I import from a card or from Photos.app (iPhone synched pictures). Take photos without a gps data into HoudahGeo and geotag, or sometimes correct wrong geotag info. Import into a DAM. Reject obvious failures, then rate each photo. I often need to straighten horizons before I can look at a picture, or sometimes I need to crop before I can decide if I’ll keep it or reject it.
Later passes include selecting photos for more work. First keywording pass is person / thing / type, second is place. Finally keepers get the pithiest of captions or version names, usually as part of a series.
Hoping to migrate to using a program called Photo Mechanic to do the culling and hopefully easier keyword tagging, but so far I don’t have that workflow down yet.
Yes, I use all the apps I mentioned in iOS and MacOS. I prefer using Affinity Designer in particular in iOS because the pencil makes creating new shapes easier, and I love the fact these apps are all equally powerful no matter which platform I’m on.
I’m sure my system is overkill for your needs but I use LightRoom Classic on my desktop iMac. I hardly ever edit any photos anyway and the nondestructive editing in LightRoom is perfect so I don’t mess with my originals. I never leave photos on my phone or camera card and I don’t use Apple photos. I do use PhotoSync as a transport mechanism from devices to my Mac.
Why are you concerned? And what do you consider large? I know folks with LightRoom catalogs that are in the +500K photos range. I am typically taking around 3k photos a year just with my phone. Storage of photos is outside of LR and I do that on our server but also backed up nightly and soon to be archived on Amazon Glacier. I don’t really care how many I have. My LR Catalog is also the repository fo the metadata on all the historical family photos I am digitizing.
Yes, LR is a subscription. But it’s one I pay for gladly due to the power of the program.
For me, library size is not an issue of how much space it will take on disk, but more that having too many photos dilutes the best ones.
I like to keep at least one photo of each person at each event, but I might delete others. Having said that, I might sometimes simply hide photos or put them away somewhere rather than deleting them just in case if it’s a very special occasion.
But the photo library that I keep on my phone and all my devices has only the photos I want to look at in it. In theory!
As for deleting memories being silly, how many photos of Uncle Bob do you need to remember how much he enjoyed birthday parties? One or two choice images per party is more than enough for me, but everyone is different and this is very personal territory really.
Disclaimer: I am not throwing shade here, just presenting a different opinion.
This sounds good but tagging takes time, and tagging well takes significant time, which is the reason I’ve never gotten into tagging anything. I just can’t justify the time required.
Oogie,
How do you tell ahead of time if an app is non-destructive? I do not like to mess are with my originals either. I usually just make duplicates, if I don’t know.
As far as I know the ONLY app that does non-destructive editing of photos is LightRoom. I know that Photoshop, GIMP and Photos all make permanent changes to your pictures when you edit them.
I sit corrected. I thought that once you selected save Photos applied the changes and that was it. OTOH later in that article there is a mention that only a single app or extensions changes are saved so there is still a destructive part of editing in Photos.
Nowadays there are quite a lot of non destructive editors other than Lightroom: ON1 Photo Raw, Exposure X4, Capture One…
Don’t remember if Affinity Photo does it or not.
Anyway they usually tell you in the product page
Thanks, Oogie! I thought there were a lot more. As I am rather compulsive, I usually make duplicates.
Oops, I see otherwise!
I use ios.
If you have copies, is there any way you can determine which photo is the original? Does it even matter any more?
Have you seen the new iPhones? The cameras are astounding! Too bad I don’t have a thousand dollars to devote to one. I’m looking for a digital camera on eBay instead. Any recommendations? I want a telephoto or, better yet, a zoom.
I keep about five a year. About what I had pre computer era pretty much on average, sometimes friends turn up with a new one from some context. I know this will not be useful advice for anybody else
Two others that are non-destructive are PixelmatorPhoto and Darkroom. I can use the share sheet in Photos on an iPad and send a photo to PixelmatorPhoto which is my current favorite for getting rid of the common green dot lens flares from an iPhone photo. There’s a handy “healing” tool for that. It’s also pretty great at all the other adjustments. Then when finished use the share button to “modify original in Photos” option. It will write the changes to Photos. If you decide to revert the photo you can do so in Photos by opening the photo for editing and choose revert. Same process for Darkroom.
now so I can’t check there.
