[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

[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

[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 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]

Surprise after surprise – good thing I don’t rely on Time Machine exclusively but also do fully open CCC backups.

[Erik Brammer]

Thank you, Nik, for your candid outline of all the traps people may fall into. This alone is very much appreciated.

Good luck to us all! 🙂

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

does that mean that even I have migrated my Aperture library to Photos several years ago, I will lose all the edits and be presented only with hard-baked JPGs once I will update the OS to Mojave or Catalina? I understand you are still investigating all this, but it would be insane for Apple to do this. That would be another proof point that users should avoid locking themselves into an ecosystems of catalogs, libraries and all this stuff. Hence, the better Raw Power will deal with these aspects, the more people you can win over – see the other discussions we have had around the Raw Power sandbox directory and integrity of the modification data therein.

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

Thank you, this helps to understand what is going on. So from now on all renaming and EXIF should be done before I start editing in Raw Power.

For Raw Power 3.0, it will be useful to have instructions in the manual of what NOT to do in order not to break the link.

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

Fixing permissions did not do the trick, I just verified.

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

I would like to catch up on the topic discussed above. Today I have come across an issue where I was checking some images which I was sure I had edited with Raw Power, this time SOOC JPGs from my Fuji X-Pro2. No adjustment icon visible in the thumbnails (see below), no adjustments visible when editing the files. I then checked for the .dat files in the sandbox directory that you have mentioned above, and such .dat files exist for the JPGs. It seemed like Raw Power ignored them. I then tried to “open with” –> Raw Power, and Raw Power says “The file you have selected could not be opened. There may be a permissions issue, or it may be damaged in some way.

Now I wonder what could have caused this. After we had the discussion above, I now always rename first and then start editing in Raw Power. Could one of the following actions cause damage to the .dat file or unlinking of it:
– Using ExifTool to add a GPS location
– Using ExifTool to change the file creation date to the image capture date
– Renaming the directory in which the image files are located
– Moving the image files to a different directory

Would you recommend to run a repair of permissions using

diskutil resetUserPermissions / id -u

Or would you mind if I sent you one of these JPGs plus the corresponding .dat file from the sandbox directory?

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

Hello André,

thanks a lot for all your help and advice, very encouraging as I played more with my raw images of the milky way. Depending on the original ISO setting and exposure, I have to use different settings in Raw Power, of course.

But my general approach worked as follows: Reduce Boost and Block Boost to 0.5, Luma and Color Noise pretty much all the way up, Raw Contrast to 0.5. With some images I used Definition and Deepen. Then Sharpen in the lower section to 0.5. Finally, I would typically apply a curve with lowering the shadows further and lifting up the curve in at 50% such that everything from 20% up would be lift above the diagonal. That would give the milky way and all other stars quite a bit more contrast. I accept the resulting artefacts in other parts of the image. That’s the price for not using stacking and special software packages to process those images.

In case anyone is interested, I can send a raw image plus a screen shot of my settings so you can replicate the process and see the results.

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

Thanks, that would be a great starting point.

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

I think I will just export from Raw Power as a 16 bit TIFF in ProPhoto RGB, open this in GIMP or even just the ColorSync utility and the conversion there. For the rather few images where I need to do this conversion, this approach should work.

[Erik Brammer]

Thank you, Nik!

I can see how there are many other features that are being asked for by more users.

Maybe other users reading this have an advice on how to go about soft proofing out of Raw Power? My workaround would be the Preview application of Mac OS X. Of course there are other raw converters or photo editing applications that allow soft proofing, but my goal would be not to use anything but Raw Power.

Best regards,
Erik

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

thanks a lot for your swift feedback as usual. Indeed, if items 1 and 2 above are resolved, file creation dates don’t necessarily need to be messed around with, and it will greatly enhance the usability of Raw Power for processing larger series of images. In my most recent case, it was about 270 images to start with, ending up with 180 images I kept, and I could do the necessary adjustments on those very fast.

Back to my original post, in the future, I will first only do a quick screening of a series of images I want to keep, then rename, and only then start to do adjustments in Raw Power. Even if later I want to delete another few images, I prefer to live with the “holes” in the sequential numbering of my custom renaming rather than sticking with the original file names that came from cameras and phones.

Best regards,
Erik

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