Graphic Converter; Photos alternative?

[robgendreau]

There has been a lot of discussion about alternatives to Aperture, whether Photos will work, how much some dislike Adobe, how disappointed some are with Apple, etc.

I'd like to offer a humble alternative, Graphic Converter. I know I've mentioned it before, but I had occasion to do some major work with it recently and I realized I use it more than I realize, even though I have and use Lightroom a lot, and Capture One, and DxO, and Nik, and MacPhun, and After Shot Pro, and Photoshop, and Aperture. And others I probably forgot, not to mention some demos.

I had an issue where some CR2 RAWs weren't displaying their keywords in the keyword palette, so I emailed support. Who is the developer. He asked the next day for some example files, and by the next day he had a beta for me with the problem fixed.

Are you gonna get that kind of service with any of the other options out there?

People keep talking about Apple's lack of commitment and Adobe's avarice. So if that's important to you, you can't beat Graphic Converter. Affordable, and committed to the Mac platform since the Nineties.

And it STILL does stuff that none of the others can do. It has been occurring to me that using GC in conjunction with Photos might be the bomb. GC is sort of the opposite of Photos: it can do things that Photos cannot. Good examples are all sorts of metadata edits, batch adjustments, geolocation, and time shifts. I was using it to batch prepare and convert RAWS for use on a web site, the sort of thing Photos won't be good at. And it has a great browser: you can drag and drop photos to other Finder folders like you do in LR, but GC also shows non-Photo folders and doesn't require an import first. And it's smart enough to move the XMP sidecars with the RAW photo files.

So give the demo a shot. For Aperture refugees, it might be handy in making a transition out of that program, since it can do so much stuff with metadata and even moving images, as well as all sorts of batch operations.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

There has been a lot of discussion about alternatives to Aperture, whether Photos will work, how much some dislike Adobe, how disappointed some are with Apple, etc.

I'd like to offer a humble alternative, Graphic Converter. I know I've mentioned it before, but I had occasion to do some major work with it recently and I realized I use it more than I realize, even though I have and use Lightroom a lot, and Capture One, and DxO, and Nik, and MacPhun, and After Shot Pro, and Photoshop, and Aperture. And others I probably forgot, not to mention some demos.

I had an issue where some CR2 RAWs weren't displaying their keywords in the keyword palette, so I emailed support. Who is the developer. He asked the next day for some example files, and by the next day he had a beta for me with the problem fixed.

Are you gonna get that kind of service with any of the other options out there?

People keep talking about Apple's lack of commitment and Adobe's avarice. So if that's important to you, you can't beat Graphic Converter. Affordable, and committed to the Mac platform since the Nineties.

And it STILL does stuff that none of the others can do. It has been occurring to me that using GC in conjunction with Photos might be the bomb. GC is sort of the opposite of Photos: it can do things that Photos cannot. Good examples are all sorts of metadata edits, batch adjustments, geolocation, and time shifts. I was using it to batch prepare and convert RAWS for use on a web site, the sort of thing Photos won't be good at. And it has a great browser: you can drag and drop photos to other Finder folders like you do in LR, but GC also shows non-Photo folders and doesn't require an import first. And it's smart enough to move the XMP sidecars with the RAW photo files.

So give the demo a shot. For Aperture refugees, it might be handy in making a transition out of that program, since it can do so much stuff with metadata and even moving images, as well as all sorts of batch operations.

I don't think anybody out there can provide the GC support, nor the free upgrades offered by Lemke. What I would like to see from Lemke is some interesting plugins for GC.

 

[neutrino23]

I've been using GC since forever. I still use it. The developer is awesome at responding to emails.

 

[Ray2]

I've also been using it forever. Aperture is still my main post processing app but having been through a couple of migrations in the past (Lightroom, C1, Aperture) I'm about to dump any app that uses a data base when I move away from Aperture.

Iridient will be my editor, front end will be GC, Photo Mechanic, or, still looking.

I don't need to replace the Photos app. It will never see the light of day. But if I wanted to, GC would likely be my choice.

 

[robgendreau]

I don't see why more people don't use browsers instead of stuff that relies on databases. Certainly if you need to store edits non-destructively in a PIE, but now that we have RAW, and cheap storage, many don't even need that. You've always got an undestroyed RAW, and whatever exported TIFFs or JPEGs from that. And browsers are quick; no import time.

And there are downsides to keeping all that in say an Aperture database....

BTW, for editing check out the Affinity Photo beta. It's very nice.

AfterShot Pro by Corel also has an interesting take; it can either catalog or browse. It stores edits in a special XMP file.

Having tested Photos now, it's abundantly clear that GC (and others) are fine alternatives to what is a basically iPhoto with better editing tools (but worse metadata tools).

Another one to check out is XnViewMP. Free for personal use. It's especially nice for those who use keywords extensively. Some folks get put off by the Windows-ish look, but it's actually a very powerful browser.

 

[Ray2]

GC is one of my 2 alternatives when I retire Aperture. In my view, the pros are I get rid of a proprietary library and its simple.

One downside I've come across is the amount of time it takes to render Fuji XTrans raws. Don't know about other raw formats but the Fuji's take an eternity. Odd since its using Apple's raw converter.

 

[maflynn]

I don't see why more people don't use browsers instead of stuff that relies on databases. Certainly if you need to store edits non-destructively in a PIE, but now that we have RAW, and cheap storage, many don't even need that. You've always got an undestroyed RAW, and whatever exported TIFFs or JPEGs from that. And browsers are quick; no import time.

And there are downsides to keeping all that in say an Aperture database....

BTW, for editing check out the Affinity Photo beta. It's very nice.

AfterShot Pro by Corel also has an interesting take; it can either catalog or browse. It stores edits in a special XMP file.

Having tested Photos now, it's abundantly clear that GC (and others) are fine alternatives to what is a basically iPhoto with better editing tools (but worse metadata tools).

Another one to check out is XnViewMP. Free for personal use. It's especially nice for those who use keywords extensively. Some folks get put off by the Windows-ish look, but it's actually a very powerful browser.

Seems like an ineffecient work flow, GC, (Maybe Aperture for holding the images), xnViewMP for keywording.

I'm not a pro, just a hobbyist and I want something that doesn't get in my way. Aperture was one such product, LR is another, though it took some time to get used to how it did things. I don't see any advantage to using disparate utilities, when one tool can do that quite efficiently (whether we're talking about Aperture, LR, or C1).

I like the idea of the catalog holding my images, edits, flags and keywords, etc. I can easily search on any number of those settings to zoom in a certain set of images. It also helps with publishing to social media, and/or sites such as smugmug. That is, I use smart albums and with a push of a button, I publish my images.

To each his own, but I like the simplicity of what I have now.