It's nice to see someone else using the ISO date format (YYYY-MM-DD) as well. Makes dates a lot easier to work with, apart from making files much easier to keep in order.

My phone puts the date and time in the filename and I have written a little script that makes them consistent with the ISO format (when I directly transfer off the phone; if my photos go via Dropbox, Dropbox actually does this automatically, which is really handy).

For my point-and-shoot camera, it does the same as Asa's and just numerically increments (so once again I've got a script to extract the timestamp from the EXIF data and rename the files).

For those who don't program, though, having a simple tool to import your files and assign timestamp as the name is valuable.

I use windows folders and organize by name when I can. I also have an external backup for all my photos.

I subscribe to LR and PS just to keep things simple. I've been using PS since version 7... yes, 2001. I've been using LightRoom since v2. The monthly withdrawal is not ideal, but this is the direction everything is going. I was surprised that no one mentioned NIK filters for editing. I'm bummed that Google decided not to update them, but they still work with the current version of PS and LR. Here is an example of NIK Effex. The original is on the top. The edit is a little too dark. I need to rework it.

I've been looking for a reasonable alternative to my old copy of CS4. CS4 is still a very competent piece of software and I used it happily for a decade, but it is getting old and I don't want the Photoshop subscription.

So far I've settled for the ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2020. It is not a perfect program and it is not free. I'm sure some could also see it as a bit overly complicated to use, but it suits my needs very well. It is also all the software I need for my photos. It is a full solution for management, development, viewing and editing.

It allows you to manage your files without importing them to a library. Instead it uses the file folders of your operating system. Like many others on this thread, I see this as much more trustworthy and future compatible than using a library function that may become obsolete or corrupted. It does still use a database to store some info, but you can (and should in my opinion) set it up so that it writes the info into the image files regularly.

Image editing is not as sophisticated as even my very old copy of CS4, but the Ultimate version does have full 16 bit adjustment layers, which is a big deal IMHO. Like in Photoshop you can record actions and play them again later, but the functionality is again more basic. If you like, you can start up any external editor from within ACDsee, so that is also an option.

However my favorite parts of the software is the develop mode and more specifically the Light EQ function that easily and precisely lets you optimize the light/contrast in your image. It is much more powerful than the traditional shadow/highlight tool. It is somewhat similar to doing custom curves adjustments to your image, but for me it yields much better results and does so quicker too. I prefer the Light EQ's standard mode, as it allows editing every tonal band in the image individually, but the basic mode is more intuitive to start with.

Viewing mode is quick and useful for image comparisons as you can view your images zoomed in at 100%. Like in IrfanView you can switch between images while being zoomed in 100% which is essential for checking absolute focus. This is not a unique feature by any means, but it is a very useful one to have integrated.


Some image examples that I processed in ACDsee:

For some time I have been meaning to look into Affinity Photo. There is no photo management and only basic RAW processing, so this is not a do it all software for the photographer, but what it does do, it seems to do very well. The price is also really good, which does not hurt in my opinion!

I started to play around with digital images around 30 years ago, starting with DPaint and later Brilliance on the Amiga. Affinity is definitely the best price/performance ratio of any editing software I've tried so far. Masking, layers and retouching all seems excellent to me, but of course if you don't need this kind of features, then Affinity isn't the correct choice.

On my hd I have some decade old macro photos that I did not manage to focus stack with the software available then. Sure, I might have been successful doing it entirely by hand, but it would have been very time consuming. Affinity photo did a nice job on many of them, often with very little manual retouching required. This is an example:


Aeshna mixta, 4 image stack in Affinity Photo.

Active insect during the day and hand held can make for very difficult stacks. Considering Affinity isn't a dedicated focus stacking software I was very impressed, especially how it handled alignment of the images. I'm not saying that the latest versions of dedicated focus stacking software such as Helicon or Zerene wouldn't be able to achieve similar result, but I'm saying that the results from Affinity are very good and stands well on its own merits.

In contrast the stacking tools in ACDSee, is easily confused, at least on anything less than perfect stacks and for me it was almost completely useless.

Anyway, although I don't need most of the features in Affinity, there are some occasion where it will compliment the photo Management and more basic editing tools in ACDSee really well.

I'm always in awe, William. Thanks for the tips. I'll have to look at both of them.

I'm so frustrated with editing. I know I have some shots that, in the right hands, would be really neat. I think I can see what's in there - and what I want out - but I have no idea, even still, how to get to what I see. And I'm not sure where to begin. Peaks and valleys in my abilities and current understandings.

That is an amazing macro, William. I must admit that I have not tried focus stacks and don't even know how to do them (my simple point-and-shoot and my phones probably aren't capable of taking the required images anyway... someday I'll get a DSLR!).

Thanks for the tip re Affinity. Will have to check that out when I have time.

Thank you Asa and Joshua.
It is a good thing that there are free trials available as we all have different tastes and needs in software.

Asa' I'm sorry to hear that you are frustrated with editing. I think we have all been there at one point or another.
If you need any suggestions, this forum is always open.

I'm using Movavi photo editor to edit my photos and other images. I prefer it to the alternatives because it has an intuitive interface which is very important for me (I don't like programs with an incomprehensible interface). So it's very easy to use and it has many cool features like removing excess stuff from your photos. And it's cheaper than Photoshop, of course.

Hadn't heard of that one before, but just had a look at its website. The photo restoration feature caught my attention - have you used this functionality and if so, how did you find it?

Just got a new computer so this is of great interest to me.

to the photography forum, Leafeon.

It is very important that one gets software that suits one's needs, so it is good that you found something that works for you.

Australis said:Hadn't heard of that one before, but just had a look at its website. The photo restoration feature caught my attention - have you used this functionality and if so, how did you find it?

I don't have my own old photos but I used this feature on the photo which I've found on the Internet. Works well but if you add colors to this photo (on faces, for example) they look unnatural. A bit sadly.
I was watching the video on YouTube which was called "Best photo editors" or something like this and Movavi was there. I downloaded it and tried a free trial.

William said: to the photography forum, Leafeon.

It is very important that one gets software that suits one's needs, so it is good that you found something that works for you.

Thanks, William!
Yes, you are definitely right.
I really happy I've found it for my needs.

evermorelawnless said:For cropping, I love IrfanView, but it re-saves the .jpg and that's a lossy save. So if you're working from a .jpg and save it as a straight .jpg, you're losing a bunch of stuff and introducing a bunch of other stuff. Which, in just about every respect, is kind of a bad thing to do.

@evermorelawnless

Great, and vital, point about re-saving to 'lossy' formats. The results of multi-generational 'lossy' saves are all over the net.

The good news is that IrfanView will allow you to "Save as..." using the lossless TIF format.

JamesT said:

@evermorelawnless

Great, and vital, point about re-saving to 'lossy' formats. The results of multi-generational 'lossy' saves are all over the net.

The good news is that IrfanView will allow you to "Save as..." using the lossless TIF format.

It also has the the option of a "lossless crop" that seems legitimate, but it's a little more cumbersome to use.

One thing that I really cannot do with out with any photo editing software is a programmable (gaming) mouse. I like Logitech products (they have a lot to choose from) but there are other good brands.

With such a mouse, you can program either single keystrokes or a series of keystrokes (macro) into a single button. And you can set up a "profile" for any photo editing (or other) program that you would like.

One way I use it, for example, is in FasPictureViewPro. I use this program to identify "keepers" (it can magnify to 100pct at the stroke of a key so I can tell if I've nailed focus) - and I nudge the mouse wheel to the left (another advantage of Logitech - they've patented that) to mark as "toss" and to the right to mark as "keep". I can blast through a day's worth of photos quickly with that method - faster for me than with the keyboard.

I have switched over to Photo Mechanic Plus to manage my photos.

I import photos with adobe bridge so I can convert them from raw to dng format.

I use dng because amazon photos allows you to backup dng photos, part of amazon prime.

I have many editing programs that i can call from Photo Mechanic... ON1, Affinity, Elements, Pixelmator, DXO, and so on

I was an Adobe Lightroom user until they went to a subscription service.

I think my current workflow is better now.

I've been using Lightroom and Photoshop for years now. Lightroom is probably the most used and a program I wouldn't be without ever, I love it. You can still use the stand-alone version of Lightroom, there's some features missing compared to the subscription service, but nothing that I myself miss at all.

Another image editor I recently discovered is Topaz DeNoise AI. They have a complete series of specialty programs, but I find DeNoise is the most perfect one-stop fix for those high ISO photos that have too much noise, it gives excellent results.

I have all my photos organized by file folders exactly as others have here, naming the folders YYYY-MM-DD. They're also broken down into different categories, locations, etc., and naming them that way lets me always sort chronologically without hassles. So while Lightroom does catalog the photos into a database, I'm not dependent at all on its database.

I've tried stacking photos in the past with various software and never got good results. I'll have to give Affinity a try.

I now rename all my photos to the metadata title + the original name generated by the camera. So, my filenames now look something like this.

Paeonia suffruticosa 'Lan Bao Shi', 2018 photo,P5140012.dng

This is useful when backing up on amazon photos, because amazon does not display much of your metadata. But they do display the filename.

I store photos in a yearly folder with no sub folders. I use Photo Mechanic to easily find by capture time or any other metadata. Photo Mechanic is very fast. I usually shoot around 6-9,000 photos per year. I was shooting in raw, this year I switched over to raw+jpeg. If I edit a photo (I edit the raw file), I overwrite the jpeg with my edits and never modify the original raw file.