Seeking successor to iPhoto

[Wingsley]

Hi folks!

I'm on a Core i5 iMac running MacOS 10.12 Sierra. I want to upgrade to Mojave.

I am still using iPhoto (v. 9.6.1), because I regard Photos (from Apple or Google) as iPhoto Lite. Apple abandoned iPhoto a few years ago and in the process they stopped serving my needs. I regard Photos as a smartphone/tablet photo appliance.

I store metadata in my iPhoto library as both prose captions and abbreviated labels in Events titles (I was improvising hashtag-like strings as titles long before the term "hashtag" was in use in social media).

I'm looking for something...

1. with iPhoto 9's power and metadata capabilities that will run on MacOS Mojave
2. with an iPhoto-like image cataloguing system that allows for easy search for items
3. that can import iPhoto's database and metadata without loosing/mangling it
4. that can store the photo database on an external hard drive if necessary
5. can allow images to be posted to social media directly, especially Twitter and Instagram
6. that can allow for a paragraph of two to be stored in "comments" metadata so I can write a prose caption for a photo or group of photos
7. that can download photos from smartphones and tablets (both iOS and Android), D-SLRs and point-and-shoots, just like iPhoto
8. that can do some light retouching within the app like iPhoto, or hand-off editing of a photo to an external editor like Photoshop

I have about 60,000 photos in my iPhoto library. Everything from family photos, to photos of work projects, to community events, to civic volunteer work bees. I need to find a way to preserve all these photos and info and be able to do what I do with iPhoto on MacOS Mojave without having to worry about iPhoto breaking. I plan to clean install Mojave if/when I find something that will work.

I've been looking at Photoshop Elements, but I'm not sure. I use Adobe Creative Cloud that is paid for by a business office I do part-time work for, but I regard Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC as a convoluted workflow with a lot of unnecessary features and procedures that are too distracting.

Are there any Mojave-ready photo cataloguing and minor-retouching apps out there to succeed iPhoto?

Thanks in advance.

 

[tehStickMan]

Lightroom? That's about the only other large photo catalogue app.

What's exactly wrong with Photos?

Point#5, nothing uploads direct to Instagram any more btw.

Otherwise:
https://www.lifewire.com/photo-management-apps-replace-aperture-2259813

 

[Wingsley]

I tried out Photos, both from Google and from Apple. Both of them disgusted me. iPhoto provides me with multiple ways to store metadata to make thousands of photos searchable and to write useful prose captions for record-keeping. Both Photos effectively ruined all of that. I can't afford to loose all that metadata.

 

[tehStickMan]

Here's a pic of Photos.app metadata editor. In the Description field, you can put your prose. I did a test and called it "test description", then in the search bar I typed "test" and the photo appeared.

Photos.app seems to work for your needs.

 

[shaunp]

Lightroom and Capture One both do cataloguing, but both have too many features for you. Have a look at Skylum Liminar. It doesn't have a cataloguing feature, but it is coming this year. It's worth downloading the trial and seeing if you like it. It's more grown up than iPhoto, but not as complicated as LR or Capture One.

 

[maflynn]

You're only options as noted above are LR and C1. Both have the advantages and disadvantages. I will say LR is the market leader for a reason and if you want the power and flexibility that's your best bet imo.

 

[Wingsley]

Here's a pic of Photos.app metadata editor. In the Description field, you can put your prose. I did a test and called it "test description", then in the search bar I typed "test" and the photo appeared.

Photos.app seems to work for your needs.

But what will happen with my existing metadata, including Event titles? I saved a lot of hashtag-like abbreviated descriptions of photo sets in my Event titles.

 

[hanser]

Events will become Albums which keep the titles

 

[Mousse]

What about Adobe Bridge? People who use it sing its praises. I don't have a huge photo collection, so I don't bother with specialty software.

 

[bigfatipod]

Is Lightroom available only by subscription now?

 

[chrfr]

Is Lightroom available only by subscription now?

The non-subscription version is still available but is no longer being updated whatsoever.

 

[pika2000]

Have you actually tried the Photos app again? I love iPhoto, but today, I don’t see what the current Photos app is lacking other than missing some old slideshow themes. Even the editing in Photos is quite powerful now while still being easy to use.

The next jump is Lightroom, but the subscription thing really turns me off. Capture One is trying, but not as easy nor fast as Lightroom.

For most people, the current Apple Photos app is more than sufficient, and it ticks all your requirements as well. Give it another shot.

 

[ignatius345]

Have you actually tried the Photos app again? I love iPhoto, but today, I don’t see what the current Photos app is lacking other than missing some old slideshow themes. Even the editing in Photos is quite powerful now while still being easy to use.

And if you want more power, Photos now seamlessly sends your image out to Photoshop (or other apps) and then resaves the edits from there back into its own library.

I've been looking at Photoshop Elements, but I'm not sure. I use Adobe Creative Cloud that is paid for by a business office I do part-time work for, but I regard Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC as a convoluted workflow with a lot of unnecessary features and procedures that are too distracting.

OK, Photoshop is an editing program, not a photo archiving program, so apples to oranges there.

And you haven't really said what it is about Photos you find so disgusting (!) but I can tell you that if you find Lightroom convoluted, you're not gonna do much better with any other pro-level apps.

I'm not a pro photographer, maybe more of an "enthusiast" level, but I use Photos to manage a library of 30,000+ images from various cameras I've had over the years from old pocket Canons, scanned photos, iPhones, the Olympus OM-D I use now...

Before Photos, I used iPhoto for many years when it was current. And at this point, I have to echo what pika2000 above said: I can't think of much that iPhoto did then that Photos doesn't do now. I find it reliable and quite powerful. Edit history is maintained so originals can be reverted to. There are some good metadata features. Face (and even object) recognition has been getting better and better. And everything is synced with iCloud so I can look and edit my photos on my iPhone, iPad, or even on the iCloud website.

And as far as trusting it, inside the single "Photos Library" file there's folder after folder with all the original JPEGs and RAW files inside it. I keep that sucker backed up, believe me, and not just with iCloud, with hard drive copies, multiple versions going back as far as possible. I'm paranoid that way

 

[angeloweb]

Lightroom and Capture One both do cataloguing, but both have too many features for you. Have a look at Skylum Liminar. It doesn't have a cataloguing feature, but it is coming this year. It's worth downloading the trial and seeing if you like it. It's more grown up than iPhoto, but not as complicated as LR or Capture One.

I've been watching and waiting for Luminar's DAM. It's like the old Microsoft's vaporware. Been waiting since the end of last year...

 

[maflynn]

I've been watching and waiting for Luminar's DAM

Two years ago I cancelled my Adobe subscription and I tried so many apps. It was sad that so many over promised and underdelivered. While I despise the subscription model, there's no getting around the fact that Lightroom, offers the most integrated, polished and powerful photo management t application. There's a reason they're number one. I'm back on Lightroom. I know of people that spend a lot of time managing their photos using many different products, for me LR provides one stop shopping. The best in the industry DAM. Solid RAW processing, a great plug-in system.

 

[mkelly]

Are there any Mojave-ready photo cataloguing and minor-retouching apps out there to succeed iPhoto?

There are a few open-source options you could look at too. Both Darktable and digiKam run on macOS and have a number of the features you've asked about. Darktable is probably the more powerful of the two (think Aperature or Lightroom), but if it's too much power than digiKam is also worth a look.

The downside to both is that their UIs are not mac-native (darktable's takes some getting used to) ... but if you can get past that, there's a lot of good functionality there - and they're cross platform so you can easily open the same photo libraries on a Windows or Linux machine down the road if you want. Both are also actively updated on a regular basis.

Darktable: https://www.darktable.org/
digiKam: https://www.digikam.org/

 

[writevli]

Wingsley:
Being a longtime photographer and cataloguing maniac, I've never found anything better than Apple Photos (even over iPhoto). I've tried Picasa, Google Photos, Lightroom, Aperture, and many other third parties. With Adobe, I feel there's so much to install/synchronise and I always have to backup my Lightroom catalogue before formatting the Mac.

For all professional shoots, I backup with Finder and browse with Bridge. But for all private photos, Apple Photos and iCloud together have been a great help above iPhoto and Adobe — Here's why:

• The iCloud backup and syncing across all devices is perfect. No more import/export required and they're ready to share on social media. Editing across several devices is perfect and "out of the box" easy.
• Photos are split by Moments, filtered by date, description, location, keyword and title (that's already 5 possible metadatas).
• Photos automatically makes a map based on Places, and makes a People Album and Shared Albums.
• Photos keeps them split by Media Types (Videos/Selfies/Live Photos/Portraits, etc); great UI/UX
• There's automatic AI metadata that Siri tracks and shares back for Memories (like your pets, family, birthdays, etc)

That's enough metadata to keep it simple. Here's a preview:
I'm born in 1990 and have around 3000 photos for my whole life. Every photo has been properly set by location, person tag, keyword and description.
Using Lightroom everyday for my professional shoots, I won't find the courage to filter my whole life catalogue and subscribe to Adobe Cloud.

Last but not least, one of the most important features is durability.
In 2014, I was all crazy about black and white and edited accordingly. That phase past away and went all crazy on contrast. Today, I tried to keep everything as neutral as possible, because as you grew up, you don't see "filters" the same way. Thankfully, with Photos, it's easy to switch everything back to normal in a few clicks. And therefore trying to keep a most durable library for 10, 20 years to come.
Lightroom's UI unfortunately doesn't really motivate me to keep track of every filter or editing.

P.S.: Photos is free.

 

[shaunp]

Two years ago I cancelled my Adobe subscription and I tried so many apps. It was sad that so many over promised and underdelivered. While I despise the subscription model, there's no getting around the fact that Lightroom, offers the most integrated, polished and powerful photo management t application. There's a reason they're number one. I'm back on Lightroom. I know of people that spend a lot of time managing their photos using many different products, for me LR provides one stop shopping. The best in the industry DAM. Solid RAW processing, a great plug-in system.

I have a bit of a love-hate thing going on with LR. When it works, it's the best, and integration with PS is great. As are all the plugins. However when it doesn't work it drives me mad. Recently been having a lot of issues with colour shifting between develop module and full screen. I keep toying with the idea of C1, but not sure I'm convinced yet and I don't want to change my workflow.

 

[maflynn]

I keep toying with the idea of C1

I was the same way, but in the end, I felt that LR was the better product. My needs are a lot more humble, and I'm not noticing any issues with color shifting.

 

[shaunp]

I was the same way, but in the end, I felt that LR was the better product. My needs are a lot more humble, and I'm not noticing any issues with color shifting.

If I could sort out the colour shifting issue, I'd be happy with LR too. Like the PS integration and the amount of plug-ins.

 

[Wingsley]

I'm confused. People in this thread seem to believe I will not loose any prose metadata ("Comments") from my iPhoto library if I convert to Apple Photos.

If this is so, how does one access this metadata within Photos? When submitting select photos from iPhoto for e-mail, I have always taken for granted that I can select whether or not I want to include my prose comments with the photos I want to e-mail. This is extremely useful and necessary to me. Can this all be done in Photos, do iPhoto "comments" metadata transfer over, and is it easy to access, add, edit and extract this metadata in Photos?

 

[0970373]

I'm confused. People in this thread seem to believe I will not loose any prose metadata ("Comments") from my iPhoto library if I convert to Apple Photos.

If this is so, how does one access this metadata within Photos? When submitting select photos from iPhoto for e-mail, I have always taken for granted that I can select whether or not I want to include my prose comments with the photos I want to e-mail. This is extremely useful and necessary to me. Can this all be done in Photos, do iPhoto "comments" metadata transfer over, and is it easy to access, add, edit and extract this metadata in Photos?

There's a little "i inside a circle" icon or hit Command+I and you can update metadata there. Anything embedded should move over. I don't know about comments as it's not something I ever used or use now. But if you have any hope of maintaining any 'special" fields (non-standard metadata), it's from Apple product to Apple product.

Why not just make a backup of the iPhotos library on an external and try upgrading the one on your iMac to Photos to see what happens. Make another copy and try it with Lightroom too, or any other DAM you want to try. I can't remember if iPhotos allows you to export a project as its own library it's been dead so long but if it does, try that for a smaller sample size. Just make sure you have a full backup before starting! On an external drive!

Photos has been far more reliable, powerful and usable than iPhoto ever was once the bugs were ironed out.

 

[jasnw]

As one who is still connected-at-the-hip to iPhoto the only way you'll answer the question about whether Photos will work for you is to make a test library with some subset of your main iPhoto library that has all of the metadata bells and whistles you need. Convert this test library to Photos and see how it works. I try this once a year or so on my own test library and am still on iPhoto, not because I love iPhoto so much but because Photos doesn't work for me.

 

[Wingsley]

Okay, today I left my iMac sit for several hours while I converted a copy of my iPhoto library (the whole thing; almost 68,000 photos) into Apple Photos. It took several hours and the iMac wasn't any good for anything else while the conversion took place, but it did work!

I am not sure that I'm ready to commit to Photos yet. Yes, the iPhoto's events did transfer over as albums. And my prose iPhoto comments metadata did show up in Photos. I'm not sure I understand how to handle photo imports from now on, though. I am accustomed to batch-capturing photos as an event (everything on a camera card is usually one event if it was all shot in one day, but sometimes I'll "split" an event into two or more events if the photos are of different contexts; or "merge" events imported from different cameras, or of different days but the same activity) and attaching hashtag-like abbreviated descriptions as event titles. I'm not sure how to do this in Photos.

One thing I loved about iPhoto is how I could batch-change a whole event to insert caption-like information in the comments metadata of a whole bunch of photos all at once. Can this be done in Photos?

Also, I'm working with two computers here. I use an iMac and other family members use a MacBook Pro. We share a single iPhoto library on a pocketable external hard drive. (We go places where there is no internet or cellular connection available, so iCloud Photo Library isn't practical for us). So if I commit to adopting Photos as our new "digital shoebox", I will have to set up both machines to point to that hard disk to access Photos. (We *never* need to connect more than one computer at a time to that hard drive.) Can Photos be set up to store the library on an external drive?

 

[martyjmclean]

Can Photos be set up to store the library on an external drive?

Yep, it works exactly like Aperture or iPhoto. Or iTunes for that matter.
Quit Photos, move the Photos Library to an external drive, hold ⌥ while opening Photos and navigate to the new location, click Use As System Photo Library in Preferences.