Yes, you do effectively duplicate your images when you import them into a managed catalog, but what other people call duplicates, I call a backup. There’s a third feature of managed catalogs that I particularly like, which some might call a vice but I prefer to see as a virtue. They all have equal merit and ‘realness’ within the catalog and once they are exported they are equally permanent image files. Second, because the only way to get an image out of a managed catalog for use elsewhere is to export it, there’s no longer any practical difference between JPEGs, TIFFs, RAW files and virtual copies. Well, they are, but your files are in a self-contained environment, not loose in the wild scattered across your computer’s hard disk. In a managed catalog, different versions (Variants, in Capture One) have equal status to all your other images and are not simply metadata sidecar files or linked to your images in a database. The possibility of moving files and folders externally, or inadvertently disconnecting images from their processing metadata, no longer exists. So surely all this applies to managed catalogs too? Not quite.įirst, a managed catalog draws all your images into a single database which is inaccessible to other programs. RAW files and virtual copies (including those of TIFFs and JPEGs) will only look the way they do in that particular software – in fact, your virtual copies will only actually EXIST in that software. They depend on image-metadata connections that can be lost.ģ) It’s likely your catalog will contain processed TIFFs and JPEGs, RAW files and perhaps multiple virtual copies of images that you want to try out different ‘looks’ on. Non-destructive adjustments can take as long to do as the regular sort, and while the ability to go back and change them is extremely useful – but these adjustments are impermanent and stored alongside your images and not within them. The Capture One folder is created if you use Capture One in Sessions mode – another good reason for using a managed catalog.Ģ) If your software stores your non-destructive editing adjustments in sidecar files or folders, there’s also the danger that moving images outside the catalog or in other software will separate the images from their adjustments. xmp metadata) and they must not be separated from the RAW files because they contain all your edits. on1 files and that Capture One folder? They are sidecar files left behind by non-destructive editing tools, like Adobe Bridge and Lightroom (if you set Lightroom up to export. Exposure X can cleverly work out what you’ve done and fix it within its catalog (on my Mac, at any rate). If you work with regular ‘referenced’ catalogs for any length of time you will become aware of some drawbacks and annoyances.ġ) If you move any images or folders outside of your cataloguing application, you will need to re-synchronise your catalog with your folders to find them again (Lightroom, Capture One). So why would you even do that? Why duplicate your whole photo collection all over again and then lock it into a bespoke image database that only one program has access to? The unexpected joys of managed catalogs That’s a special case, however, which I’ll come to shortly.
Only a very few offer to import your photos into the image catalog itself, notably Apple Photos, Aperture… and Capture One.Īctually, let’s not forget Lightroom CC, which pulls your images into a cloud-based database. Almost universally, cataloguing programs ‘reference’ your photos in their existing location. There are lots of reasons I like Capture One, but let’s pick out the one that makes it feel most like Aperture used to.Ĭataloguing programs use a database to store information about your photos, including thumbnails, previews, metadata and the image file’s location on our computer.
#APERTURE SOFTWARE FOR MAC REVIEW MAC OS#
On the basis that almost no-one can still be using Aperture any more, after successive Mac OS updates have left it flaky and incompatible, I’ve decided to redirect all my old Aperture content here instead. That program is Capture One, and while Apple originally pointed users towards Adobe Lightroom when it shut down Aperture, I actually think Capture One is its real spiritual successor. Sigh.īut there is a program that has shades of Aperture, and for one odd reason in particular: the option to create managed catalogs. Aperture’s handling of stacks and picks and albums and projects was just perfect.
It eventually lost out to Lightroom’s more advanced editing tools, but Lightroom has never come close (nor any other program) to Aperture’s speed or its organisational genius. It’s possible I may never get over the loss of Aperture, Apple’s abandoned image cataloguing and editing software.