Picktorial: Alternative to Lr or Aperture

[MCAsan]

If you are looking for a replacement for Lightroom or Aperture you might want to consider Picktorial. The description says it can read native Aperture catalogues.

Picktorial does not create a database driven catalog (yea). It browsers the folders and subfolders where you are storing your images. It does not have any import feature. So you might need another app like Photo Mechanic to import from cards, do any renaming, adding of IPTC data...etc.

You can also use Picktorial to send your images as TIFs to external editors such as Ps, Nik Collection, Luminar....etc.

Something I need that is missing....a Haze/Dehaze filter. They told me it is planned for a future release.

https://www.picktorial.com

 

[Stefan johansson]

Looks like a very limited solution for a specific problem,I guess I stay with pixelmator.

 

[Floris]

We've switched completely to lightroom, it's just so much better the last few years, and we've had less and less issues with it. The support from Adobe has also improved quite a bit.

I've been testing around quite a few alternatives and use them for 4+ months each, and I keep falling back to lightroom just to get stuff done. Workflow wise, it's just hard to beat.

 

[ChrisA]

......
Picktorial does not create a database driven catalog (yea). It browsers the folders and subfolders where you are storing your images. ....

If there is no catalog to store meta data how do you search? Say I'm looking for a certain subject, maybe I have photos of animals and I want the ones of frogs? Browsing by folder just does not work.

Lets say I have 400 folders and 50 of them each have two frog images. How do I get all 100 front images on my screen at once so I can select one of them. Don't make me look at 400 folders and select checkboxes. I'd prefer to type "frog" press enter count to "two" and then have all 100 images showing as thumbnails

I always wonder what people who don't understand catalogs do when they go to a public library. Do they just browse the stacks and walk from room to room looking for the book that want? I guess that works in the library is very small and you had it mostly memorized.

But most people DO understand catalogs and look there, write down the number then go strait to the book, They call it a "photo library" because it works about the same way as a large public library.

 

[MCAsan]

I have over 100,000 raw images and can easily find images in a folders arranged by date.

In the case of Picktorial, there is a search window that teaches through the EXIF data in the files. I typed in "05" to look for images shot in May. In around 2 seconds it found over 4,000 of them. If you want to know how the app works, try the free trial.

 

[ChrisA]

In the case of Picktorial, there is a search window that teaches through the EXIF data in the files. I typed in "05" to look for images shot in May. In around 2 seconds it found over 4,000 of them. If you want to know how the app works, try the free trial.[/QUOTE]

So what do you do with 4,000 images except hunt through them from to back. And what if the one you were looking for was actually in April.

You had to know in advance the image you wanted was shot in May. What if you like frogs and find about four frogs every month for the last ten years and now finally are putting together a presentation on frog identification and needed to gather your frog images.

You can't remember over 100 dates and even if you did you likely shot mostly non-frogs of those dates. The only way is to keep some kind of catalog that maps image content to the filename. Lots of people shoot wild life or flowers and collect images over several years.

If it possible to automate the content to filename mapping. You can build a GPS index and use face recognition to tag some images with a person's name and there are ways to automatically sort images that are sort of alike but these are still catalogs even if that are automatically generated

If you are able to access images by date it is only because you have memorized your entire library and have in effect a catalog in your head. My memory is not that good for example, I do keep a lot of images in simple chronological order but I'll never find some images because I can't even remember if I was at that location in the 1970s or was it in the 80's I forget and I might have been there three times over a 20 year span but on which trip did I get that rainbow effect in the waterfall?

Not many people have such good memories so they take notes and keep files

 

[Picktorial]

In the case of Picktorial, there is a search window that teaches through the EXIF data in the files. I typed in "05" to look for images shot in May. In around 2 seconds it found over 4,000 of them. If you want to know how the app works, try the free trial.

While Picktorial frees you from the need to maintain, back up, or sync a catalog, this does not mean that your photos are not indexed. macOS's Spotlight already indexes your photos by metadata, and Picktorial relies on this index rather than maintain its own. This saves battery life (CPU) and space on your drive.

In addition to organizing your photos in folders, you can also organize and search by keywords.

Our catalog-free approach means that you can freely move your files between folders and drives, without worrying about "relocating" them or losing your edits.

Check out this video about Picktorial's catalog-free library:

 

[MCAsan]

[doublepost=1498837143][/doublepost]

Looks like a very limited solution for a specific problem,I guess I stay with pixelmator.

Hejsan,

Pixelmator, like Affinity Photo and some others, are competitors for Photoshop, not Lightroom. Picktorial is a competitor for Lightroom, not Photoshop.

 

[robgendreau]

[doublepost=1498837143][/doublepost]

Hejsan,

Pixelmator, like Affinity Photo and some others, are competitors for Photoshop, not Lightroom. Picktorial is a competitor for Lightroom, not Photoshop.

It's more like a competitor for Photos; it's nowhere near Lightroom, unless you use a very very very small subset of Lr features. For example, you can only enter a very small subset of metadata. And no location info, geocoding, date/time changing, publishing, batch stuff, etc etc. It's got some nice editing features, and appears to be pretty easy to use. But again, it's totally unfair to compare it to Lr.

I do think it's a nice option for some to save to XMP sidecars and XMP within DNGs, JPEGs, etc. But I don't prefer it over a database, which is used for this by Adobe, Apple, etc for some pretty important reasons. Mylio takes the same approach, but their adjustment data can be read by Adobe products too. And BTW, you lose your edits post haste if the original and sidecar become separated or don't have the same name, as if the user renamed the images in an external application without renaming the sidecars to the same name.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

If you are looking for a replacement for Lightroom or Aperture you might want to consider Picktorial. The description says it can read native Aperture catalogues.

Picktorial does not create a database driven catalog (yea). It browsers the folders and subfolders where you are storing your images. It does not have any import feature. So you might need another app like Photo Mechanic to import from cards, do any renaming, adding of IPTC data...etc.

You can also use Picktorial to send your images as TIFs to external editors such as Ps, Nik Collection, Luminar....etc.

Something I need that is missing....a Haze/Dehaze filter. They told me it is planned for a future release.

https://www.picktorial.com

Here is a nice review. hands-mac-app-picktorial-3

 

[MCAsan]

The huge problem most of these Adobe alternatives face.....where is the IOS version? How do we replace a laptop in the field with an iPad? With the release of Lr Mobile 2.8 that is really not a problem as you can carry your raw images back home inside the iPad or if there is wifi, like Lr Mobile copy them to your designated location on your home machine. Serif may address this now that they do Affinity for both desktop and iPad and the same maybe goes for Pixelmator. But Pictorial, ACDSee, DxO Optics, and others are not addressing that scenario.