Former Aperture user here. i held on tight until Monterey and the M1 gave me no choice but to let it go. Currently using Photos as primary DAM. It’s… OK, barely. The main advantage was that I could easily import all my Aperture libraries. Also, the system integration that comes with using Apple software. At this point I really do not want to switch to a new DAM (Lightroom, etc.) if I can avoid it.
One of my most-used Aperture features was the ability to create a “stack” of similar photos and then view the stack, two photos at a time – always showing the current “pick” and one other image. You could quickly breeze through a whole bunch of images using only keystrokes – any image that was better than the current pick would become the new pick and all subsequent images would be compared to that one.
AFAIK, Photos does not have such a feature. I thought PhotoSweeper X would do the trick, but it seems to be geared towards finding and deleting duplicate images. It doesn’t really work for comparing and culling from 10 or more similar photos. PhotoMechanic looks like it would be a good tool to use as a stopover between getting files onto the computer and importing them into Photos.app, but it is a bit expensive for my usage.
Are there any Photos plugins or even (inexpensive) stand-alone apps that can do this one thing without the need to commit to a whole new DAM system?
Nothing that is not expensive comes to mind. But I can select two photos in the Photos app, right click, and Edit in the Preview app. Viewing as a Preview contact sheet, I can see two images side by side (even more than two).
Since picking up Photo Mechanic, I have forgotten about a much less expensive app called FastRawViewer which will view photos two-up or four-up. But read the manual. I did not catch on to their approach to multi-window viewing at first.
I’m not at my Mac and I’ll forget to check later, but this is free and might do the job (or it might not, I’m just throwing it out there as I am tight on time).
I have used this for years - even paid for it before it was free.
It is really good for triaging photos, and you can set up key strokes for rejects, keepers and in-betweeners. It can then sort all the photos into separate folders. The developer used to be super responsive.
Funny I never saw Photoreviewer before though a quick look at it suggests it may not be as good as my cool new photo triage discovery of GoodOnes (I think its iOS only). The app is still in open beta but I highly recommend for the following reasons:
Breaks your Apple Photos library into batches so you don’t have to do everything at once. Whenever you have some time you do a bit here and there.
Has three buckets for Best, Rest and Trash.
You get the choice to have ‘Best’ also mark the photo as an Apple Photos ‘favorite’.
Ignores screenshots and non-photo items and puts them in a separate group.
There are a couple of minor bugs but the team is super responsive and none of them have been major dealbreakers.
I believe its currently free but I’d be happy to pay them when they start charging since I’ve never found a low friction way to go through and clean up my Apple Photos!
I think this article was how I first found out about it.
Former Aperture user here, too. I loved the stacks idea and used it a lot. AFAIK, nothing in Photos comes close.
However, what makes you say that PhotoSweeper X doesn’t work for 10+ similar images?
Its interface is not elegant, I grant you. But I’ve used it to compare similars and cull from large groups. You can find similars and based on a few features and you can set the similarity level. There are three different views: a single large image, compare 2 matches, and view all matches.
There are keyboard shortcuts for marking, but it could use more of them.
You’d never know all of this if you just looked at the interface! (It’s a bad design.) So reading the manual (a pdf) is required if you want to get the most out of it.
Glad you like it. I don’t open it as often as I’d like but I love how it batches the job of cleaning out photos so that eventually you can get done with your whole library one day at a time as you have the time.
Ultimately my goal is to have a much more relevant photos library. It’s a great approach.
The key thing is that it still keeps everything within your Apple Photos as that will continue to be my primary photo service for the foreseeable future.
