Alternative to LR (non-)workflow

Processing
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Hi all
Currently, I am using Lightroom (LR) and want to finally substitute it with FOSS Linux tools. With LR, I take advantage of the fact that virtually all features I need are included in it. Thus, I only export pictures if I really have to. Most of my pictures (and videos) are for private purposes only. Due to the lack of time, I seldom work on the pictures right away. This might happen months later. Still the pictures and media are already at the right spot. Because of that (non)workflow, I see issues when working with several programs.

So here is what I do in LR in 95% of my use cases:

  • download pictures and videos from SD card into YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD folders and add to database
  • rename folder from “YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD” to “YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Eventname” to quickly find it
  • tag pictures with GPS information
  • remove unwanted pictures (and videos)
  • tweak picture settings
  • tagging

The first three steps happen sooner, the last three steps later. Still, after the first three steps, the pictures and videos are already usable. Staying in the raw developer also has the advantage that I don’t have to think about the output colour space.

The other 5% percent of the use cases is for scans of old documents or pictures:

  • add png (might be big) or jpg to database
  • tweak settings and output to jpg
    Other programs might be more suited for that, it’s just that I am most comfortable with sliders of LR. Also all steps can be easily undone.

When I try to find a workflow that includes different tools, I am mostly afraid what happens to metadata and tags. Digikam seems to be a very nice program to manage the final pictures and videos. It offers extensive tagging, GPS and face recognition tools. Videos are included nicely. However, it does not seem to handle raw files very efficiently. Thus, I need a raw developer. A workflow could look like this:

  • download pictures to raw folder of name “raw/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD”. What to do with videos? In the end, they should be together with the pictures in the “developed/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Eventname” folder.
  • rename “raw/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD” to “raw/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Eventname” and delete bad pictures
  • in the raw developer, develop pictures with output folder “developed/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Eventname”
  • import “developed/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Eventname” into digikam
  • do tagging

Now, what happens (and I find this very likely) that I need to redo some picture tweaking in the raw developer later? I overwrite the jpgs in “developed/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Eventname”. OK, but the new jpgs don’t have any tags. These were only added by digikam. Now, there are some jpgs with tags, some without, and I can only hope that digikam does not decide to update its database with the new files, removing the corresponding tags. I do see a realistic chance for a total mess.

Am I just paranoid? Do you have a better idea?

How do I handle videos efficiently?

RawTherapee and darktable are the obvious candidates for the raw developer. Since I haven’t used either of them, I am happy to use whatever you suggest.

Thanks a lot!

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Are you jumping ship to Linux as well or planning to stay with windows or macOS?

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Get Rapid Photo Downloader for downloading and renaming your image files. It’s a brilliant piece of software, I find it invaluable.

Then, for my specific use-case scenario, RawTherapee has met (and exceeded) all my expectations. In comparison, RT does everything LR does and so much more.

I would alse like to recommend @Andy_Astbury1’s channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAndy800. I watch it almost as entertainment, since the guy is funny as all hell, but saying that is also doing him a great disservice, since the quality of his content is outstanding. He goes very in depth explaining a lot of the more cryptic stuff that RT does, and does it in such a way that it’s funny, pleasant and easy to understand. He also does a lot of parallels between LR and RT so I’m confident it would help your transition be as smooth as possible.

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I’ve been using Linux as my main system for 15 years. Windows dual boot mainly for LR because it just worked for me. So I am also happy to do some scripting etc.
Thanks!

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Thanks a lot for the hints. I will look into the tools and the youtube channel.

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I’d agree that Rapid Photo Downloader should cover the first two steps of your workflow (importing and renaming).

For my raw development I am mostly using darktable, though I bounce around a lot because I like to play with everything.

darktable should cover your tagging needs, which seem fairly simple. Any exported photos can carry the metadata over from the raw file (tags, keywords, GPS tags). darktable has just enough management for me to get by; it is fairly spartan. If you feel like you need more asset management, digiKam is an obvious choice and assuming you use a fairly up-to-date distro, they should place nice together.

We have some pretty diverse tooling, you can see more of what is available at https://pixls.us/software

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