Understanding how Photo-Editors store my work

[Ambrosia7177]

Hello. I am almost ready to get into photo-editing, and have been doing a lot of research on photo-editing software.

(I dabbled with Nikon Capture and Photoshop in the 1990's, but honestly haven't edited any photos in a proper way in 25+ years - which definitely puts me in the ranks of "Greatest Digital Hoarders of All Time") 😇

Before choosing a solution, I need help understanding how all of these applications store my work and how they interact with the original photo file.

It's embarrassing to say, but I have spent the last 20+ years shooting a lot of photos (and video) and never found time to actually edit and publish any of my work. I probably have 200-300k digital photos, and around 40TB of video/photos.

Am mentioning this, because that makes my "use-case" likely very, very different than average users.

Like it or not, my mindset for working on a computer is doing everything via Finder and directory structures - akin to a command-line warrior on Linux/Unix.

So it really trips me up how video and photo-editing applications seem to slurp things up into a database or file or some internal thing which I cannot see. (And don't get me started on how confusing mobile-apps are!)

I'm used to opening a file, editing the file (e.g. document, spreadsheet, PDF, photo, etc), then saving the file - and all you have is that one file. (Plus, of course, a copy of the original!!)


There are a few areas where my lack-of-knowledge in the area worries me...

1.) I need an architecture that will handle very complex directory structures and tons of photos and scale and not break.

2.) I worry that as my business grows, and as I re-organize my external drives / directory structure / photos files - or as I re-name file names - it will break the database/whatever in these photo-editing applications might use?

3.) Am also worried that if everything gets stored in a database / file - and then that becomes corrupt, then I might lose years of work.


(*Side note: The way I organize my laptop and hard-drives may not be "modern", but it works for me - and has worked for the past 30 years. So please don't judge my current workflow, but instead help me to merge what I currently have with how all of these applications likely work.)


It's funny, because as I have been looking at dozens of photo-editing and vector-editing applications today, and then independently, @cjsuk brought up this same idea in another thread...

Make sure you are fully aware of the differences between a generic image editor (photoshop/gimp) and “darkroom” processors with catalogues (Lightroom/darktable). They are very different beasts.

So that is a related question that I have...

How do photo-editing applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp store your work and photos as compared to applications like Lightroom / DarkTable / etc?


(Am having a similar problem with DaVinci Resolve and my voluminous video collection. Trying to wrap my head around how DaVinci Resolve stores things in database / projects and how that relates to my original media files.)

In the end, before I can choose a photo-editing application, I need to have a solid understanding on this topic, and come up with a strategy of how to organize my original photos plus however the final ones will appear. Because once I go down the rabbit-hole with all of these photos and hard-drives I have amassed, there is no turning back!!

Am hoping you guys can enlighten me, and that this isn't as scary as it feels... :-/

 

[Bigwaff]

How do photo-editing applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp store your work and photos as compared to applications like Lightroom / DarkTable / etc?

I need to have a solid understanding on this topic, and come up with a strategy of how to organize my original photos plus however the final ones will appear.

Questions tailored made for AI .. I dumped your questions into Claude.ia ... I won't regurgitate answers here and pretend they are my own. Recommend you simply try it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

[cjsuk]

There are several things to consider:

1. Image library. That is finding, sorting, cataloguing images across multiple disks/devices on a large scale. This is usually an abstraction / database over files on disk.

2. Developing. It's not really developing stuff these days but it gives you the equivalent functionality of darkroom i.e. crop, resize, light and colour manipulation, masking, dodging, burning etc. Designed to take raw camera sensor data or processed image and turn it into something you can print or work with later. This should be non-destructive i.e. it does not change the original image, storing the processed version as metadata in a database or file on disk and allowing you to export it to somewhere else (and print it etc).

3. Image editing. This is pretty much where you can do any advanced image editing like re-composing multiple images, adding shapes, art and painting, drawing and adding text etc.

Photographers spend 90% of the time in 1 and 2 and 10% in 3.

Graphic artists spend 90% of the time in 3 and 10% smoking a fag outside.

Know who you are first.

Product notes....

Affinity Photo. Does 3 well and a half arsed job of 2. It does not do 1 at all.

Lightroom. Does an exceptional job of 1 and 2. It does not do 3, delegating it to photoshop.

Gimp. Does a terrible job of 2 and 3 and makes you want to gouge your eyes out. Does not do 1.

Darktable. Does a really good job of 2 but you need to know what you're doing from a technical level first. Does an ok-ish job of 1. Useless at 3.

Photoshop. Does not do 1 at all. Does do 2 via Camera Raw. Exceptional at 3.

NX Studio. Does 1 ok. Does 2 exceptionally well and doesn't do 3. Costs nothing but only works with Nikon cameras.

On balance I chose Lighroom+Photoshop as the combination as they are well integrated, the catalogue in Lightroom is exceptional, the developing stuff in Lightroom is exceptional and the image editing stuff in Photoshop is exceptional. The tools are well documented and there are plenty of tutorials and courses if you get stuck.

Lightroom got me the other day. "find me everything I shot on that 50mm Nikon AF-S lens 15 years ago". It did it.

 

[cjsuk]

Questions tailored made for AI .. I dumped your questions into Claude.ia ... I won't regurgitate answers here and pretend they are my own. Recommend you simply try it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Equally it might also be garbage out of a crack pipe. Only use AI if you know the answers already. Because if you don't know the answer then you don't know it's right or not. Watched so many people blow their own toes off on that one.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

There are several things to consider:

1. Image library. That is finding, sorting, cataloguing images across multiple disks/devices on a large scale. This is usually an abstraction / database over files on disk.

2. Developing. It's not really developing stuff these days but it gives you the equivalent functionality of darkroom i.e. crop, resize, light and colour manipulation, masking, dodging, burning etc. Designed to take raw camera sensor data or processed image and turn it into something you can print or work with later. This should be non-destructive i.e. it does not change the original image, storing the processed version as metadata in a database or file on disk and allowing you to export it to somewhere else (and print it etc).

3. Image editing. This is pretty much where you can do any advanced image editing like re-composing multiple images, adding shapes, art and painting, drawing and adding text etc.

@cjsuk, I guess you were talking about functionality? Somewhat helpful, but my OP was asking about how applications store things...

My naive view of photo-editing software is that you open a file, edit it, and save it over the original or as an edited version and are done.

But I suspect that all of the applications we have discussed plus more, are more akin to DaVinci Resolve.

By that I mean that they store all of your project/editing details into either an internal database or store things to a file?

Am still trying to wrap my head around how DaVinci Resolve trulyw orks, but so far it seems that a really complex project in DaVinci usually only take up MEGABYTES - whereas the media files could take up a TERABYTE.

If that is how applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp or Illustrator / Affinity Designer / Inkscape work, then I guess I shouldn't be too worries about those applications internal database (or file) because I could easily store that on a small hard-drive.

But I don't know...

Also - similar to what I am again trying to figure out in DaVinci Resolve - what happens when I move the original files to a new hard-drive or into a new directory or rename things? (In DaVinci, you just re-link the media files and things work. Of course, my fear is, "What if I forget where I moved things?"

Again, not sure how the applications we have been discussing work?

But let's assume that my original photos are TERABYTES and number over 100,000...

What considerations do i need to make up front?

Follow me?

 

[Bigwaff]

Equally it might also be garbage out of a crack pipe. Only use AI if you know the answers already. Because if you don't know the answer then you don't know it's right or not. Watched so many people blow their own toes off on that one.

Perhaps no better than some random poster’s response in a forum thread to be sure, especially if “you don’t know the answer then you don’t know it’s right or not”. But the “garbage out of a crack pipe” statement is pure melodrama FUD. I’ve found AI to be useful, helpful, and more often than not, accurate. It’s certainly safe as one of the sources of information during one’s research… especially questions posed in this thread. But we can agree to disagree.