Hello! This is both a question and commentary, as I'm hoping to finally solve a dilemma that's bothered me all year.
I have a library nearing 1 million photos and videos of all formats (including RAW and heic) that I've built over several years. Nowadays, I edit with Capture One, which is fantastic, but not very useful for importing (lack of options), culling (slow render), and especially cataloging (breaks down with a year's worth of photos). I do not yet have a NAS, and store everything on two USB HDDs — broke artist with ancient mac arch etc etc.
So began the quest to find software that could organize and show my photos. What's the use of a million photos if it takes too long to look at any of them? My POIs were importing (copying files from source to library, sorting by year/month, detecting duplicates), culling (rate, color tag, keywords, and preview speed in full view), and catalog (fast gallery thumbnails, albums, sorting, small data size). Here's what I've found thus far:
-Lightroom: Does it all, but I hate it. Overpriced, lacks some professional features, doesn't play well with a lot of non-adobe apps, no duplicate finder, slow-ish.
-PhotoMechanic Plus: Excellent cataloging, okay culling and import. Quite expensive, doesn't let you assign custom keyboard shortcuts, weird-ish licensing system, hard to tell what data you have in your RAW photos (can you save under/overexposed parts? will it look good in B&W?)
-ACDSee 10 for Mac: Eh? Seems to work well, but has some... quirks. Always shows both jpeg and raw when shooting linked. Feels underdeveloped still, or like a paid version of Darktable.
-FastRawViewer: Amazing for culling, shows full RAW data and lets you view with basic "effects" like shadow boost of B&W. Lacks keywords or any kind of cataloguing or importing.
-XnViewMP: Previews seem fast enough, but software seems slow and sometimes has issues when scrolling past videos. Unsure how usable it is for importing.
-Mylio: Offers a lot of features and a nice UI for free, but also seems oversimplified, has a lot of weird restrictions, doesn't offer a good way to switch to my backup drive if my main fails, and seems to read the wrong capture date on many of my Panasonic RAW photos. I'm also worried it won't stay free forever.
-PhotoSupreme: Supposedly similar to PhotoMechanic? I could not get it to work very well, seems to lack the import to year/month folder feature so I didn't spend a ton of time with it.
-DigiKam/DarkTable: (similar experience with both) Worked okay, but both software and previews were slow. It felt like my catalog file was set up wrong and slowing things down, but everything I checked looked correct. I tested these a while ago now, maybe they've improved or I should change something?
-PhotoStructure: I'm hopeful? Seems to just be for cataloging and deleting duplicates, but paired with FastRawViewer and C1, I'm okay with that. I'm running this now and will update... so far looks like it's going to be slow, unfortunately.
-Adobe Bridge and similar DAMs without cataloging: Too slow and complex to navigate for more than like 20 pictures. At least FastRawViewer lets you see subfolder contents, unlike most of these. Great if you do low-batch work, but I shoot a lot (concerts, etc) so it's a non-starter.
-Network DAMs, ie Daminion: Sounds great. Doesn't work for me per above...
I'm left baffled. How are there all of these almost-good options at vastly different price points? Like, smash together ACDSee and FastRawViewer and I'd be a happy camper, but no. I know development is hard and I'm not saying any of these are bad software, but, surely there's something that covers these relatively basic bases?
For myself, I see two path: Drop money I don't have on PhotoMechanic Plus, or make do with FastRawViewer and C1 with a minimal catalog. I feel like there has to be a better option though. Does anyone have tips? A program I haven't tried, or settings to make the above work betetr?
Thank ya!
P.S. I'll update the above as I learn more!
I've been looking for a Lightroom alternative. I've been doing the free trial of all the major raw editing programs. I haven't decided which one to buy yet. On1 Raw 2024 has AI catalog tools. Not sure how it would run on an old mac but it could help tag your pictures.
Pretty much same. On1 2021 (i think?) was the first replacement I bought and I certainly didn’t hate it. But I remember it also chugging to handle the large catalog, and while it had more features, the quality didn’t compete with C1. Has it improved though? Without the AI tools, is the cataloging faster now?
Do you keep all your photos in only a single catalog? I recently started spinning off my photos into separate catalogues (by year) to help with just seeing less, myself.
I'm also hyper aggressive about deleting rejected photos every few months; I think I'm only at 20,000-30,000 photos these days, when I used to be close to 100k, simply because what's the point of saving rejected photos I'm never going to look at again?
The bigger red flag for me is your hardware. I'd consider upgrading that first. USB HDD's are not the most reliable, and storing media you're actively using on HDD's is going to be slow, especially over HDD. If the USB drives are SSD drives that will help, are they running over USB-C, USB-A, Firewire?
I keep my active library on an SSD, and backup to a home server running HDD's. But older computers with lower RAM pools are going to struggle to keep up with modern memory hungry programs. I believe C1 (amongst others) can also offload graphical processing to preview to GPU's these days, and if you're running an older machine like you said, that's not going to be an option. Previews on my version of C1 23 render in about as fast as I can click through (even the mega 61mp files taken with my A7R V), but I also have a processor that's only 2-3 years old and a high end AMD GPU to help (with a crapton of GDDR RAM).
I might start trying yearly catalogs and an ssd for the current one, that’s a good idea! Doesn’t solve all my problems, but that’s at least a major improvement to traveling with an hdd haha!
I’m okay with small previews, and my internal ssd and ram is plenty for a catalog with the right software. I intend to cull and delete stuff from years of being less vigilant, but the hope is to catalog it all first so I can see everything clearly.
It’s worth noting SSDs are only significantly more reliable if you’re moving the drive a lot. The best longevity is the cloud. For speed, it’s also foggier. My HDDs are pretty quick with USB 3.1, it’s not thunderbolt, but I’m not editing video, so it’s not really a bottleneck that affects anything I’m trying to do. Plus, due to the physical caching structure of low-mid range SSDs, the difference is smaller than it looks on paper for random access photos (to my understanding). When in FRV, I get the same speed you describe in C1, but with the actual raw. In C1, I could get that in small catalogs, but only with the compressed/low res previews (since it’s in the catalog on my machine). If you’re getting the actual raws loading that quick, I’m guessing it’s more because you’re using a newer version of C1 than because of write speed. Granted, that’s all based on anecdotal evidence so I can’t be sure. Regardless, it’s the catalog speed I’m most concerned with, so I’m personally okay with slower devices.
I think I’m gonna try your advice until I find sometime better… Thank you :D
The yearly catalogues help because it's less that your computer will need to load into active memory and manage. This will help a little with flipping through things.
I'm only talking about speed with regard to SSD's. I'm not worried about reliability. Your typical 7200RPM HDD is going to have a data transfer rate at around 80-160MB/s. USB 3.0 has a theoretical maximum of 600MB/s, USB 2.0 has a theoretical maximum of around 30MB/s, if I recall correctly. Typical SSD's vary in transfer rate, but I know mine for my C1 library is 580MB/s (though connected over SATA theoretical Max is 6GB/s, that's not realistic to hit on my PCIe version).
So if you're talking an SSD over USB 3.0 or in your computer, you'll see incredibly different transfer speeds; if you're working over 3.0 or higher (which you said you were) you should see a huge step up in individual file accessibility with SSD's; that being said, previewing is going to be based on cache and hardware render, which on an older Mac may be the bottleneck you're hitting here. C1 has different overhead and uses hardware differently from FRW I think, and C1 has a lot of other tasks it's hitting your computer with besides just rendering the previews.
Like I said, it takes less than half a second for a 60 megapixel image to render on my machine. But we're operating very different hardware too (i7-9700K & a RX 7900 XTX with 24GB GDDR6), and I know that's playing a role.
I suspect you're being bottlenecked by the older processor & rendering solution in your Mac, but getting onto using smaller catalogues with an SSD should help you get some improvement.
Okay, we’re pretty much on the same page!
I admit I’m off with the SSD info, but there are scenarios where the gap is diminished. I’ve experienced it first hand, I just can’t remember what caused it… the internet can explain, though I couldn’t find anything that explained it concisely. Takeaway: SSDs are objectively faster, but not required for my personal use case atp.
We agree that C1 does something inefficient with it’s cataloging and raw rendering (I’m calling it “bloat,” and I think all of us are mostly guessing what that involves). But that’s fine, when I’m editing, neither of those are priorities.
Hence the search for other software… PM does the cataloging and importing satisfactorily, and FRV does the RAW render/cull great! So, software is the difference. Yea, better hardware will better handle C1’s “bloat” and have more headroom overall, but PM and FRV prove that what I have already has the ability to work satisfactorily with my RAW files (though, I’d definitely need an upgrade if I was regularly shooting your 60mp!) Takeaway: C1 is not optimally efficient, so compromises, like the year-to-year catalog, are necessary—doubly so on lower end hardware.
I’d just love to spend less than ~$350 + cost of upgrading in a few years. It seems unlikely that FRV and PM are the only programs without so much “bloat”, but maybe they are? I don’t know what this “bloat” is, so maybe it’s harder to remove than I know, but my impression is that it is more so something C1 added than FRV and PM took away.
So yep, for now I’m using your solution because I have C1 and can’t afford the PM and FRV combo. Hopefully a middle option comes along 🤷🏻♀️