Adobe-free Zone
I’ve been thinking about how to better manage my images recently, especially now that my photography activities have gone up a gear thanks to my Fujifilm X100VI. I think I’ve taken more photos since January than I have in the last four years!
I left Adobe products behind a long time ago, and the only thing I’ve missed from Lr is the catalogue feature. That was pretty good.
My post-processing workflow has evolved quite a bit since then, and I use ON1 Photo Raw as my editor. It’s cool as fuck, but asset management from there really sucks. It’s not what we would call feature-rich.
My use case now is such that after I’ve culled the rejects from a shoot, I edit the images on the way to deciding whether to publish on my website here, Irys, Mastodon and Flickr from the remaining keepers. If I’m satisfied with an edit I use ON1’s export features to create a .DNG and 3 JPGs (full-size for Irys, 1800px for website and 1600px for Mastodon and Flickr) in the same folder as the RAW image. I’m warming to the idea of skipping the DNG creation very soon, as I have a robust (tested) backup strategy for my RAW files, and there really isn’t the need these days.
Stacking
In my thumbnail view of my images, I don’t want to see each of these files cluttering up the workspace. I want to see just one tile with a representation of the edited image.
DigiKam has a great feature that allows the auto-grouping (stacking) of images with a configurable range of timestamps to make this really easy! The docs suggest that it automatically uses the smallest file in the group, but my experience shows that it’s not too reliable; it will often choose a RAW file like a NEF. Still, I can easily choose the group leader myself after the fact, and it only takes seconds. DigiKam is free, and this is the only real issue I’ve encountered so far, so what do you want?
Smart Folders
Another thing I miss from Lr is virtual albums or folders where I can group images together based on criteria I set. ON1 kind of does this, but I want to use ON1 purely for editing going forwards. One job, one tool is the way to go. DigiKam allows me to do this by using advanced searches that can be saved and labelled for quick reference. For example, I’ve got one that finds all the images in my library tagged ‘abstract’ in any folder except my legacy folders with ‘export’ making up any part of the name. I call this “firehose | abstract”. I have another one the finds all these same images, but only the ones with the ‘Accepted’ flag set from my editing workflow. This one is called “accepted | abstract”. I have more like this that allow me to instantly see my commonly used searches in lieu of smart folders. Of course this only works if my tagging and labelling is effective, but I’m pretty OCD about all of that stuff anyway.
Another good use of these searches is helping me keep track of where I’ve published my images to. I have a hierarchical tag called ‘published’ with three children ‘Flickr’, ‘Irys’ and ‘Mastodon’. I just update the tag tree when I post an image and then use the relevant search later for an instant lookup of what is where.
Worth the Effort
I spent quite a lot of time going through the images I’ve posted to my favourite platforms, but now I have an established base to work from in future.
Leave a Reply