I was an Aperture/Photoshop user until the former became defunct and the latter subscription. I have a few thousand photos (mostly wildlife and nature), but as it’s just a hobby for me, and after playing around with a tonne of software, I found that I can get along pretty well with just the Finder. Here’s my current setup:
I keep all of my photos on an external drive in folders arranged by PhotoLibrary>CameraModel>Year>Event.
To import new photos, I simply drag them off my Camera and drop them in the relevant place in my library (CameraModel>Year>…), using a folder naming convention like ‘20170815TripToMars’ which keeps everything neatly organised.
For browsing, I’ve created some Smart Folders, and I keep them alongside my photo library for convenience. For example, I’ll click on my RAW Smart Folder and it’ll show all my RAW files, or my Canon Smart Folder to see images from that particular camera, etc. Mostly I use an ‘All Images’ Smart Folder (for my photo library only, not system wide) and scroll through my photo’s in large icon view, organised by date, previewing by hitting Spacebar.
For developing/editing, I use Affinity Photo. I’ve taken to saving the final images alongside their original RAW files using the same/similar filename which makes locating them easy. I save edits as TIFF, because it’s non-app-specific, can preserve layers if necessary, and is isolated easily in a search (another Smart Folder).
On the plus side, I’m no longer beholden to any particular brand of software. I can share my library between Macs and it’s easy enough to browse, preview, and check meta data. The things that I miss, however, are the advanced tagging, starring, and other collection options you get with a proper DAM. If Affinity develops a DAM, I will definitely check it out, but I still plan to keep my own folder structure and reference it with whatever app I eventually decide on.
Apple Photos has a reference option in its import preferences (you have to uncheck ‘copy to library’, or something), and I have tried that, as a browsing tool. But I keep finding its quicker to just use Finder.