Need to update my backup devices and workflow...

[Jacques Cornell]

Lightroom Classic is better because you can organise your masters in your own file structure (although I believe this is frowned on by purists), but these don't have your edits in them.

I have used Lightroom for many years, since Aperture went away, to manage roughly 200,000 images for my event photography business, and roughly 120,000 personal images, and what you're saying here doesn't make any sense to me.

How I interpreted that is, that all the edits and adjustments are stored in Lightroom's internal database. If your catalog corrupts and a backup is missing or something, that edit is lost

That is, of course, if you DON'T have the option turned on to write the adjustments to sidecar XMP files. Been using too long to even know, but I think it at least used to be off by default.

Definitely want those sidecar files.

 

[Jacques Cornell]

- external HDD organized my way. I have a 6TB HDD organized with my own file structure for long-term storage, and I connect it once in a while to export newly-edited/finsihed photos. I have this drive formatted as ExFat.

I do the same and believe this is a very important type of backup for anyone using the proprietary organisational structure of a photos DAM app to manage their photos.

In my case I have some 80K photos in my managed Photos library. Although all my originals and edits are buried in the library, if Photos went pfff (like Aperture did) I would have no way of switching to another DAM.

As with Aperture, you can choose to import photos to Photos while retaining their location in the Finder hierarchy. There isn't a mechanism, though, for moving them around in the Finder hierarchy via the Photos app, as there is with Lightroom Classic.

Yes makes referenced masters mode in Photos very risky.

When Aperture died, I switched to Lightroom Cloudy, using this backup. Lightroom Cloudy is superficially better because it provides the option of retaining the originals in an accessible folder structure.

Aperture did, too. Keeping image files in its library was strictly optional. I kept mine in a Finder hierarchy, which made it dead-simple to transfer to Lightroom Classic when Aperture faded away.

Yes I had forgotten this. But did your Aperture edits transfer to Classic?

No, and I didn't care, because all of my pro work had already been delivered, and I knew that as software advanced I'd reprocess any of my personal work I wanted to print or sell. I can make the same image look so much better now than I could then.

But the organisation of the masters in this is solely date based, and my structure has many other types, and many other photos have no exif dates being scans of old film photos.

Lightroom Classic is better because you can organise your masters in your own file structure (although I believe this is frowned on by purists), but these don't have your edits in them.

I have used Lightroom for many years, since Aperture went away, to manage roughly 200,000 images for my event photography business, and roughly 120,000 personal images, and what you're saying here doesn't make any sense to me.

My replies are all about trying to avoid being locked in for life to one software. If you only use Collections for organisation and the Catalog for edits you pretty much are. If you also keep your masters in your own organisation and use XMP for edits you have more scope for switching (though unclear how many other apps can read Adobe XMPs, from this thread for example).

Sure, every raw processor makes edits proprietary. Maybe export all your processed RAWs as lossy compressed DNGs (using JPEG-XL compression) as a future reference with reasonable headroom for further editing.

My comment about a masters structure being frowned on is based on comments in forums from experts who expect you to solely use collections for structure, and not try to have any structure in the masters folder.

I've never heard any such suggestion. Even in the Aperture years, I maintained a Finder hierarchy of folders and imported files as "referenced", keeping them in place. I do this with Lightroom as well. I use "Collections" strictly for virtual groupings, such as candidates for a show, portfolio or gallery.

Another consideration is that when I die or become incapacitated my relatives will much more able to use my exported folders of photos than a program like Photos or Lightroom.

You can export from Photos into Finder folders, as well. But, as you seem to be saying, it'd be simpler for a third party to deal with the master image files if they're already organized into some kind of Finder folder hierarchy.

Exactly this.

Hence the need for an independent set of backups of the edited photos in my own organisational structure.

Ya lost me. My Archive Backup is a mirror image of my Archive.

I don't know what is in your Archive, but if all Adobe you are still locked in to a degree.

I don't know what you mean by "locked in". Edits are proprietary, but my system of organizing files is not.

I also have conventional exact backups of my Photos libraries, which I use in case of need before the Finder JPEG’s backup being discussed here.

I use Photos strictly for my iPhone snaps, so I don't really care about portability of edits, keeping it tightly organized, or moving the files to another app.

I export max size and quality jpegs monthly from Photos to it.

Then, are your RAWs backed up?

Yes in all my normal backups as above. The independent Finder and jpegs backup is a last resort in addition.

 

[Mike Boreham]

- external HDD organized my way. I have a 6TB HDD organized with my own file structure for long-term storage, and I connect it once in a while to export newly-edited/finsihed photos. I have this drive formatted as ExFat.

I do the same and believe this is a very important type of backup for anyone using the proprietary organisational structure of a photos DAM app to manage their photos.

In my case I have some 80K photos in my managed Photos library. Although all my originals and edits are buried in the library, if Photos went pfff (like Aperture did) I would have no way of switching to another DAM.

As with Aperture, you can choose to import photos to Photos while retaining their location in the Finder hierarchy. There isn't a mechanism, though, for moving them around in the Finder hierarchy via the Photos app, as there is with Lightroom Classic.

Yes makes referenced masters mode in Photos very risky.

When Aperture died, I switched to Lightroom Cloudy, using this backup. Lightroom Cloudy is superficially better because it provides the option of retaining the originals in an accessible folder structure.

Aperture did, too. Keeping image files in its library was strictly optional. I kept mine in a Finder hierarchy, which made it dead-simple to transfer to Lightroom Classic when Aperture faded away.

Yes I had forgotten this. But did your Aperture edits transfer to Classic?

No, and I didn't care, because all of my pro work had already been delivered, and I knew that as software advanced I'd reprocess any of my personal work I wanted to print or sell. I can make the same image look so much better now than I could then.

But the organisation of the masters in this is solely date based, and my structure has many other types, and many other photos have no exif dates being scans of old film photos.

Lightroom Classic is better because you can organise your masters in your own file structure (although I believe this is frowned on by purists), but these don't have your edits in them.

I have used Lightroom for many years, since Aperture went away, to manage roughly 200,000 images for my event photography business, and roughly 120,000 personal images, and what you're saying here doesn't make any sense to me.

My replies are all about trying to avoid being locked in for life to one software. If you only use Collections for organisation and the Catalog for edits you pretty much are. If you also keep your masters in your own organisation and use XMP for edits you have more scope for switching (though unclear how many other apps can read Adobe XMPs, from this thread for example).

Sure, every raw processor makes edits proprietary. Maybe export all your processed RAWs as lossy compressed DNGs (using JPEG-XL compression) as a future reference with reasonable headroom for further editing.

My comment about a masters structure being frowned on is based on comments in forums from experts who expect you to solely use collections for structure, and not try to have any structure in the masters folder.

I've never heard any such suggestion. Even in the Aperture years, I maintained a Finder hierarchy of folders and imported files as "referenced", keeping them in place. I do this with Lightroom as well. I use "Collections" strictly for virtual groupings, such as candidates for a show, portfolio or gallery.

Another consideration is that when I die or become incapacitated my relatives will much more able to use my exported folders of photos than a program like Photos or Lightroom.

You can export from Photos into Finder folders, as well. But, as you seem to be saying, it'd be simpler for a third party to deal with the master image files if they're already organized into some kind of Finder folder hierarchy.

Exactly this.

Hence the need for an independent set of backups of the edited photos in my own organisational structure.

Ya lost me. My Archive Backup is a mirror image of my Archive.

I don't know what is in your Archive, but if all Adobe you are still locked in to a degree.

I don't know what you mean by "locked in". Edits are proprietary, but my system of organizing files is not.

I also have conventional exact backups of my Photos libraries, which I use in case of need before the Finder JPEG’s backup being discussed here.

I use Photos strictly for my iPhone snaps, so I don't really care about portability of edits, keeping it tightly organized, or moving the files to another app.

I export max size and quality jpegs monthly from Photos to it.

Then, are your RAWs backed up?

Yes in all my normal backups as above. The independent Finder and jpegs backup is a last resort in addition.

Thanks for replies. I think the relevant points have made by both of us so that other users can make decisions appropriate for their usage.

One of the characteristics of forums is that questions are asked by people with very different needs and capabilities, and so are the answers. Replies by full time high volume professionals is not necessarily the correct answer for low powered users. A typical example is “how much RAM do I need?”. High power users say 64GB is a minimum and low powered users take this as gospel. 15 years ago I was a high volume professional using Aperture and Lightroom and it has taken me a long time to change my thinking and behaviour to be appropriate to that of a low powered user that I am now.

 

[Kaitlyn]

If you're on a current MacOS version, APFS is fine for external HDDs. It's a much more modern (read advanced) file system, and I think is required for an external disk used for TimeMachine.

I believe it's recommended but not required, at least with macOS Sonoma. My two Airport Time Capsules haven't been reformatted since I bought them in the pre-APFS era, and they work just fine.

A MacOS disk can be formatted to be case-sensitive for filenames, so myfile.dat, MyFile.dat and Myfile.dat would all be different files. Unless you know you need it, don't use it as it can cause problems with programs that are not expecting case-sensitivity.

A couple of recent sources to read about APFS:

https://iboysoft.com/wiki/apfs-vs-mac-os-extended.html

https://eclecticlight.co/?s=apfs

FWIW, Bombich Software - developer of Carbon Copy Cloner backup software - also recommends APFS for HDD-based backups.

Interesting. Will have to re-find where I read APFS was NOT recommended for external disks... or maybe I misread/misunderstood.

There was a fuss about it when APFS was first released, but over time the system has matured. APFS may well have a few disadvantages, but it has significant advantages and is the future for Apple.

A quick look shows, at least, that I can read APFS on Windows if something horrible happened and I didn't have access to my Macbook... so that's good at least.

If you still want a Windows machine to access/share data with a Mac, that's a whole different barrel of prunes that would need some careful thought.

 

[Mike Boreham]

If you're on a current MacOS version, APFS is fine for external HDDs. It's a much more modern (read advanced) file system, and I think is required for an external disk used for TimeMachine.

I believe it's recommended but not required, at least with macOS Sonoma. My two Airport Time Capsules haven't been reformatted since I bought them in the pre-APFS era, and they work just fine.

A MacOS disk can be formatted to be case-sensitive for filenames, so myfile.dat, MyFile.dat and Myfile.dat would all be different files. Unless you know you need it, don't use it as it can cause problems with programs that are not expecting case-sensitivity.

A couple of recent sources to read about APFS:

https://iboysoft.com/wiki/apfs-vs-mac-os-extended.html

https://eclecticlight.co/?s=apfs

FWIW, Bombich Software - developer of Carbon Copy Cloner backup software - also recommends APFS for HDD-based backups.

Interesting. Will have to re-find where I read APFS was NOT recommended for external disks... or maybe I misread/misunderstood.

There was a fuss about it when APFS was first released, but over time the system has matured. APFS may well have a few disadvantages, but it has significant advantages and is the future for Apple.

A quick look shows, at least, that I can read APFS on Windows if something horrible happened and I didn't have access to my Macbook... so that's good at least.

If you still want a Windows machine to access/share data with a Mac, that's a whole different barrel of prunes that would need some careful thought.

So what I’ve been coming across is the way APFS works is good for SSD because ssd is great with random read and write, but with a spinning HDD it will create slowdowns ESPECIALLY as the disk fills up, sometimes causing the disk to have to basically rewrite some sections

My understanding is that APFS on spinning disks is only really a no-no on bootable drives. It is OK for backs ups hence Apple's forced use of it for all Time Machine backups and Mike Bombich's endorsement for CCC backups.