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DAM Photo editor

martinX

martinX

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 11, 2009
928
162
Australia
So, it's nearly time to move on from Aperture...

There are a number of photo editors popping up, and they all look quite capable, but there's not much talk of DAM.

Can anyone recommend an Aperture replacement with good DAM that can be purchased outright? It doesn't have to have PS-like abilities, but the ability to host NIK plugins would be nice.

Thank-you one and all :)
 
As much hate as it gets, Lightroom is the answer to the editor+DAM all-in-one. But, obviously you can't buy it outright anymore.
Everything else (Luminar, ON1, etc) is "coming soon" vaporware. ACDSee for Windows is very, very good - but the Mac version is still in beta and it is not nearly as robust as the Windows version.

Personally, I'm leaning towards separating the DAM from the editor. Editors seem to come and go.
 
martinX said:
So, it's nearly time to move on from Aperture...

There are a number of photo editors popping up, and they all look quite capable, but there's not much talk of DAM.

Can anyone recommend an Aperture replacement with good DAM that can be purchased outright? It doesn't have to have PS-like abilities, but the ability to host NIK plugins would be nice.

Thank-you one and all :)
Click to expand...

Adobe Photoshop Elements.

People keep forgetting about this product. It has many good things going for it
1) Photo organization
2) no subscription, a one time $100 price.
3) the editor has almost all the features of the full up Photoshop, in fact all the features a photographer (as opposed to graphic arrest) might want, layers and all.
4) uses Adobe Camera Raw for raw conversions.
 
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maflynn said:
I thought Photo Mechanic was just a fast viewer. You can flag, rate and keyword images in Photo Mechanic?
Click to expand...


Yes. Yes. Yes. I use it for sorting (rating/flagging), rotating, renumbering, adjusting time and date when needed, convert RAW to DNG, extract JPEGs from RAW files, etc.

It's insanely fast at everything it does. I never open a RAW editing library until I've sorted through and renumbered all the files in PM. Saves tons of time opening a new catalog of a few hundred files in a RAW editor vs. thousands of files.
 
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Ditto on @scoobs69 comments about Photo Mechanic. I use it for those things and really like it. Looking forward to the new PM6 (64 bit) when it comes out.
 
As I sooner or later also will have to find an alternative to Aperture, this interests me, too. One big question I have regarding most proposed alternatives is how the migration from Aperture would look like. I mean, it's nice that the new Luminar will offer options for the migration from Lightroom, but what about Aperture users?
 
Janichsan said:
As I sooner or later also will have to find an alternative to Aperture, this interests me, too. One big question I have regarding most proposed alternatives is how the migration from Aperture would look like. I mean, it's nice that the new Luminar will offer options for the migration from Lightroom, but what about Aperture users?
Click to expand...
Pretty much you're on your own. Lr Classic has an option to migrate from Aperture, which at least does some organizational stuff. Luminar's announced DAM doesn't appear to have much that could be taken from Aperture, but we've only seen promises and nothing real yet. Capture One can import/convert from Aperture.

Lr and Luminar can't deal with Aperture's image adjustments (as opposed to say metadata like IPTC). C1 can at least import some basic adjustments. But odds are you'll have to try to keep using Aperture to access those, or convert to Photos, or use say Aperture Exporter to generate TIFFs and/or JPEGs from your adjusted images. Aperture's been kinda dead for a while now, so the emphasis is back to Lr/Ps vs the rest. I guess they figure most everyone's moved on maybe. Or maybe there's just more money in early adopters who prepurchase vs accommodating those who wring the last ounce of value out of something like Aperture. Go figure.
 
..or migrate to Photos with managed library + icloud. Not the same features as Aperture but manageable
Recently converted 50k+ RAWs - quite happy with DAM capabilities. Love sync across my devices. Have all my keywords, folders/projects structure, years of edits, etc.
Photos editing still has to improve (nice progress in high sierra thou), but you have plugins to complement.
Mobile version is great for viewing but nothing else - editing is far behind photos on mac osx, no keyword management, etc - so iPad for consumption for now.
 
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am2am said:
or migrate to Photos with managed library + icloud
Click to expand...
I kick that idea around from time to time. The lack of ratings, is one drawback, though I can keyword my images. Seems a little different in how you keyword them.

Given Apple's propensity to scrap existing apps and start from scratch means I'm hesitant to trust them
 
am2am said:
..or migrate to Photos with managed library + icloud. Not the same features as Aperture but manageable
Click to expand...
This has merit. I have been playing around with Photos a bit more in High Sierra and a few more check boxes are ticked.

Search within the DAM side seems a little lacking.I'll keep poking at it to see if it meets my needs.
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maflynn said:
Given Apple's propensity to scrap existing apps and start from scratch means I'm hesitant to trust them
Click to expand...
This (Claris Works) never (iMovie6) happens (FCP, Color, Aperture, iPhoto, Shake...)
 
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Since I left Adobe, I use Photo Mechanic to import files from cards to the Mac file system. It creates the needed folders and subfolders, does file renaming, and fills out the IPTC data fields.

I moved to Luminar as my prime editor and will try out their DAM which should be out in Q1 2018. I hope it lets me drop Photo Mechanic. PM does not support buying logical contains of collection sets and collections, or projects and albums....etc. That is part of what I hope to see in the Luminar DAM.
 
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