Workflow Help

[smallcoffee]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice/assistance for my workflow.

I've moved from an iPhone and the Photos app back to an SLR. We have Creative Cloud so I have access to Lightroom and Photoshop. We also have 2TB iCloud.

I really like the Photos app - I take pictures, they're synced and stored across my Mac and my iPhone, they're on the cloud (I don't want external hard drives), and I can do things like create a photo stream to share with my family when we travel (I don't have social media so this works very well for us). This setup is fantastic for me.

Now that I have the SLR I'm back to managing RAWs, and using Lightroom and/or Photoshop. I don't want to store photos locally because I have a 256gb drive, only edit and then upload.

Photography is a hobby and I'm almost exclusively photographing stuff from traveling, to then publish and share with friends and family. My Photos work stream is perfect, but I understand that the Photos app isn't exactly up to par for editing.

Can anyone offer any advice for how to set things up here? Should I import photos to Lightroom, then edit and then import to Photos?

Thoughts?

Thank you!

 

[mpfuchs]

I'm using Google Photos instead of Photos on my Phone, but here is what I do:

Shooting with my dSLR and Mirrorless, import, organize and edit in Lightroom.
Then I export (at 15.5MP) the 3+ star images from each shoot and import those into Google Photos.
That way I have the favorites from each shoot/trip with me on the phone, and don't eat into any cloud storage since I save the photos below the 16MP limit for free Google Photos.

It's a little bit of a hassle, but the free storage option makes it worth it for me.
All this can be done with Apple Photos app to share with your family, but you're paying for the cloud storage.

 

[fcortese]

You might want to consider having all of your photos on an external HD. You can get a 1 or 2 TB external HD fairly inexpensively. With an SLR your file sizes will be larger and more than likely will eat up your 256gb. drive. With Lr/PS you can use Lr's mobile app on your phone. You will need to put your photos or only ones you select, which is what I do, into a collection or series of collections that can sync with Lr Mobile. This way you can have them on your phone to look at and share. There are many youtube videos showing you how to do this. I was an dedicated Aperture user than switched to Lr a long time ago. So an option is to abandon Apple's Photos. I know there are ways to work between Lr and Photos but there ae other options to fully utilize Lr's editing capabilities.

 

[smallcoffee]

Yes what I was thinking was to use the laptop as a passthrough - I can edit in Lightroom then add to the Photos library. I can store RAW on my 2TB iCloud Drive

 

[steveash]

Isn’t this what Lightroom CC does (as opposed to Lightroom Classic)? Im pretty sure it stores them in the cloud with just previews synced to Mac and iOS.

 

[smallcoffee]

Isn’t this what Lightroom CC does (as opposed to Lightroom Classic)? Im pretty sure it stores them in the cloud with just previews synced to Mac and iOS.

100gb limit I think unless I pay a lot more - then I lose the ability to share with my family, etc.

 

[steveash]

100gb limit I think unless I pay a lot more - then I lose the ability to share with my family, etc.

In that case, you can use things like Pixelmator, Affinity Photo or Luminar as Apple Photos extensions to do your editing from within Photos but with a better quality editor.

 

[kallisti]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get some advice/assistance for my workflow.

I've moved from an iPhone and the Photos app back to an SLR. We have Creative Cloud so I have access to Lightroom and Photoshop. We also have 2TB iCloud.

I really like the Photos app - I take pictures, they're synced and stored across my Mac and my iPhone, they're on the cloud (I don't want external hard drives), and I can do things like create a photo stream to share with my family when we travel (I don't have social media so this works very well for us). This setup is fantastic for me.

Now that I have the SLR I'm back to managing RAWs, and using Lightroom and/or Photoshop. I don't want to store photos locally because I have a 256gb drive, only edit and then upload.

Photography is a hobby and I'm almost exclusively photographing stuff from traveling, to then publish and share with friends and family. My Photos work stream is perfect, but I understand that the Photos app isn't exactly up to par for editing.

Can anyone offer any advice for how to set things up here? Should I import photos to Lightroom, then edit and then import to Photos?

Thoughts?

Thank you!

Some very good replies above. And I totally understand your wish to keep everything in the cloud.

The only thing I would throw out there is that having a physical copy of all your photos on an external hard drive is probably a good idea as well. Not for your main workflow, but as a backup.

I personally have my LR library on an external drive from which I do all my edits. Periodically (at least once a month, but more often if I take a trip or took photos at an event) I will clone my external drive to a second external drive that I keep at work. I also have a cloud backup via Carbonite. Many of the jpegs I like (exported as ~12MB files) are also stored in iCloud and sometimes on my Dropbox.

Why all the redundancy? Because all of the physical things I own can be replaced in an emergency, either buying them again or through insurance. My photos can't be replaced if they are ever lost. My photos are my most prized material possession. I wouldn't jump off a bridge if they were lost, but I would be seriously bummed. Having multiple copies of the RAW files with edits (my LR library, in other words) stored locally on an external hard drive, off-site on an external hard drive, and also in the cloud serves as an insurance policy--one with very low premiums .

Large capacity external drives are cheap. They don't have to be fast SSD drives if your workflow doesn't involve editing directly from them. Just something to periodically keep a physical backup of irreplaceable memories/creative endeavors.

Something to consider....

 

[Ray2]

Your use case is almost identical to mine. ILC, raw + jpeg, Lightroom CC, Photos for iOS device albums and shared albums during travel. I travel 4 to 6 months a year. Generally shoot anywhere from 3 to 30 gig of stills during a trip. I’m always experimenting with some changes. Here's my recent experience:

Cloud storage of files with no local backup (my understanding of your post) is lunacy. I’ve already lost almost 5 gig of files in iCloud. Apple worked for 3 weeks trying to find it to no avail. Cloud is for convenience, not backup. If all you want is convenience, you’re fine.

CC: I have a 2014 3.0 ghz i7 rMBP, 16 gig ram and a 2019 iPad 6. My Comcast line is a minimum 125mbps.
The iPad cannot handle Lightroom CC for iOS. The rMBP can run fine, crash Lightroom Classic during a Lightroom CC session, crash Safari during an Adobe Portfolio session concurrent with Lightroom CC or crash the entire rMBP. Once Porfolio is open I live with an almost constant memory warning message and streams of Adobe error messages about 80% of the time. Basically I need an iPad Pro and a more powerful cpu with a lot more ram. None of which I have any intention what-so-ever of purchasing just for the sake of poor coding at Adobe. My gut tells me Adobe is taking CC Pro and they have little to no interest in the hobbyist market anymore. The new apps, used without paying attention to what else is running, and all the background processes CC has running make 16 gig of ram and 125mbps broadband totally inadequate. Given historical Adobe progress at streamlining processing I have little hope for CC and me.

The reason I went to Adobe Portfolio is Apple no longer has any sort options in Photos Shared Albums. It’s most recent addition first. Irrespective of when the pic was taken or if it’s part of a series. Google Photos is the same. Perhaps that works for you. I have no use for either. I compile albums that attempt to have some logic in their presentation. So I need to be able to sort. Since I have no idea what brain trust came up with no sort capability on Shared Albums, I’m waiting breathlessly to see what’s next.

Given all that, workflow during travel:
Shoot, import to iPad using sd card reader, cull, quick edits in Photos, upload a few shots to a Shared Album.
When I have time, more in-depth editing (I’m basically doing most of my edits on the iPad these days other than for the few 5-star images I accidentally captured.).
When home, use Image Capture to copy iPad files to rMBP.
Import to Lightroom Classic
Cull, edit, tag, export selected pics to Photos for an album (rename and number during export). This goes fairly quick as most of the work was already done on the iPad.
I am now done with Lightroom Classic
Import the album shots to Photos, compile albums, sync albums to iOS devices and Apple TV.
Import new Photos albums into Adobe Portfolio and update my site/blog.
Done

My intent is to dump Adobe as well as Photos. So who knows where I’ll end up for a workflow. Been looking since Aperture was discontinued and Adobe still has the best Mac + iOS solution I’ve used so far. Though, for iOS will likely dump Photos for myPics. I've been using myPics for 3 years now and am convinced it’s a better app than Photos. Just no web albums and Mac app.

 

[smallcoffee]

What external hard drives do you recommend? I'm seeing lots of $100 Western Digital 4TB drives and similar, but worried about read/write speed.

 

[Ray2]

I use ssd externals on Thunderbolt. I’d never go back to spinners other than backups. That’s a bit pricey.

If you want to continue to rely on the cloud, buy a cheap usb drive and don’t worry about read/write speeds. If you want to work on disk resident files, a small ssd for active/recent files and anything for backup. Oyen makes a 2-bay 2.5” usb enclosure that’s a lot of enclosure for the money and works very well. I used a pair of them at our Swiss apartment for years.

If you prefer a 1 disk solution, I would ignore 2.5” drives. They’re universally slow, sleep constantly and quickly, wake ever so slowly. Go with a 3.5”, 7,200 rpm, usb external.

 

[smallcoffee]

I use ssd externals on Thunderbolt. I’d never go back to spinners other than backups. That’s a bit pricey.

If you want to continue to rely on the cloud, buy a cheap usb drive and don’t worry about read/write speeds. If you want to work on disk resident files, a small ssd for active/recent files and anything for backup. Oyen makes a 2-bay 2.5” usb enclosure that’s a lot of enclosure for the money and works very well. I used a pair of them at our Swiss apartment for years.

If you prefer a 1 disk solution, I would ignore 2.5” drives. They’re universally slow, sleep constantly and quickly, wake ever so slowly. Go with a 3.5”, 7,200 rpm, usb external.

Thanks. After talking about it we came to conclude it makes sense to get a big external and then put the best individual photos on our photo stream (original copies on the drive of course) while keeping the bulk of pictures on external drives.