What are the requirements for software that I allow to manage my photos: - Very good chance of still being in the market in 5-10 years. This basically rules out all Google (Picasa), Apple (iPhoto, Aperture, Photos) products. - Possibility to backup my photos on various destinations (not only one commercial cloud) - A library format that is readable from external applications (SQL, metadata files) - Good tools to search, compare and sort my library - At least support two major platforms natively Unfortunately, the only software that meets most of these requirements is Adobe's Lightroom. And this is very sad: - It has too many features that I do not need - I am not a professional photographer - It does not care about native UIs and its usability I still find weak - It asks for a premium price for professional photographers (both the one-time fee and the creative cloud version) How about alternatives? - Aperture was a very good alternative, despite being only available for Mac - I was disappointed by all open source alternatives; most of which are not easily available for Mac and Windows (Lightzone, Darkroom, Digikam, Shotwell) - Digikam comes closest, but as it's KDE based, installation and native support on Windows and Mac is still weak - Capture One Pro 8 works on Mac and Windows but is even more expensive than Lightroom and hence not worth it - I do not know about any other photo management tool that is stable, multi platform and meets most of the conservative demands

danieldk 12y ago
This. Having gone through some discontinued products already (keychain sync, Aperture, iDisk), I have learned to rely on Apple for the hardware and operating system and on others for software and synchronization. I switched to LightRoom when Aperture became stagnant. It has many advantages for the long term, e.g. being able to export collections as separate catalogs (ideal for backuping RAWs and adjustments for stuff that is done, e.g. holidays), storing metadata in XMP sidecar files, continuous and quick updates for RAW support for new cameras. I agree on the pricing as well. I do use some raw editing features, but it is relatively modest. For that, it is relatively expensive, and has gone through four iterations (paid upgrades) already since I first started looking into it.
chkuendig 12y ago
I completely agree. Nevertheless I switched to Photos a few days ago for the following reasons: - The integration across devices is perfect (All metadata editing/sorting is synched on all devices while the Only files only reside on my Mac and on the cloud) - All Photos are still backupped offline with my Mac and from what I see a simple symlink of the Masters folder is enough to back them up to a third party backup service. (w/o metadata but for me this is good enough worst-case protection) I still miss a few features, but I hope an eventual release of Photos Framework for OSX will be able to add them through a 3rd Party tool: - Metadata export for a 3rd Party Backup - Better automation to find duplicates/corrupted images etc. (i have a super messy library of about 20'000 pictures which i cant clean up manually at this point) - Better metadata editing, especially for geo-tagging (I have a lot of non-smartphone pictures)
- mcbetz 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing to Photos' Framework. That might really solve some of the problems that you mentioned.
rakoo 12y ago
camlistore (http://camlistore.org/ http://camlistore.org/) is a good contender: - It's an open source software, created and personally (as in, it's not part of the job) maintained by one of the go maintainers at Google - It's designed to be a personal storage for everything, but there already is a good focus on photos. Check out the demo in the video - It has a multitude of remote storage already: - s3 - google cloud storage - google drive - any mongoDB you can point to - It has encryption and synchronization of data and metadata built-in - The storage format is utterly simple - Unfortunately its installation is still quite spartan, being CLI and all. I'm following it closely to see where it goes, because it could very well be a final solution for all content management woes.
- mcbetz 12y ago
  That's a very interesting hint and the demo looks promising. The project has the potential to change not only the way how to store photos, but also to manage my documents and notes and knowledge related files (books, emails, bookmarks).

by mcbetz 12y ago

danieldk 12y ago

This. Having gone through some discontinued products already (keychain sync, Aperture, iDisk), I have learned to rely on Apple for the hardware and operating system and on others for software and synchronization. I switched to LightRoom when Aperture became stagnant. It has many advantages for the long term, e.g. being able to export collections as separate catalogs (ideal for backuping RAWs and adjustments for stuff that is done, e.g. holidays), storing metadata in XMP sidecar files, continuous and quick updates for RAW support for new cameras. I agree on the pricing as well. I do use some raw editing features, but it is relatively modest. For that, it is relatively expensive, and has gone through four iterations (paid upgrades) already since I first started looking into it.

chkuendig 12y ago

I completely agree. Nevertheless I switched to Photos a few days ago for the following reasons: - The integration across devices is perfect (All metadata editing/sorting is synched on all devices while the Only files only reside on my Mac and on the cloud) - All Photos are still backupped offline with my Mac and from what I see a simple symlink of the Masters folder is enough to back them up to a third party backup service. (w/o metadata but for me this is good enough worst-case protection) I still miss a few features, but I hope an eventual release of Photos Framework for OSX will be able to add them through a 3rd Party tool: - Metadata export for a 3rd Party Backup - Better automation to find duplicates/corrupted images etc. (i have a super messy library of about 20'000 pictures which i cant clean up manually at this point) - Better metadata editing, especially for geo-tagging (I have a lot of non-smartphone pictures)

mcbetz 12y ago
Thanks for pointing to Photos' Framework. That might really solve some of the problems that you mentioned.

rakoo 12y ago

camlistore (http://camlistore.org/ http://camlistore.org/) is a good contender: - It's an open source software, created and personally (as in, it's not part of the job) maintained by one of the go maintainers at Google - It's designed to be a personal storage for everything, but there already is a good focus on photos. Check out the demo in the video - It has a multitude of remote storage already: - s3 - google cloud storage - google drive - any mongoDB you can point to - It has encryption and synchronization of data and metadata built-in - The storage format is utterly simple - Unfortunately its installation is still quite spartan, being CLI and all. I'm following it closely to see where it goes, because it could very well be a final solution for all content management woes.

mcbetz 12y ago
That's a very interesting hint and the demo looks promising. The project has the potential to change not only the way how to store photos, but also to manage my documents and notes and knowledge related files (books, emails, bookmarks).