I agree that you should put effort in capturing solid images instead of "cleaning things up in Photoshop".
More to complicate the mix!
Yeah.
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Revisiting switching to Affinity Photo
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I agree that you should put effort in capturing solid images instead of "cleaning things up in Photoshop".
More to complicate the mix!
Yeah.
I just want my work to look professional and be taken seriously.
Well, I have spent a fair amount time studying "composition", and I think my street photos have gotten better because of it. When I pull up (?) my iPhone now, I run through a series of checkpoints, and ask a series of quick questions (e.g. What is the subject? What if I stood over here? How do I make this grab people's attention?)
I am happy with my work, but who knows what the world thinks?
RAW is over my head, so that is for later on.
I guess I use it in terms of colors and lighting. (Have seen lots of photos that you think look good, and then in some tutorial an expert will work magic in Photoshop, and you realize how much was lacking in your original photo.)
But at the end of the day, I hope people are drawn in because of my subjects and my composition versus color and saturation.
A-ha.
So Apple bought both Photomator and Pixelmator Pro? (Are they from the same company?)
Could one of those be the next Aperture?
What do you think would be the best software to choose and something that has features like (I think) Lightroom where you can preview photos in a gallery and then dive in to edit the best one?
For someone with basic needs, is most photo-editing software similar in the quality it produces, and the real difference is the look-and-feel and workflow. Or are there clearly better choices?
Appreciate all of the advice in this thread, but feel overwhelmed with all of the choices?!
I agree that the only way to know what work for me is through trying things out.
Just afraid of going down the rabbit-hole with one software and then getting stuck - which is why I started this thread!
YouTube is probably my friend on this and watching videos about different photo-editing software and seeing how things work and what others say.
Life was so much easier when all we had was Photoshop and you could buy a one-time license and be done with it!
Appreciate all of the advice in this thread, but feel overwhelmed with all of the choices?!
I agree that the only way to know what work for me is through trying things out.
Just afraid of going down the rabbit-hole with one software and then getting stuck - which is why I started this thread!
YouTube is probably my friend on this and watching videos about different photo-editing software and seeing how things work and what others say.
Life was so much easier when all we had was Photoshop and you could buy a one-time license and be done with it!
I definitely agree.
For the OP's use Apple Photos tick many of the boxes.
Very easy to learn… 👍
I would also look into Lemke Software "Graphic Converter". It will probably seem a little overwhelming at first, but it includes a pdf instruction manual in the Help Menu. While I use other Apps, I have always kept Graphic Converter in my Mac's updated trough the years. I believe it costs $39.00.
Ignorance is always the easiest thing to fix (speaking for myself
). If you're using an iPhone, it's easy to use Apple Photos, even if you aren't doing iCloud-based stuff. There are zillions of tutorials on it; just search, and it's free in the Apple ecosystem. If you aren't doing any sort of raw editing, there is no need to go anywhere else. And even if you are, with an iPhone, Apple Photos is going to be optimized for iPhone raw images. Just give it a try. Apple Photos is on an iPhone, and iPad, and on the Mac. Go for it.
Ignorance is always the easiest thing to fix (speaking for myself
Okay, but does it also address the issue that @cSalmon brought up that he/she thinks I would be better off with a solution that behaves more like Lightroom than Photoshop?
I created this thread to do a deeper-dive on that aspect of my search - because I like to OVER-think everything!! 😊
Photoshop-esque vs. Lightroom-esque applications
Overthinking is definitely your prerogative but I’d argue that overthinking without action isn’t that valuable (that’s just me)
and Photos definitely isn’t Photoshop, it’s semi-closer to Lr. There’s no penalty whatsoever to trying it. It’s on all of your Apple devices right now.
100% agree you should try out many softwares maybe even Photos
That said I HATE Photos/Music it is in my opinion what's wrong with the direction Apple has taken this past decade and not at all easy to learn - at least in the viewpoint of a sustainable best practices workflow.
The simple fact we photographers deal with a lot of data. We photograph variations, we bracket, file sizes become larger and larger. What is the number 1 rule of all things computer - Backup on multiple devices
Photos is not designed for "easy" external drive backup it's not even easy to know where your files are if you let your guard down one sleepy morning and let Photos do it's thing
There's a lot more to a proper workflow than just picking software. IMO a photographer's first step after capture is ingesting the images onto an external drive. When you have multiple folders containing 400 camera files internal hard drives and Cloud storage is just too quickly exhausted.
IMO Photo's design works against external hard drive storage even if it allows it - like a soft tire it wants to steer you back to it's preferred internal library gooblygook
Know your workflow, not just how to use a piece of software, but how you are going to ingest files from the camera into the computer, how you are going name, how you are going to back up. In four years how much data will your archives contain? How easy will it be to work on a file four years later?
IMO choose a software that is optimized for accessing files from external hard drive storage.
That said I HATE Photos/Music it is in my opinion what's wrong with the direction Apple has taken this past decade and not at all easy to learn - at least in the viewpoint of a sustainable best practices workflow.
The simple fact we photographers deal with a lot of data. We photograph variations, we bracket, file sizes become larger and larger. What is the number 1 rule of all things computer - Backup on multiple devices
Photos is not designed for "easy" external drive backup it's not even easy to know where your files are if you let your guard down one sleepy morning and let Photos do it's thing
There's a lot more to a proper workflow than just picking software. IMO a photographer's first step after capture is ingesting the images onto an external drive. When you have multiple folders containing 400 camera files internal hard drives and Cloud storage is just too quickly exhausted.
IMO Photo's design works against external hard drive storage even if it allows it - like a soft tire it wants to steer you back to it's preferred internal library gooblygook
Know your workflow, not just how to use a piece of software, but how you are going to ingest files from the camera into the computer, how you are going name, how you are going to back up. In four years how much data will your archives contain? How easy will it be to work on a file four years later?
IMO choose a software that is optimized for accessing files from external hard drive storage.
I have been on Affinity Photo for a very long time - since the early days of Adobe Subscription.
I can normally follow a Photoshop tutorial along in the Affinity interface. so it is not like starting from scratch.
Canva did pinky swear to not take Affinity to subscription. That promise and $10 might get you a coffee at Starbucks, but they haven't done it yet. Gimp could go private and turn into a subscription if people tried hard enough. Nothing is future proof 100%. So don't borrow trouble.
There are a few things Affinity does better than Photoshop. Having frequency separation built in is nice.
There are a few things where Photoshop wins, but it is not unworkable in my experience.
Many photoshop plugins work. Not all do (Pro Panel didn't, last I checked. RC Astro Gradient Remover does).
Photoshop actions do not translate. You will have to make Affinity Macros.
I can normally follow a Photoshop tutorial along in the Affinity interface. so it is not like starting from scratch.
Canva did pinky swear to not take Affinity to subscription. That promise and $10 might get you a coffee at Starbucks, but they haven't done it yet. Gimp could go private and turn into a subscription if people tried hard enough. Nothing is future proof 100%. So don't borrow trouble.
There are a few things Affinity does better than Photoshop. Having frequency separation built in is nice.
There are a few things where Photoshop wins, but it is not unworkable in my experience.
Many photoshop plugins work. Not all do (Pro Panel didn't, last I checked. RC Astro Gradient Remover does).
Photoshop actions do not translate. You will have to make Affinity Macros.
Today I downloaded the newest release of (gasp!) GIMP (R3), and it was actually quite nice to work in. It took the developers 7 years, but I can see progress was made. Not bad at all. The GUI actually looks quite acceptable now.
Tonemapping was very slow to work with, though.
Tonemapping was very slow to work with, though.
I think I need to learn photo-editing from an application with tons of support (i.e. forums, videos, how-to's), and then I can move into things like GIMP and fancy one you use.
@Ambrosia7177 Oh, it was just a general remark on GIMP's positive development, rather than a suggestion to use it.
Also one I would not be without. For whatever reason, the version I use in Sierra on my older Macs also works fine in Sequoia. Not so true of many other apps. That said I did pay to upgrade it on the new computer.
I use GC for several things. The big one is renaming a group of files. Once you figure out how, it does a rename and reindex of hundreds of images almost in real time.
It remains my go to app for slideshows. Nothing is imported you just select the folder you want to use for the slideshow.
Also has some powerful editing tools but usually I find other apps easier to work with for editing.
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Understood. Just saying. Thanks for the info though - in an ideal world I would use ALL open-source.
It will take me the next 2-3 months to chew on all of this, but I appreciate all of the advice from everyone!
Apparently Affinity Photo doesn't do that, or not as well?
Is that an add-on to Affinity Photo, or do you have to use it as a separate application?
Also, how does Affinity Photo compare to Lightroom? (Does XnConvert offer any Lightroom features, or not?
Affinity Photo is a Photoshop alternative and doesn’t really do sophisticated cataloging and digital asset management like Lightroom. XnConvert is a batch editing processor and doesn’t do sophisticated cataloging and digital asset management like Lightroom. You can consider opensource tools like Darktable for that.
Pretty spiffy, and it has a nice mem. footprint.
Yeah; Stress TM pegged 100% of all the Cores on my M2 Max Studio for 24sec...
I'm quite impressed, in general.
it doesn’t. Affinity is to Lightroom as Photoshop is to Lightroom.
Very different tools. Affinity has exactly zero of the asset management that Lightroom does.
You could use On1, Luminar Neo, DxO, Capture One, Darktable, RawTherapee, Photomator, or Apple Photos in that role (or even Lightroom) and then round trip edit in Affinity when you needed that power.