Understanding how Photo-Editors store my work

[Ambrosia7177]

Hello. I am almost ready to get into photo-editing, and have been doing a lot of research on photo-editing software.

(I dabbled with Nikon Capture and Photoshop in the 1990's, but honestly haven't edited any photos in a proper way in 25+ years - which definitely puts me in the ranks of "Greatest Digital Hoarders of All Time") 😇

Before choosing a solution, I need help understanding how all of these applications store my work and how they interact with the original photo file.

It's embarrassing to say, but I have spent the last 20+ years shooting a lot of photos (and video) and never found time to actually edit and publish any of my work. I probably have 200-300k digital photos, and around 40TB of video/photos.

Am mentioning this, because that makes my "use-case" likely very, very different than average users.

Like it or not, my mindset for working on a computer is doing everything via Finder and directory structures - akin to a command-line warrior on Linux/Unix.

So it really trips me up how video and photo-editing applications seem to slurp things up into a database or file or some internal thing which I cannot see. (And don't get me started on how confusing mobile-apps are!)

I'm used to opening a file, editing the file (e.g. document, spreadsheet, PDF, photo, etc), then saving the file - and all you have is that one file. (Plus, of course, a copy of the original!!)


There are a few areas where my lack-of-knowledge in the area worries me...

1.) I need an architecture that will handle very complex directory structures and tons of photos and scale and not break.

2.) I worry that as my business grows, and as I re-organize my external drives / directory structure / photos files - or as I re-name file names - it will break the database/whatever in these photo-editing applications might use?

3.) Am also worried that if everything gets stored in a database / file - and then that becomes corrupt, then I might lose years of work.


(*Side note: The way I organize my laptop and hard-drives may not be "modern", but it works for me - and has worked for the past 30 years. So please don't judge my current workflow, but instead help me to merge what I currently have with how all of these applications likely work.)


It's funny, because as I have been looking at dozens of photo-editing and vector-editing applications today, and then independently, @cjsuk brought up this same idea in another thread...

Make sure you are fully aware of the differences between a generic image editor (photoshop/gimp) and “darkroom” processors with catalogues (Lightroom/darktable). They are very different beasts.

So that is a related question that I have...

How do photo-editing applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp store your work and photos as compared to applications like Lightroom / DarkTable / etc?


(Am having a similar problem with DaVinci Resolve and my voluminous video collection. Trying to wrap my head around how DaVinci Resolve stores things in database / projects and how that relates to my original media files.)

In the end, before I can choose a photo-editing application, I need to have a solid understanding on this topic, and come up with a strategy of how to organize my original photos plus however the final ones will appear. Because once I go down the rabbit-hole with all of these photos and hard-drives I have amassed, there is no turning back!!

Am hoping you guys can enlighten me, and that this isn't as scary as it feels... :-/

 

[Bigwaff]

How do photo-editing applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp store your work and photos as compared to applications like Lightroom / DarkTable / etc?

I need to have a solid understanding on this topic, and come up with a strategy of how to organize my original photos plus however the final ones will appear.

Questions tailored made for AI .. I dumped your questions into Claude.ia ... I won't regurgitate answers here and pretend they are my own. Recommend you simply try it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

[cjsuk]

There are several things to consider:

1. Image library. That is finding, sorting, cataloguing images across multiple disks/devices on a large scale. This is usually an abstraction / database over files on disk.

2. Developing. It's not really developing stuff these days but it gives you the equivalent functionality of darkroom i.e. crop, resize, light and colour manipulation, masking, dodging, burning etc. Designed to take raw camera sensor data or processed image and turn it into something you can print or work with later. This should be non-destructive i.e. it does not change the original image, storing the processed version as metadata in a database or file on disk and allowing you to export it to somewhere else (and print it etc).

3. Image editing. This is pretty much where you can do any advanced image editing like re-composing multiple images, adding shapes, art and painting, drawing and adding text etc.

Photographers spend 90% of the time in 1 and 2 and 10% in 3.

Graphic artists spend 90% of the time in 3 and 10% smoking a fag outside.

Know who you are first.

Product notes....

Affinity Photo. Does 3 well and a half arsed job of 2. It does not do 1 at all.

Lightroom. Does an exceptional job of 1 and 2. It does not do 3, delegating it to photoshop.

Gimp. Does a terrible job of 2 and 3 and makes you want to gouge your eyes out. Does not do 1.

Darktable. Does a really good job of 2 but you need to know what you're doing from a technical level first. Does an ok-ish job of 1. Useless at 3.

Photoshop. Does not do 1 at all. Does do 2 via Camera Raw. Exceptional at 3.

NX Studio. Does 1 ok. Does 2 exceptionally well and doesn't do 3. Costs nothing but only works with Nikon cameras.

On balance I chose Lighroom+Photoshop as the combination as they are well integrated, the catalogue in Lightroom is exceptional, the developing stuff in Lightroom is exceptional and the image editing stuff in Photoshop is exceptional. The tools are well documented and there are plenty of tutorials and courses if you get stuck.

Lightroom got me the other day. "find me everything I shot on that 50mm Nikon AF-S lens 15 years ago". It did it.

 

[cjsuk]

Questions tailored made for AI .. I dumped your questions into Claude.ia ... I won't regurgitate answers here and pretend they are my own. Recommend you simply try it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Equally it might also be garbage out of a crack pipe. Only use AI if you know the answers already. Because if you don't know the answer then you don't know it's right or not. Watched so many people blow their own toes off on that one.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

There are several things to consider:

1. Image library. That is finding, sorting, cataloguing images across multiple disks/devices on a large scale. This is usually an abstraction / database over files on disk.

2. Developing. It's not really developing stuff these days but it gives you the equivalent functionality of darkroom i.e. crop, resize, light and colour manipulation, masking, dodging, burning etc. Designed to take raw camera sensor data or processed image and turn it into something you can print or work with later. This should be non-destructive i.e. it does not change the original image, storing the processed version as metadata in a database or file on disk and allowing you to export it to somewhere else (and print it etc).

3. Image editing. This is pretty much where you can do any advanced image editing like re-composing multiple images, adding shapes, art and painting, drawing and adding text etc.

@cjsuk, I guess you were talking about functionality? Somewhat helpful, but my OP was asking about how applications store things...

My naive view of photo-editing software is that you open a file, edit it, and save it over the original or as an edited version and are done.

But I suspect that all of the applications we have discussed plus more, are more akin to DaVinci Resolve.

By that I mean that they store all of your project/editing details into either an internal database or store things to a file?

Am still trying to wrap my head around how DaVinci Resolve trulyw orks, but so far it seems that a really complex project in DaVinci usually only take up MEGABYTES - whereas the media files could take up a TERABYTE.

If that is how applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp or Illustrator / Affinity Designer / Inkscape work, then I guess I shouldn't be too worries about those applications internal database (or file) because I could easily store that on a small hard-drive.

But I don't know...

Also - similar to what I am again trying to figure out in DaVinci Resolve - what happens when I move the original files to a new hard-drive or into a new directory or rename things? (In DaVinci, you just re-link the media files and things work. Of course, my fear is, "What if I forget where I moved things?"

Again, not sure how the applications we have been discussing work?

But let's assume that my original photos are TERABYTES and number over 100,000...

What considerations do i need to make up front?

Follow me?

 

[Bigwaff]

Equally it might also be garbage out of a crack pipe. Only use AI if you know the answers already. Because if you don't know the answer then you don't know it's right or not. Watched so many people blow their own toes off on that one.

Perhaps no better than some random poster’s response in a forum thread to be sure, especially if “you don’t know the answer then you don’t know it’s right or not”. But the “garbage out of a crack pipe” statement is pure melodrama FUD. I’ve found AI to be useful, helpful, and more often than not, accurate. It’s certainly safe as one of the sources of information during one’s research… especially questions posed in this thread. But we can agree to disagree.

 

[r.harris1]

If you don’t need to process raw files from your camera(s), which I’d guess you don’t from your descriptions of what you’re trying to do, and you just want to store images on your hard drive, your “image library” is solved for. It’s just your hard drive, store the images in whatever way makes sense to you. No magic there. Just back it up, of course. From there, you just need an editor such as Affinity or Photoshop for your JPEGs or TIFs. You edit the JPEG or TIF. You save the JPEG or TIF. DaVinci Resolve for your videos. Job done. If you’re just editing JPEGs or TIFs, you can use many different tools - these are fairly universal formats.

 

[cjsuk]

@cjsuk, I guess you were talking about functionality? Somewhat helpful, but my OP was asking about how applications store things...

My naive view of photo-editing software is that you open a file, edit it, and save it over the original or as an edited version and are done.

But I suspect that all of the applications we have discussed plus more, are more akin to DaVinci Resolve.

By that I mean that they store all of your project/editing details into either an internal database or store things to a file?

Am still trying to wrap my head around how DaVinci Resolve trulyw orks, but so far it seems that a really complex project in DaVinci usually only take up MEGABYTES - whereas the media files could take up a TERABYTE.

If that is how applications like Photoshop / Affinity Photo / Gimp or Illustrator / Affinity Designer / Inkscape work, then I guess I shouldn't be too worries about those applications internal database (or file) because I could easily store that on a small hard-drive.

But I don't know...

Also - similar to what I am again trying to figure out in DaVinci Resolve - what happens when I move the original files to a new hard-drive or into a new directory or rename things? (In DaVinci, you just re-link the media files and things work. Of course, my fear is, "What if I forget where I moved things?"

Again, not sure how the applications we have been discussing work?

But let's assume that my original photos are TERABYTES and number over 100,000...

What considerations do i need to make up front?

Follow me?

Point is you need to understand what you need first. Your original questions were missing clear understanding of that. Once you've peeled off that layer you can look at how things are stored, because it's different for each piece of software and that defines where you need to put your effort.

The defining factor you have here is "terabytes". Which means the principal effort will be catalogue. So Lightroom as it has the superior catalogue. External DAS HDD array with the source images in. Internal SSD with previews/catalogue on it. Similar to Resolve but just lots of small files instead of fewer large ones.

Source images are just wherever you stick them on disk. Multiple disks/volumes are fine. Mine are ordered in /yyyy/yyyy-mm-dd - subject/ albums on internal and external disk and go back from 1886 (no joke) to 2025. Over the top of that Lightroom maintains a catalogue database which is a SQLite database on disk. This contains the metadata and editing information for the images. The metadata such as lens/location information is read from the images at import time. You can add your own metadata over the top of that which can be subject related, people or whatever. When you make an edit it saves the "last state" as a preview and saves that on disk. The only thing that needs to be connected is the catalogue and previews. All edits are non destructive in Lightroom - the original source images are never touched. If you drop into photoshop, it stores a new intermediate image when you come back to Lightroom and you edit that.

None of the other tools have this level of flexibility. They will import a file into their layer system and then you can save it out as a single file. But you have ZERO catalogue management there.

 

[cjsuk]

Perhaps no better than some random poster’s response in a forum thread to be sure, especially if “you don’t know the answer then you don’t know it’s right or not”. But the “garbage out of a crack pipe” statement is pure melodrama FUD. I’ve found AI to be useful, helpful, and more often than not, accurate. It’s certainly safe as one of the sources of information during one’s research… especially questions posed in this thread. But we can agree to disagree.

I'll remain disagreeing. It's a reasonable side arm if you know what you are doing already but it's terrible for discovering new things. It just looks like it isn't. In subject areas I am a domain expert in, the things it (all models) churn out are facepalm level 70% of the time and incompetent 20% of the time. I expect that to be true in other areas as well. That's not a good foundation to learn something from. You wouldn't hire a teacher who didn't know a subject but pretended convincingly they did.

What it does do is confidently give people credible sounding advice when you need credible advice.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

If you don’t need to process raw files from your camera(s), which I’d guess you don’t from your descriptions of what you’re trying to do, and you just want to store images on your hard drive, your “image library” is solved for. It’s just your hard drive, store the images in whatever way makes sense to you. No magic there. Just back it up, of course. From there, you just need an editor such as Affinity or Photoshop for your JPEGs or TIFs. You edit the JPEG or TIF. You save the JPEG or TIF. DaVinci Resolve for your videos. Job done. If you’re just editing JPEGs or TIFs, you can use many different tools - these are fairly universal formats.

My apologies that all of my threads seem to grow enormous and then fork - but life is complicated!!

Okay, I might start another thread on this, but for now...

So @r.harris1 you imply that working with non-RAW photos is much easier?

My "camera" is/are my iPhone(s) for now. (I think my iPhone 15 Pro Max can shoot some form of "raw", but I just put it away for the Winter in storage last week, so I don't have it handy to see what it can do.)

98% of my photos come from the iOS camera app - I have tinkered with Cinema P3 for photos, but I use that app primarily for video.

Once I get $$$ coming in, I would like to buy a modern, professional mirrorless camera, but for now I am stuck doing mobile-journalism (MOJO) - which honestly is better in most cases when doing photojournalism.


I am sensing that my OP wasn't clear, so let me try again...

(**NOTE: Please allow me to describe what I know about DaVinci Resolve - because I believe it very closely relates to how photo-editing software works, and talking about it relates to my organization/management concerns which I tried to articulate in my OP, but maybe didn't do so well?!)


From the little I know...

In DaVinci Resolve you have a "database" which stores "projects" which are linked to "media". (If I designed DaVinci Resolve, I would have added much more flexibility to how all of that works, but that is another discussion!!)

From what I can gather, when you take original media (i.e. video + B-roll stuff) and start working on it in DaVinci Resolve, you do so in a "project" - which is a file or series of files that save all of your work (e.g. Timelines, cuts, frame adjustments, audio adjustments, color adjustments, Fusion work, etc.)

I believe the file(s) in a DaVinci Resolve "project" are basically just XML files which store all of your work.

These "projects" are then stored in a "database" which is a library of all of your work on "projects".

From what I have seen, the "projects" are pretty tiny compared to the "media". (For example, I just completed a couple "background" videos that are maybe 5-10 minutes in length. For each video, the DaVinci Resolve "project" is only 5-10 MB, whereas the "media" is 10-20 GB.)

What I have yet to figure out in DaVinci Resolve is how to best manage my "database" full of "projects"...

(And some reliable sources tell me that DaVinci Resolve can only effectively store 15-20 "projects" in a given 'database" before you get performance issues... WTF?!)

I believe you can create a directory structure in DaVinci Resolve, but for the volume of files that I had - as mentioned in my OP - managing things in DaVinci Resolve seems foolish.

Fortunately, in DaVinci Resolve, you can create a "project archive" and choose to basically ZIP up all of your work (i.e. "project" and "media" into one nifty .dra file (i.e. DaVinci Resolve project archive file.)

This works great for portability, because a .dra file not only has all of your XML "project" info, and your "media" files (e.g. A-roll, B-roll, etc.), but it also saves everything in the original folder structure, so when you restore a .dra file, back in DaVinci Resolve, it is just like where you left off!

The only downside is that by creating a "project archive" (.dra), you are in essence DOUBLING your storage requirements - unless you delete the original files - which I feel would be foolish.

While I think "project archives" are a great idea, the way you have to "restore" things is awkward at best. Furthermore, how DaVinci Resolve works with "databases" and "projects" is fairly rigid. For example, once you have a database, you can't just move it to another location on your hard-drive or to an external hard-drive. (I believe you have to create a new "database" and then export and import projects into that new "database" - I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of this?!)

What's my point?

The point is that in DaVinci Resolve you are NOT just working with ONE original media file (e.g. quick video on my iPhone). Instead you have a "database" of "projects" plus "media". (This is not your father's "FamilyTaxes_2025.xls" kind of thing!!!!)

So for all of my VIDEO, I need to come up with a strategy to manage 30+ TB of raw video, PLUS I have to work in DaVinci Resolve's "framework" of how it stores all of my work.

(As mentioned earlier, I don't think it makes sense to keep a running history of all of my "projects" inside of DaVinci Resolve as it simply wasn't designed to manage THOUSANDS of projects in a single "database' or even within the DaVinci Resolve application. And since you CANNOT move a "database" in DaVinci Resolve, that create a real problem as DaVinci Resolve fills up and/or my macBook pro's hard-drive fills up!!)


So my fear is that if I started using Photoshop or Affinity Studio or Pixelmator Pro or Lightroom or DarkTable or whatever, that I might run into a SIMILAR DILEMMA...

That being said...

Can you all help me understand how an application like Photoshop, or Affinity Studio or Pixelmator Pro or Lightroom or Photomator STORE and ORGANIZE photo-editing projects?

(*Note: Not going to use Adobe, but knowing how it stores things would still be educational.)


From an application design standpoint, wrapping up all of your work into a BLOB seems to be fairly common in today's world. For example, I am pretty sure that macOS "Photos" slurps up all of your photos into an internal "database". And I think the old iTunes did that. And I think the Music app does that also.

(I am used to my work just being stored as a FILE versus these complex directory-structures and data-structures...)


So, all of that being said...

I need to understand how these applications work with my original files (and later my editing) before I dive into any application. Because 90% of what I need to have a successful business is properly organizing and managing the ENORMOUS amount of data/information/content that I have amassed over the past 25 years.

(Note: I am NOT trying to make myself feel important or impress people, but one of my key CHALLENGES to getting my startup launched is keeping up with the SHEER VOLUMES of data/information I take in every day. For example, last year I downloaded 10,000 videos on the T***p Administration for research. Thankfully, I have come up with a solid file-naming and directory structure to help me find everything as far as my research goes. But now I need to do the same things with all of the CONTENT that I will be creating in DaVinci Resolve and likely Affinity Studio.)

I have to work "smart" trying to do the work of ten people as a company of one!

FWIW, I have built some pretty fancy "systems" for the INTAKE of all of the information I gather - and creating a "system" has helped me IMMENSELY in other areas of my business.

Now I could use some help understanding how all of these photo-editing / graphic-design applications work so that I can come up with a proper strategy to build an architecture that will scale yet also be adaptable.

I assume that these photo-editing / graphic-design applications probably store your work in a fairly similar manner to how DaVinci Resolve works, but I just don't know...

Hope that makes sense?!

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Equally it might also be garbage out of a crack pipe. Only use AI if you know the answers already. Because if you don't know the answer then you don't know it's right or not. Watched so many people blow their own toes off on that one.

I couldn’t believe what a snotty, unhelpful reply that was.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

You store your phone for the season?

 

[cjsuk]

I couldn’t believe what a snotty, unhelpful reply that was.

I was keeping up the tone of the original reply...

 

[Ambrosia7177]

Point is you need to understand what you need first. Your original questions were missing clear understanding of that. Once you've peeled off that layer you can look at how things are stored, because it's different for each piece of software and that defines where you need to put your effort.

I have never used Lightroom, but from the screenshots I have seen, I really like how you can look at a "galelry" of thumbnails of your photos.

Many, many moons ago, when I was hot-n-heavy into digital photography with my brand new $5,000 Nikon dSLE - that a cheap smartphone could outperform now! - I used Nikon Capture to download and preview my photos.

As I recall, it had a gallery of thumbnails of all of your photos - either n camera or already downloaded. It was glorious in how it helped you quickly preview things - especially after going out and shooting 1,000 photos in a day!!

So that would be nice.

Then again, I am used to just going into a directory on my MacBook Pro, tapping the spacebar to get a "Quick Look", and pressing the down arrow to go to the next photo. (Not as good as a side-by-side gallery, but I am used to working with limited resources!

A gallery to preview my photos (and videos) would be dreamy, but what I need first is a way to just EDIT all of this original work that is collecting cob-webs on my numerous hard-drives!!

The defining factor you have here is "terabytes". Which means the principal effort will be catalogue. So Lightroom as it has the superior catalogue. External DAS HDD array with the source images in. Internal SSD with previews/catalogue on it. Similar to Resolve but just lots of small files instead of fewer large ones.

(Adobe is still out...)

It sounds like Photomator (~ $119 for perpetual license) might help in that area?

Source images are just wherever you stick them on disk. Multiple disks/volumes are fine. Mine are ordered in /yyyy/yyyy-mm-dd - subject/ albums on internal and external disk and go back from 1886 (no joke) to 2025.

Yep. That is what I am doing for all of my news articles and news videos.

(I just decided to use that paradigm since "news" and "space-time-continuum" go hand in hand!!)

Over the top of that Lightroom maintains a catalogue database which is a SQLite database on disk. This contains the metadata and editing information for the images.

I know that Lightroom would be the easy solution, but I am going to hold my ground out of principle...

Could I do similar thing in Photomator and/or DarkTable or something else?

Also, does Lightroom (or similar applications) have a LIMKIT on how many photos they can hold? (DaVinci Resolve seems VERY limited and inflexible in this area. It seems it was built to hold 1-2 TERABYTE Hollywood movies, and not 10,000 run-and-gun news videos...)

The metadata such as lens/location information is read from the images at import time.

Would this apply to lowly iPhone photos too? or just mirrorless?

You can add your own metadata over the top of that which can be subject related, people or whatever. When you make an edit it saves the "last state" as a preview and saves that on disk.

Is all of this non-destructive?

Does Lightroom (and others) store a "history" of edits and metadata?

Can you roll-back edits and metadata?


And this SQLite database...

Can it be backed up / moved / restored /etc? (Or is it a rigid PITA like DaVinci Resolve has?)

The only thing that needs to be connected is the catalogue and previews.

Lost me here...

All edits are non destructive in Lightroom - the original source images are never touched. If you drop into photoshop, it stores a new intermediate image when you come back to Lightroom and you edit that.

Is this the same for Photomator? DarkTable? Otehrs?

Also, does Affinity Studio offer anything to help me "catalog" all of my work?

What other open-source options might exist?

None of the other tools have this level of flexibility. They will import a file into their layer system and then you can save it out as a single file. But you have ZERO catalogue management there.

So it is Lightroom or nothing? ;-(

 

[Ambrosia7177]

I'll remain disagreeing. It's a reasonable side arm if you know what you are doing already but it's terrible for discovering new things. It just looks like it isn't. In subject areas I am a domain expert in, the things it (all models) churn out are facepalm level 70% of the time and incompetent 20% of the time. I expect that to be true in other areas as well. That's not a good foundation to learn something from. You wouldn't hire a teacher who didn't know a subject but pretended convincingly they did.

What it does do is confidently give people credible sounding advice when you need credible advice.

But who wants to THINK for themselves in 2025? /s

(In fact, why don't people just put their brain in a jar and hook it up to social media and A.I. so they don;t have to be bothered "living"...)

 

[Ambrosia7177]

You store your phone for the season?

My field iPhone (and gear) that was in my trunk got put away for the Winter. (It was 8 F this morning...)

Actually, I have stored my phone in my car all Winter, but I am getting too old to do man-on-street interviews in this snow and ice, so I said "screw it" for the rest of the season...

One benefit of miserably cold January weather in (formerly) November is that it forces me to figure out all of this photo-editing (and video-editing) stuff!!


P.S. How come I can no longer add smilies to my posts? The toolbar icon is greyed out. (Am I in trouble??)

 

[Ambrosia7177]

I couldn’t believe what a snotty, unhelpful reply that was.

<< Smilie emoticon eating popcorn >>

 

[r.harris1]

Any camera, single image or video, stores what it captures. It can store it in a couple of main ways:

(1) raw or RAW - you'll see it spelled both ways. I use lower-case just 'cause - "raw" - but it doesn't matter. Often, all caps means something is an abbreviation for something longer, for example JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format, RAW... stands for nothing. Raw data is straight luminance data captured and read by a camera's sensor. It needs to be processed into something a human can see on a screen or on a print. This means JPEG or TIFF in many cases and it's where white balance, color, and other human-pleasing things happen to the luminance data. The reason people process data stored originally in this format is that you have a lot of leeway on recovering shadows and sometimes highlights. In general, unless you want to go into a rabbit hole, you're not going to need to turn raw data into "cooked" data, and you'll likely start with "pre-cooked" data. Cameras can do this for you without you doing it yourself. I prefer working with raw data and producing my own JPEGs and TIFFs, but plenty of people don't. As I said, Rabbit. Hole.

(2) "Cooked". Raw data needs processing via some sort of "raw processor" - this can include Lightroom, Apple Photos, and tools like Fast Raw Viewer. Raw data gets "cooked" into JPEGs or TIFFs (I don't know video so can only speak for "traditional" cameras). This means white balance, color corrections like saturation, etc, and things like sharpening and noise correction. Most cameras do a great job with providing "pleasing" settings out of the box for most of these sorts of things - and it's a lot of what you see around on Insta, etc.

I'd suggest (2) for you - let the restaurant (camera) cook your image for you.


Next is the library and how the image gets stored. You have either non-destructive or destructive. Don't freak out on the word "destructive".

Parametric Editors:

Some tools, like Lightroom and Apple Photos let you store the edits to an image and keep the original intact. You'll hear these referred to as parametric editors. Let's say you have an image called my_image.jpeg and you increase the saturation to +5 and the contrast to +50. A parametric editor stores just the saturation and contrast changes, and is what you see on the screen. Once you're happy, you "export" the image to a second JPEG and use it however you wish. The original my_image.jpeg remains the same. So you can have multiple variants of the same image, with the original intact. Don't know if this is how DaVinci works - I don't know it well.

These parametric editors tend to also be asset managers, so that you can store in whatever structure you want, search for images, and that sort of thing - you'll hear the term Digital Asset Management (DAM). So they store and capture metadata such as lens, shutter speeds, and the like and let you search by these things. They allow you to apply key words to images to search on later. You can typically store these on your disk in whatever way makes sense but the database will keep references to these files. Apple Photos isn't quite as flexible, but you can make it work.

Pixel Editors:

These take your JPEG and change it. Photoshop, Affinity, etc. So if you increase your saturation to +5, your original JPEG will now have +5 saturation, unless you save it off to another file name. They don't typically do DAM.

So if you use your hard disk as you digital asset management - store by year/month/day or whatever makes sense to you, you can certainly use Affinity but it won't be doing DAM for you - no database. Lightroom and Apple Photos provide the database for you but you need to operate within their constraints. And sense you're using an iPhone - I can suggest Apple Photos is a good free option if you have a Mac.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@r.harris1,

Always a detailed response!

Any camera, single image or video, stores what it captures. It can store it in a couple of main ways:

(1) raw or RAW
(2) "Cooked"

I'd suggest (2) for you - let the restaurant (camera) cook your image for you.

For photojournalism going on a responsive website, I assume that "cooked" is more than sufficient, right? (And presumably, "raw" is more for people who do printed work like publishers, wedding and portrait photographers, etc., right?)

Next is the library and how the image gets stored. You have either non-destructive or destructive. Don't freak out on the word "destructive".

Parametric Editors:

Some tools, like Lightroom and Apple Photos let you store the edits to an image and keep the original intact. You'll hear these referred to as parametric editors. Let's say you have an image called my_image.jpeg and you increase the saturation to +5 and the contrast to +50. A parametric editor stores just the saturation and contrast changes, and is what you see on the screen. Once you're happy, you "export" the image to a second JPEG and use it however you wish. The original my_image.jpeg remains the same. So you can have multiple variants of the same image, with the original intact. Don't know if this is how DaVinci works - I don't know it well.

Yes, DaVinci Resolve is a non-destructive video editor.

These parametric editors tend to also be asset managers, so that you can store in whatever structure you want, search for images, and that sort of thing - you'll hear the term Digital Asset Management (DAM). So they store and capture metadata such as lens, shutter speeds, and the like and let you search by these things. They allow you to apply key words to images to search on later. You can typically store these on your disk in whatever way makes sense but the database will keep references to these files. Apple Photos isn't quite as flexible, but you can make it work.

For someone who has such a large - and growing - volume of files, does it make sense to use a "parametric" editor as an end-all-be-all repository as far as metadata and search go?

Fwiw, I have spent this afternoon looking up stuff about Darktable. (All while backing up another 2TB onto a 7200rpm HDD - which provides me lots of time to read!!)

So far I like what my searches pull up on Darktable **except** for that fact that it doesn't allow you to create directory structures like in Finder - or presumably in a DAM.

Darktable does appear to allow me to move my files around, and put it on however many external drives. If I had to move files or move things to a new HDD - like I am doing now - then it seems all that I have to do is re-import the files - which is a misleading expression!! - and then Darktable will see things again. (This is how DaVinci Resolve works.)

I do like how Darktable uses "sidecar" files, in addition to its database.

But what I am wondering is if...

1.) Should I use a Parametric Editor as a "DAM" to manage all of my business photos for life?

or

2.) Use my filing system in Finder to truly manage things, and just use something like Darktable or Lightroom or Photomator as a "workspace" where I can import 500 photo files from a photoshoot, then preview them, then cull them, then edit a handful, and then file them in their homes (or new homes) on my drives?

It sounds cool to add tags to your photo files, and be able to search for things down the road, but even if you had a measly 50,000 files, is this asking too much of Darktable or Lightroom or Photomator?

(Truth me told, I had even considered just making a spreadsheet where the photo file is a row in my spreadsheet, and the filename is the "primary key", and then I can add whatever metadata I want.)


Side note: So much of what I come to MacRumors for often involves, "I know what i don't know" or "I don't know what i don't know." It is all part of the journey... What I do know is that I have an INSANE amount of files - even for a business - and I have no regrets capturing them, because if my business takes off, it will totally be because of all of these files. (Bloomberg has a tagline something like "Knowledge is power" and I totally think that applies to what i am working on. And how lucky am I to live in a time where storage is all but free - so why no go full-bore capturing things?!)

Then again, I probably take too many pictures!! (And I do bracket the hell out of things - but it helps me get the shots I want!)

Once I get things semi-organized, and get rid of a lot of sub-par bracketing, then maybe all of this won't be so unwieldy?


So what advice do you have on how I should use something like Darktable / Lightroom / Photomator / whatever from a photo management standpoint?

Pixel Editors:

These take your JPEG and change it. Photoshop, Affinity, etc. So if you increase your saturation to +5, your original JPEG will now have +5 saturation, unless you save it off to another file name. They don't typically do DAM.

I thought you could (also) do non-destructive photo-editing in Photoshop and Affinity and a lot of other pixel editors?

So if you use your hard disk as you digital asset management - store by year/month/day or whatever makes sense to you, you can certainly use Affinity but it won't be doing DAM for you - no database. Lightroom and Apple Photos provide the database for you but you need to operate within their constraints. And sense you're using an iPhone - I can suggest Apple Photos is a good free option if you have a Mac.

Does Apple Photos just use a database, or does it also use "sidecar" files + a database like Darktable?

And do any of the non-DAM options at least give you a gallery to preview photos in a folder? Or is it just opening (and previewing) one file at a time?

As I recall, I liked how in Nikon Capture you got a photo gallery when you opened it up, and when you double-clicked on a photo, you could edit it. That was a nice combination of features when you were trying to figure out which photos were your "keepers" from a shoot.

 

[r.harris1]

@r.harris1,

Always a detailed response!




For photojournalism going on a responsive website, I assume that "cooked" is more than sufficient, right? (And presumably, "raw" is more for people who do printed work like publishers, wedding and portrait photographers, etc., right?)




Yes, DaVinci Resolve is a non-destructive video editor.




For someone who has such a large - and growing - volume of files, does it make sense to use a "parametric" editor as an end-all-be-all repository as far as metadata and search go?

Fwiw, I have spent this afternoon looking up stuff about Darktable. (All while backing up another 2TB onto a 7200rpm HDD - which provides me lots of time to read!!)

So far I like what my searches pull up on Darktable **except** for that fact that it doesn't allow you to create directory structures like in Finder - or presumably in a DAM.

Darktable does appear to allow me to move my files around, and put it on however many external drives. If I had to move files or move things to a new HDD - like I am doing now - then it seems all that I have to do is re-import the files - which is a misleading expression!! - and then Darktable will see things again. (This is how DaVinci Resolve works.)

I do like how Darktable uses "sidecar" files, in addition to its database.

But what I am wondering is if...

1.) Should I use a Parametric Editor as a "DAM" to manage all of my business photos for life?

or

2.) Use my filing system in Finder to truly manage things, and just use something like Darktable or Lightroom or Photomator as a "workspace" where I can import 500 photo files from a photoshoot, then preview them, then cull them, then edit a handful, and then file them in their homes (or new homes) on my drives?

It sounds cool to add tags to your photo files, and be able to search for things down the road, but even if you had a measly 50,000 files, is this asking too much of Darktable or Lightroom or Photomator?

(Truth me told, I had even considered just making a spreadsheet where the photo file is a row in my spreadsheet, and the filename is the "primary key", and then I can add whatever metadata I want.)


Side note: So much of what I come to MacRumors for often involves, "I know what i don't know" or "I don't know what i don't know." It is all part of the journey... What I do know is that I have an INSANE amount of files - even for a business - and I have no regrets capturing them, because if my business takes off, it will totally be because of all of these files. (Bloomberg has a tagline something like "Knowledge is power" and I totally think that applies to what i am working on. And how lucky am I to live in a time where storage is all but free - so why no go full-bore capturing things?!)

Then again, I probably take too many pictures!! (And I do bracket the hell out of things - but it helps me get the shots I want!)

Once I get things semi-organized, and get rid of a lot of sub-par bracketing, then maybe all of this won't be so unwieldy?


So what advice do you have on how I should use something like Darktable / Lightroom / Photomator / whatever from a photo management standpoint?




I thought you could (also) do non-destructive photo-editing in Photoshop and Affinity and a lot of other pixel editors?





Does Apple Photos just use a database, or does it also use "sidecar" files + a database like Darktable?

And do any of the non-DAM options at least give you a gallery to preview photos in a folder? Or is it just opening (and previewing) one file at a time?

As I recall, I liked how in Nikon Capture you got a photo gallery when you opened it up, and when you double-clicked on a photo, you could edit it. That was a nice combination of features when you were trying to figure out which photos were your "keepers" from a shoot.

Yes, just use “cooked” JPEGs from your camera and do any cropping or what-have-you from the editor of choice. Choose one or more and try them.

Sorry, I don’t have the cycles to respond to each tiny question, but best bet is to be “outcome focused” and think of one thing you want to do, and do it, and not over think it. Thumbnail? It’s just a JPEG with size requirement, presumably provided by YouTube in your case. Any editor can do it. Pick a program and try it. Start with Apple Photos? (Yes, it uses a database). JPEGs can be read by any editor, parametric, pixel, or otherwise. I think I saw buried in your narratives here somewhere that you think that once you make a choice you’re stuck with it forever. Only death is non-negotiable. Everything else, including photo editors, can be revisited. It might take some work, but work is OK. If you’re just using JPEGs, you can use any editor.

It’s certainly possible that pixel editors do non-destructive work these days, but that’s not how I use them or intend to use them (but that’s just me). They don’t do DAM though, so you’ll need to go old school filesystem / spreadsheet or settle on a program that does. Only you will know the one that works for you.