Photo Library or Files

[Sead Lejlic]

Long time Aperture user.

200G iCloud
700G photo archive

Lately shooting RAW+Jpeg.

I intend to use Nitro on my MacBook Pro as well as on iPad.

Should I keep my photos in Photos or in a file manager folder system?

Is there any benefit in keeping photos in Photos app library when it’s not possible to sync the whole library with iCloud?

Thanks!

[Rick Fee]

for my needs, I use folder management. I do not like the way Photos stores files in their unique way, I don’t trust proprietary systems. YMMV.

[Nik Bhatt]

There is no simple answer to this question, which is why Nitro offers both options.

Photos organizes R+J as a single “item” which is good and bad (you can’t split the two pieces apart, but you don’t have both images cluttering the grid, etc.)

Even if you don’t use iCloud, there is value in using Photos. You can access the library with multiple apps. If one day, there is enough storage in the cloud, you can use iCloud syncing. you can mix and match editors. You can make albums, etc. If you use the file system, you have full control over storage (where it is and you can split across drives).

[Sead Lejlic]

Thank you Rick and Nik.

If it was a simple choice, I would have selected one already. 🙂

With Aperture proprietary system, in panic, I have not done the cleanest of the exports of the library and I have ended up with a mess of the “library”. I was frustrated almost to the point to give up on photography (which I did for couple of years). So, I am with Rick on issue of file handling.

I still have to deal with serious number of duplicates, part of library in Photos, part of the photos (mostly iPhone ones) in second Photos library (synced to iCloud) and half of the photos in a partly structured and partly just a dump folders. Frankly, I don’t even know where and how to start sorting the structure and duplicates. Choice between Photos and File system will greatly influence the methodology in sorting out the duplicates.

Then, there is question of printing. During testing I did not see print option in Nitro and that is something that Photos have on the basic quality level (like everything else in Photos – all bells and whistles and more are there but for mainstream users at best, lacking for HQ use, at least for those of us who want to use ICC profiles for printing and other more elaborate aspects of handling photos).

Another question for me is sharing photos with family and clients. iCloud makes it easy but is there anything out there that does not necessarily involve iCloud?

[Ben Hughes]

I’m not saying this is the right way to handle things, but it might give you some ideas. My approach is:

– Use the file system – this means I’m not locked into a cloud storage provider, editor/manager or operating system
– Use XnView to import files into a directory structure based on EXIF (I use YYYY/MM but it’s pretty flexible)
– I use Mega for cloud storage, mostly because I already had it before switching to Mac, but also because I still need to sync to Windows machines and iCloud on Windows is terrible
– Photos I take on my iPhone are automatically uploaded to a folder in Mega and synced to my MBP. I then use XnView to move these into my YYYY/MM folder structure

If I want to edit on both my MBP and iPad, I use syncthing to sync a folder (it works well, with some limitations – https://support.gentlemencoders.com/forums/topic/sharing-edits-between-mac-and-ios/).

[Nik Bhatt]

@Sead, given the uses that you have listed, Photos is the better choice. You have enough work to do without also having to manage the file locations etc themselves. The ability to share a library with family and friends, duplicate detection and such are all part of Photos.

[Ben Hughes]

I think any cloud storage will let you share folders with people – Mega and Dropbox certainly do.

I’m sure Photos has its benefits, but there’s no way you could convince me to use a proprietary storage format again (I made that mistake with Lightroom back in the day). I’ve changed operating systems, editors and cloud providers multiple times since moving to a file-based approach and it has been essentially seamless. Even though I’m very happy with Apple (and Nitro!) at the moment, having to start from scratch if I ever change my mind is just too much hassle to consider.

Of course if you think you’re going to be in the Apple econsystem forever, maybe Photos makes sense. But even then I find it more frustrating to use than a logically ordered folder structure.

[Brian Findlay]

I too am faced with this issue. I have about 100,000 photos to manage. I find the photos app opaque and confusing. I do enjoy the AI selected slide shows my phone pops up, and usually watch them. My file library structure was exported from Aperture back in the day, and remains my primary photo structure.

When icloud first launched, it had a feature ‘photostream’ that would populate all your devices with the most recent 1000 photos taken by your phone. That seems to have gone away. Apparently there is no way to sync across devices without storing your entire photo library in the cloud. I am not willing to pay for icloud storage just to do that – I don’t have a multi device workflow, and cannot foresee a use case for doing edits on an ipad or iphone. I just spent the past week setting up a mac mini m4 (excellent value on that machine BTW), and for the past few years I have been doing an iphone ‘dump’ onto my Mac to free up space on the phone. I had several thousand images to sort and bring in to the folder structure but I now have tons of duplicates across the finder and photos.

I turned off icloud photos, as when I set up my new mac, it auto dumped the entire photo library into iCloud, and immediately consumed the entirety of my 5G storage.

Is there any way to sync across devices as photostream used to do? I don’t want to STORE them in the cloud, but surely there is a way to sync them across the cloud.

[Gerardo McQuade]

@Ben, glad I found your posting about XnView, as I’m starting to use a NAS and consolidation of photos from iCloud into a folder structure was challenging.
Cheers!

[Rosemary Taylor]

I keep trying to think of ways to use the Apple photo libraries as they have some features which are useful (titles, description, filtering, albums etc). But I don’t want everything in my iCloud library which is reserved for the subset which I want to be able to show and share. I prefer to process RAWs and scans elsewhere and then move the resulting jpeg (or increasingly jpegxl) file over to iCloud. Aperture could do these things of course but it is gone.

So I still retain a folder-based structure which Nitro can look into for processing. In fact I keep a small SSD with “working files” and then just move the xmp files back to the archive when finished.

I have tried using a second account on my main Mac where the system photo library is not connected to iCloud but this is clunky. Also having all photos in one library seems risky. And I have tried using referenced files too but these lack adequate tools for managing them so edits are easily lost when moving to a new drive.

So the ideal would be for Nitro to be able to handle other libraries. I understand that this is not allowed for App Store programs but it would be a very useful feature. Currently PowerPhotos from Fatcat software is the only thing I have found which can make multiple libraries workable. Of course it also leads to problems when one of my Macs can no longer be updated to the latest MacOS and the libraries become incompatible.

For now I will stick to using the file based archive. Maybe Apple will use the Pixelmator/Photomator team to improve library access in the future.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 2 days ago by Rosemary Taylor.

[Nik Bhatt]

You are correct, Rosemary, that Apple does not permit App Store apps to read more than the system photo library (because the only way to do it is via private API calls which are forbidden (and a bit risky as well, since Apple makes no promises about them).

You can switch the system photo library without messing up iCloud. Here are two links:

Multiple Libraries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR0wRXPg7Tw

Apple Support Page on multiple libraries: https://support.apple.com/en-us/104946

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