Hi Erik
Yes, we’re on the 2Tb plan also, although I do wish Apple would introduce some additional tiers – from 200Gb to 2Tb is a big leap. We really only need 500Gb (or 1Tb max) so I feel we’re paying over the odds a bit. It would be great if they’d allow additional folders or external drives to be added to iCloud, at least then I could sync my external drive of older images, scans etc. which I don’t want cluttering up my Photos Library.
The ability to share the whole Photos Library with other Family members is another thing on my wishlist.
I tend to work the other way around: I import all images using Image Capture to a temporary Photo Inbox folder and use an app called Hazel (which you may be familiar with) to automatically rename them to my preferred format (YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-Name), then sort into sub-folders by camera (MFT, iPhone etc) and tag accordingly. I can then manually add descriptions and organise them into my main library.
I do this mainly because I want to keep a separate archive of all images which is accessible on other software/systems in the future. I’m reluctant to put all my eggs in the Photos basket; Apple have already pulled the plug on iPhoto, Aperture and Apple print products and I wouldn’t put it past them to dump Photos altogether one day or at least change it to a point where I’m no longer happy with it. In addition, Photos doesn’t have any way of renaming images on import which is another limitation in my opinion.
Anyway, whatever the reasons, I’m happier having an additional library. I then screen the images in Raw Power, get rid of any rejects and import the rest into Photos. I used to do all my edits in Photos itself which I actually find pretty good for editing but then used an external editor (usually Luminar) in particular circumstances. Now my plan is to do all the edits in Raw Power, using the standalone app in Photo Library mode, only using Luminar in difficult images, e.g. for object removal, sky replacement etc. Luminar is a clever app but I feel they have concentrated too much on gimmicky features at the expense of basic management, speed and stability. I’ve become somewhat disillusioned with Skylum to be honest so when I came across Raw Power it was a breath of fresh air. I only wish I’d discovered it earlier – I only found it when version 3 came out!
Hopefully Nik can add more features in the future, including spot healing, in which case I probably won’t use anything else.
Best wishes
Guy