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What's going to happen to your photos.....
- Thread starter Bigtree
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I’ve recently closed my account and very satisfied.
I don't care about my photos now while I'm alive, I can't expect someone else to care about them after I'm gone.
+1 Same here !
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You guys are my heroes !
"in the public record"? I would very strongly suggest the private sector, including individuals, take a far more responsible, knowledgeable and reliable job at backing up than our public sector. Assuming you are in the USA where public sector suggests a better place than welfare and a weird sub group of IT consultants that can barely launch a state/county/municipal website that works. And not 15 years after it should have been launched.
May I suggest Darktable as a free open-source alternative? It's a Digital Asset Manager and Non-destructive Editor in one. In my eyes, it's even better than Lightroom Classic right now! I find myself using it more and more these days, even though I am on an Adobe subscription with another 9 months to go. Once that time comes up I will not be renewing.
OK, downloaded it...I am a bit slightly confused. the UI is a touch ...basic, maybe. and there are some things that aren't as easily figured out for me. I kinda like the "Magic Button" technique where I click it and see what changes were made on a photo to help understand where the little things are.
I liked the highlighting on the photo areas for over exposed and others.
The color graph is hard for me to understand (colorblind here) I'll give it a go and try and figure this out a little later.
giving DarkTable a shot...there is still some confusion on some parts. I am trying to create STYLES...like Presets or whatever in other programs. Basing them off my previous Aperture presets I have used a few times.
It was difficult as I did not see an easy Sepia. Another thing that seems missing is a spot touch-up tool. Maybe there isn't one but I sometimes notice a little oops or speck of dirt on my kids' face (that I would prefer to remove)
Anything like that? a Spot Touchup Tool?
Otherwise it could be a viable solution. still not sure and currently still importing to Aperture and editing there.
It was difficult as I did not see an easy Sepia. Another thing that seems missing is a spot touch-up tool. Maybe there isn't one but I sometimes notice a little oops or speck of dirt on my kids' face (that I would prefer to remove)
Anything like that? a Spot Touchup Tool?
Otherwise it could be a viable solution. still not sure and currently still importing to Aperture and editing there.
You're welcome! Once you get your head around using it, it's a pretty dang amazing program.
It's a deceptively simple looking piece of goods this one! It's not a "magic button" type program. You need to consciously choose what you want to happen and it will do it for you.
Regarding the RGB colour representation of the Histogram (image exposure) click on it a few times to toggle through its various iterations, till you find the one you can work with according to your visual needs.
Heck yeah! Spot Removal is hella-simple!
Go to the Corrections Group, the second symbol from the right up top of the following image. This will open up the Sharpen, Lens Correction and Spot Removal features for you.
Click on the circle, directly under the letter "v" of the word removal, or the ellipse, or draw your own path, where you want it to be. For circles you control their size by scrolling, and you control the feather amount by clicking shift and scrolling at the same time. Move the source area where it works best if you need to. To delete a spot removal, simply right click on it.
It doesn't give you the option of heal, like Adobes Lightroom, as it is clone based in its operation.
Here's my eye and I'll show you the removal of my eye-bell at play with two spot removal applications.
Before:
Spot Removals in place:
After:
In hindsight, my choice of using a large spot removal circle would have worked better as two smaller circles and selecting better areas as sources, but it illustrates the use of them in a simple way.
Regarding creating a Sepia toned image, you need to go through it and then save that as a preset to use again in the future, so you can do it later in one click, if that's what you want.
There are a few ways to accomplish this look.
One is through the use of the Split Toning feature in the Effects Group, just selecting the colours you want to use for the highlights and shadows or right clicking and using a preset. Do this after using the Monochrome section in the Colour Group first, which I give basic details for in a second.
Here's an example of using the Sepia preset, available through the Split Toning feature.
And another slightly more convoluted way is as follows:
First open the Monochrome section in the Colour Group:
Click the sample dropper, down the bottom of this section. Darkroom will select a sample area of your image that covers all colours. You can refine this further, by clicking, holding and selecting a selection area of your image, if you want to. You can move the sample colour circle all over the colour table to create different looks easily. I've left it in place here.
To tint the image, select the Colour Correction tool and drag the centre spot to where you want the colour tint to be. The level of saturation can be adjusted by using the slider below or by scrolling. I prefer the slider as it is more refined for how I have my mouse set up to be used.
Apply a vignette if you want to, which I did.
Go back to the Lighttable Module to export your image. You can do it straight to your web based service or to where your image was sourced from, with it being placed in an export folder there, so you have them separated to find easily.
Which results in this very different interpretation and result from the above image:
Right now, I don't have time to go through making a preset, but will when I get back this afternoon.
Hope this has helped you somewhat.
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Edit:
Continuing on from my previous post, which I ran out of time to complete earlier, this time in regards of creating a preset in the Darkroom module of Darktable.
Go to the History stack on the left and click on the bunch of circles in the lower right part of that block, this will allow you to create your own preset, referred to as "Styles" in darkroom.
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Further Edit:
For all things Darktable, in regards to its use, refer to:
https://www.darktable.org/usermanual/en/index.html
And for those that like things in the way of one click fixes:
http://dtstyle.net
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Funnily enough, I was thinking about this issue of my images the other day (prior to the thread being created) and it left me feeling a bit deep about it all
Old photos will be of interest to future generations and should not be lost. Past couple of weeks our family has been sharing digital images of old printed photos from parents’ albums to figure out geneology. Geneology websites let people post images publically, and we have been connecting dots that way. New technologies will help in ways we can’t now imagine.
Thanks for the tips. I created a few presets for Sepia. a few crashes...and I cannot seem to find a simple "undo" button. i have to go through the history and back out and try to remember what was the previous last step.
While I think Darkroom is good...it lacks UI and UX that could make this a great program. I get too frustrated trying to find simple tasks. I was hoping it could be a good alternative but back to square one. ...actually back to Aperture. that still hasn't died and see no point in using inferior software until i find i definitely NEED to;.
Crashes surprise me! Are you running it in Windows? I use it in Mac and Linux versions and have no crashes or lags, unlike the Adobe suite on Mac and I'm using old equipment in both instances.
The history stack is its letdown or weak point. It should be expandable for each section you visit, rather than stepping back totally from each module you use. Sometimes, remembering everything you did within a module can be frustrating, when all you really wanted was to skip back one or two tweaks within a module, rather than having to restart that modules adjustments again.
MacBook Pro...2015 El Cap 16-Gb RAM. it has only crashed about 5 times...probably only opened it 10 times and just added my 5th photo to it.
For styles/Presets...can you view a thumbnail version of how it would look prior to just running the style? I wanted to see how the two Sepia tone styles looked on a particular photo and was missing that easy "undo" feature.
I suppose since it is a free application, it may never have the streamlined app feel.
Wow! I genuinely am surprised that your machine has issues with it! I have nothing that shiny or fast here and they both do exceedingly well with it!
No visual previews that I know of. Their equivalent is to apply the style, then go to the history and go back to where you last were.
e.g.
- Import image
- Apply first style / preset
- In History Stack go back to 1. Import
- Apply second style / preset
It's definitely not aimed at the Instagrammer's out there that want instant one click fixes, it's aimed at the nerd user and if you know how it works, it does a heck of a lot and quite capably, without any monthly fees, or any payments at all, for that.
@BJMRamage - Since you are looking to migrate from Aperture and not to Lightroom, I can offer a bit of experience as I did the same transition a few years ago. I had Aperture for a long time and loved it, but of course all things must pass at some point. At the time Lr was the only real option - so I transitioned to that. I never really liked it much, but made the best of it. I also tried other apps from ON1, Capture One Pro, Luminar, and a few others. I left Lightroom over a year ago.
I've settled on Graphic Converter from Lemkesoft (https://www.lemkesoft.de) for management of 30+ thousand photos. For the money, it's well worth it. I had tried Photo Mechanic but it's expensive.
I have Capture One Pro for Sony, DxO PhotoLab (for everything else), and Luminar as a creative editor.
It's taken a lot of trial and error, but I've reached a point where my workflow is relatively smooth and easy.
I've settled on Graphic Converter from Lemkesoft (https://www.lemkesoft.de) for management of 30+ thousand photos. For the money, it's well worth it. I had tried Photo Mechanic but it's expensive.
I have Capture One Pro for Sony, DxO PhotoLab (for everything else), and Luminar as a creative editor.
It's taken a lot of trial and error, but I've reached a point where my workflow is relatively smooth and easy.