What do you use to curate new photos?

I am just getting back into photography, and want to avoid Adobe this time around. One step in the workflow I have not been able to figure out, is a replacement for Adobe Bridge. What are people using to curate their photos as they import them from the camera?

With Adobe Bridge, I could quickly preview my new photos and apply ratings or tag them for deletion. The preview was close to full screen so I was able to make a good determination. So far, I have found no other piece of software that comes even close to that functionality. For example RawTherapee lets me rate the photos in filmstrip mode, but the thumbnails are too small for me to accurately determine the rating.

Thank you for any suggestions.

My workflow:

  1. Transfer shots from card to HDD. Rename folder.
    1b) If necessary (important shots), make a separate safe copy of the folder.
  2. Use Geeqie with safe delete to get rid of bad shots and “duplicates”. Safe delete folder max size is only 2 GB and this is a problem.
  3. Use Rawtherapee and mark shots with stars and color labels.
  4. Happy editing.

Check Digikam, it might the program you are looking for.

You neglected to say what OS you’re on, but the recommendation is generally DigiKam.

Sorry about that. At home I use Linux. When traveling I use a Macbook.

I used to be a die-hard KDE user, but about two years ago I gave up on its instability and switched to Mate.

I will give DigiKam a try. Any suggestions for the Mac?

You can get it for Mac via homebrew, if you’re into that, using homebrew-kf5 tap.

I run Linux and I think F-Spot was my first try on a “serious” photo program and my first try at tagging images and try to get control. This was when digital cameras was…not what they are today. And I did not (or could not) shoot RAW either.

Now, probably because I am (was) a Gnome user, I never started on digiKam. Probably my loss :-), I still try to start it up once i a while, but you must invest some time on new software, and I never did.

So my current solution is Darktable. It too lets you preview, rate with stars, use color labels and tags. And of course you can spend countless hours trying to get that photo just right… :smiley:

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So my current solution is Darktable. It too lets you preview, rate with stars, use color labels and tags. And of course you can spend countless hours trying to get that photo just right… :smiley:

Same thing here. Darktable + Rapid Photo Downloader for downloading photos form my A6000 (it doesn’t work with the D810 for some reason, but darktable works with the d810 but does not recognize the a6000, oh well).

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I use Xubuntu as my OS, and here’s what I do: load card into card reader. Navigate to DCIM directory on card. In file browser sort by date, newest first. Open first image in Nomacs (reads RAW directly), and start reviewing shots. If I like, I drag the file over to my hard drive. I do this manually as I review each shot. My directory structure is Photography > {year} > {month} > {specific _project}. Then, I load the current directory into Darktable, and make edits and exports. I archive the SD card when full, and back up my Photography directory on Dropbox and on two external drives.

Maybe it’s not the most fluid workflow, but it works well for me, and keeps it all organized without getting “locked in” to a specific software.

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I use digiKam for JPG and darktable for RAW. DSLR is set to RAW only. Other cameras are set to JPG only.

Exportet JPGs from darktable also end up in digiKam. To download RAWs and rename them a filemanager does it for me.

Here’s mine, not much different from the rest but with some changes:

  1. Import and renaming with RapidPhotoDownloader - it organizes photos in the format I want and renames for my filename pattern (a problem whn you have more than one camera)
  2. Culling and metadata with XnView - I prefer to do and initial round of culling before importing photos into the RAW developer, and lately I’ve started to apply metadata in bulk at the beginning, rather than at the end
  3. Import into darktable and work from there (ratings, etc)

Under Linux, make one thing, but make it well…
I copy & paste from card (no need to find this /!!~#* cable!)
I use kphotoalbum for viewing all image formats, deleting, tagging, retrieving, opening wih other software.

I use Darktable’s Lighttable. You can make the “thumbnails” very large - up to one shown at a time if you like - and ‘z’ gives a fuller screen preview.

It also has a hierarchical tag system (people|henry) and powerful means of filtering results.

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Thank you, everyone, for your recommendations.

For the initial stage of culling the out-of-focus/junk images from the rest, geeqie and nomacs seem to be best options – at least under Linux.

I tried using brew to install geeqie on my mac, but it does not display the photo’s correctly (remnants of the previous image overlap the current image).

I was able to build nomacs on my Mac, but it immediately crashes when I try to run it. I will see if I can figure out why.

I do like Darktable’s layout. I have read that the “next” version will support the mac better, so have not tried it on my macbook, but maybe I should.

I get the impression that RawTherapee runs on the mac well. Everyone seems to rave about its ‘quality’, but it seems less intuitive to me. Trying it under Linux, I have not even been able to figure out what keys to hit to set the star-rating for a photo. Hitting number keys seems to set a filter, rather than setting the rating for the current pic.

@jpoet you can see RawTherapee’s list of hotkeys and peruse the wiki. I’ve found it helpful.

I just tried XnViewMP on the mac. Once I figure out how to get it in an appropriate mode, it worked pretty well, until I got it into some mode where it wont display any pictures. I assume that I somehow set a filter, and it is not obvious how to unset it.

The keybinding say that ctrl-5 sets a 5-star rating but that does not work. cmd-5 set that rating, but I would prefer ctrl-5.

Often times on Mac, cmd is equal to what is Ctrl on every other platform. You should be able to change the hotkeys in the preferences.

Thank you, Mica, for the RAwTherapee hotkeys. That is helpful.

One of the reasons I like XnView is the metadata management, I hve set up a complex tree of categories that’s very useful for bulk metadata operations.

[quote=“jpoet, post:16, topic:2297”]
…until I got it into some mode where it wont display any pictures. I assume that I somehow set a filter, and it is not obvious how to unset it…[/quote]

XnViewMP in linux keeps the settings in a folder ~/.config/xnviewmp/

Do not know the equivalent in a mac. Delete it and XnViewMP will revert to default values and make a new one. Sometimes need to do this for an update as well.