Raw Power 3 intended feature set and Catalina Capability

[TN Args]

Hi,

I too have come here with interest in moving away from legacy DAM on Apple (LR6 in my case), and am interested in how Raw Power 3 (RP3) and Photos might serve, with an eye to the future instead of today.

There is such a glut of raw image development software, and such a shortage of photo-based DAM software that isn’t half-baked.

I understand that the release of Catalina opens up some new opportunities for developers to access the Photos database. To my non-expert eye, this might be my chance to move away from LR6, if photo-development apps like RP3 could combine their current ability to edit photos from Photos and show the edits in Photos, plus we have a way to have a managed database for DAM, plus (perhaps with separate apps) a way to migrate from other DAM software into Photos.

Since migration is a one-time action, it seems unnecessary/inefficient to built it into the DAM or editing app itself. If somebody (anybody, anywhere) has a migration app for getting LR or Aperture non-image data (tags, ratings, collections, EXIF) migrated into the Photos database, then could RP3 access the Photos database?

IMO correctly migrating image edits is too much to ask, as much as one can dream of it, and I would be happy to accept full migration of non-image data. I would then export a full set of edited JPEGs of my LR edits and hence preserve my past work on editing photos, and be done with it. We have to draw the line somewhere, instead of waiting forever for a near-impossible development.

So, with all the above in mind, I would love to see the intended feature set of RP3, including any special use of the new opportunities opened up by Catalina, and the ability to have a full-baked DAM either using Photos or independently.

(BTW Mr Bhatt, I see a current thread about Aperture migration, and I understand its relevance given your expertise on all things Aperture, but surely if you can do something about LR migration in RP3 standalone or Photos extension, that will attract a far larger customer base of disgruntled subscription model prisoners, compared to Aperture migration).

• This topic was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by TN Args.

[Nik Bhatt]

RAW Power 3.0 will be a front-end for the Photos library, but there are a lot of limitations imposed by Apple. For example:
1) There is no ability to read or write keywords, or any metadata except “favorites” and creation date
2) Aperture adjustment data is not readable, because it will have been converted before RAW Power could read it.

I plan to add ratings and flags to the Photos library, though it’s crazy what I have to do to get it to work.

Some restrictions may be relaxed in the future (like keywords). I am pretty sure the adjustment data is a lost cause once it is in Photos, though.

The feature set for RAW Power 3 is continuing to fluctuate, but I will share it once I feel that it’s stable enough to not disappoint people if I have to pull something important to get a stable release out to people.

I have not considered the idea of migrating LR data to RAW Power (or to Photos, then readable by RAW Power), but it is conceivable. As usual, the problem with moving data from LR or Aperture to RAW Power is that RAW Power (or Photos) is simply not as mature a product as either LR or Aperture. RAW Power cannot represent all of the data that those apps store. I’ll have to think about it.

[TN Args]

Thank you Nik. It is clearly a problem getting something like Aperture/LR up and going.
cheers

[Erik Brammer]

Hi all,

I am also thinking how to possibly alter my DAM.

I love Raw Power for raw development and editing. I am using it alongside Fuji X-Raw Studio which is very basic but a perfect match to apply other film simulations plus basic raw development to my X-Pro2 files.

Only final JPGs make it into my Apple Photos library with the key advantage of syncing nicely across devices. All raw files are currently only residing in folders on my HDD plus various forms of backup (Time Machine, CCC).

Now I have taken a look again at ACD-See Photo Studio for Mac 5. An idea would be to use that one as the DAM front end for all raw files, possibly even the edited JPGs. Apple Photos would thus continue to be just a one-way downstream slave receiving the edited JPGs.

I wouldn’t intent to use their raw developer but rather use the new functionality of hooking up an external raw developer to it – i.e. Raw Power.

ACD-See Photo Studio for Mac 5 currently sells at a discounted price of below $40.

Does anyone have experience with it and uses it as a DAM front end alongside Raw Power?

Should one be concerned about the fact that they discount it so steeply from their regular $99 price?

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

And for ACD-See, I had a couple of additional questions I wanted to find answers to before even giving it a try:

– Geo tagging: Does it add the GPS coordinates to the raw files? According to their web site, it writes those into the IPTC fields. Worth trying.
– Sandbox or side car files? Seems like the main repository for image edits is the ACD-See database file, however “the “Embed Database Information in Selected Files” command will write the ACDSee metadata to the files/XMP sidecars. This needs to be done manually via the Tools menu (or, you could assign a custom keyboard shortcut via Preferences > Mouse and Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts).” (https://forum.acdsee.com/forum/main-category/acdsee-photo-studio-for-mac-aa/product-discussion/47805-metadata-and-database-questions)
– Using Raw Power as the default external editor from within ACD-See: Should work, even with declaring Raw Power to be the default editor. Need to see what happens if one defines Raw Power to be capable of editing multiple files at a time. Maybe that won’t work. Also, what happens when you call up Raw Power from ACD-See – will you see the thumbnails of the images contained in the folder that holds the image that you used to call up Raw Power from ACD-See? If so, one could start of with the initial image and then carry on editing in Raw Power as usual – unlike calling Raw Power as an extension from Apple Photos.

Nik, I hope you don’t mind that I am using this thread to discuss the interaction between another application like ACD-See and Raw Power for DAM purposes, but you can see based on other people’s input that it is a subject of interest.

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

thinking about it again, I wanted to come back to one of your statements above:
“RAW Power 3.0 will be a front-end for the Photos library, but there are a lot of limitations imposed by Apple.”

Though not even having tried ACDSee, I would be happy to discard that idea completely if Raw Power 3.0 was not only to be a front-end to the Photos library (I take it you refer to the Apple Photos library), but it could also serve as a front-end to a folder structure on your Mac – similar to what ACDSee has to offer. Ideally, any generic metadata such as keywords, rating etc. would be stored in a way that they could be accessible to other photo DAM apps as well, while Raw Power specific editing data could still be sandboxed as today.

Why this idea? Well, I don’t think that it is a good idea to use Apple Photos as one’s repository for raw files, especially if iCloud photo library is being used. I would need to extend my storage plan from 200 GB to 1 TB, and I fear that the whole thing might get very clunky.

Best regards,
Erik

[Nik Bhatt]

RAW Power 3 will maintain its file browser feature set, and add the ability to browse Apple Photos Libraries as well. Ratings and flags will be stored in a small database, but I plan to add an export function to save the data out to a XMP file or something like that. I think it’s fine to use Photos as a repository for the whole library, with iCloud Photos. It does incur a monthly cost (I have a 1TB plan), with the associated benefits that come with a cloud-based library. I don’t think it’s clunky – the basic idea is quite seamless. I think if one manages multiple storage locations (file system + a library with exported JPEGs, etc), then it gets complicated quite quickly.

[Erik Brammer]

Thank you for your feedback, Nik

My initial experience with ACDSee doesn’t get me all too excited, I must say. Hence I would indeed be glad to use Raw Power 3 as a front-end to the Apple Photos library if it allows swift moving from one image to another which is currently very painful using the Raw Power extension from within Apple Photos. Copying and pasting adjustments should then also be possible within Raw Power accessing the Apple Photo library, I hope.

Using Apple Photos and the iCloud photos library as the repository can be worth a try. I would need to upgrade from my 200 GB storage plan for € 2.99 a month to 2 TB for € 9.99 a month. I would then want to export the raw files and the edited JPGs into a traditional folder structure to have the image data not fully in Apple’s hands only.

Looking forward to the feature set of Raw Power 3.0 once you have it nailed down.

Best regards,
Erik

[Nik Bhatt]

Yes, you can move from image to image. It’s like the file browser, but with the photo library. Same features for the most part. Same workflow too (other than the dialog that comes up from the OS when saving an edit [which also happens on RAW Power for iOS]).

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