[butangmucat]

So I have been using Lr to manage my photos dating back to my middle school and now all my images are organized in a single directory on my mobile workstation's data HDD and it is quickly filling up as I have been doing photography a lot recently. However, before I spend my bucks for a new HDD, I figured out that I might use my USB HDDs and several USB SSDs for storage too. And I have two laptops (one fancy mobile workstation, and another older but lighter machine), I want to do editing on both machines. Maintaining two separate Lr catalogs is too messy to me and I saw https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/32-digital-processing-software-printing/3...aw-editor.html and am thinking going catalogless. I am also considering Corel Aftershot Pro as it has a Linux version, which is something that interests me.

Any suggestions?

Sincerely

[jatrax]

Do you actually use the LR catalog or are you just using Lightroom as a RAW editor? If you are actually using the catalog as your master 'index' of images, which you should be IMHO, then stay with LR. if not and you like another RAW editor better then give it a try.

There is no reason you cannot use LR on both machines. Just put the catalog and your image directory on the external (USB) drive and plug it in to whichever machine you want to use. This assumes LR is installed on both machines and that you use proper care to shutdown and disconnect the drive from each machine.

Personally I could not work without LR and it seems you have experience with it as well so I would suggest staying with LR. But of course everyone's situation is different. Managing any size image collection without some form of index or catalog seems to me to be very difficult no matter how things are organized. Just my opinion.

[veato]

I believe Rawtherapee has a Linux client. It's also free/open source.

[tduell]

I think Darktable provides image management...worth a look as it is very capable.

Cheers,
Terry

[butangmucat]

f you are actually using the catalog as your master 'index' of images, which you should be IMHO, then stay with LR. if not and you like another RAW editor better then give it a try.

I do use it as an index, but because I tend to manually organize my images into folders, I have no problem ditching this. I am sticking to Lr because it works well with Google Nik Collection.

Just put the catalog and your image directory on the external (USB) drive and plug it in to whichever machine you want to use.

I don't know if the drifting drive letters (I use Windows) will mess up Lr catalog.

---------- Post added 08-18-16 at 08:47 PM ----------

The development seems to have stopped and it seems to have problems with new cameras (don't know if using this in conjunction with Adobe DNG converter will work).

[rod_grant]

If you are using external HDD as your working disk, be sure to have another (or three) for backup (and off site too)

[butangmucat]

If you are using external HDD as your working disk, be sure to have another (or three) for backup (and off site too)

Now I rsync my entire image collection from my laptop's internal HDD to my external HDD every two or three weeks, and then I will do a Lightroom catalog backup with it.

[jatrax]

I don't know if the drifting drive letters (I use Windows) will mess up Lr catalog.

How? Either windows finds the drive or it doesn't. It is not going to mess up anything if you have to relocate the catalog. Worst case you have to tell it where the catalog is. But that shouldn't happen anyway.

I do use it as an index, but because I tend to manually organize my images into folders, I have no problem ditching this.

Manually organizing is a must regardless of any other index, IMHO. But that doesn't mean it is easy to find all pictures taken on the Oregon coast that include hotels, or whatever you need. There is a reason that a catalog is used by most anyone who needs to locate images. I manually organize everything by date but still rely on Lightroom and keywords to actually find anything.

The development seems to have stopped and it seems to have problems with new cameras

I don't understand what you mean by this? Lightroom development? Or something else? Just shoot DNG and you don't have to worry about it. And support for new cameras comes out rather quickly for whatever it is worth. Which is not much in my opinion, as I would rather build my own camera profile anyway.

Anyway if you want to move away from Lightroom that is your call, there are lots of other options. But doing so when you already have everything working in LR seems strange to me. YMMV.

[butangmucat]

I don't understand what you mean by this? Lightroom development? Or something else? Just shoot DNG and you don't have to worry about it. And support for new cameras comes out rather quickly for whatever it is worth. Which is not much in my opinion, as I would rather build my own camera profile anyway.

I meant RawTherapee, sorry for the confusion. I have checked their GitHub repository, though commits were still made recently, their latest stable release (4.2) was still something back in 2014.

RawTherapee was my primary RAW development software when I started photography back in middle school, with my dad's Canon EOS 450D and a kit lens. I received a G15 in high school as a gift and was disappointed to see RawTherapee didn't have support for that camera, that's when I started to use GIMP+UFRaw as development software and FastStone as image viewer, still doing management by hand. I spent my high school senior year in the U.S. as a college prep student and that's when I was able to legally subscribe a copy of Adobe CC Student Edition (Adobe doesn't offer CC in my country and CS6 is not offered to high school students) and migrated to Lr and I also bought a copy of ON1's FX9 on their Black Friday Sale. I found that though I use catalog to manage my images, my flow didn't change a lot from my years of hand management as I don't really tag my images and when I want to find an image, I have to filter via date and the equipment being used.

To be honest, I don't use a Pentax digital body (I use a small collection of MF Pentax and other M42 and K mount lenses on a Sony MILC[*]) and my current DNG files were all converted from the ARW file created by my Sony body. Though I am deciding between the K-01 (which natively supports DNG) and Sony a6000, I would still second to rely on a software that has its development stalled.

*One zoom inherited from my family's old Ricoh, two other primes (which I liked very much) I bought myself at dirt cheap prices.

[emalvick]

I'm not paying much attention to the other posts, but here are my thoughts:

If you aren't using Lightroom to actually catalog (e.g. no keywords, ratings, etc.), then I would say you can get away without it. It's up to you whether you do any further cataloging really, so if what you do works, then let it work. If the LR catalog is just letting you access your folders (which you could do with Explorer, Bridge, DarkTable, etc), then you can use other software for that.

As to using external hard-drives. A key will be to be very organized about it if you are starting to split your files up by location. Without a catalog beyond folders, it starts to get more difficult to find things unless you are very methodical. Split things up by specific years or something easy. Also note that the more raw editors you use, the more sidecar files you can end up with (and even derivative files from exporting). This can make a catalog potentially more important or at least making sure that when you move files around that you make certain to 1. keep all related files together such as sidecars and even exported jpg files and 2. keep room so that if you process files in the future that you can keep the new files with the others.

Finally, when you run off of external drives, be certain to have a backup routine that doesn't forget them.

Aside: I use LR as a primary RAW processor, but I do not use its catalog functions. However, I do use something different for cataloging (IMatch). The reasons I do this are 1) I was using IMatch way before I was using LR, before I had a camera that would even shoot RAW or even digital for that matter (i.e. scans) and now 2) because I use multiple RAW processors now and don't want to be tied to Adobe. At the minimum, I like that IMatch keeps a catalog of my metadata and without any effort it uses the EXIF data to create a calendar.

So, while my photos are organized into folders by "date - shoot", I can use a timeline in it to find photos by date regardless of where the folders are. I believe many catalog software have that option. I also use simple keywords to tag shoots so I can find photos quickly my place or subject. This becomes more work, but if I keep it just simple enough, I can find photos quickly. I primarily shoot landscapes, so I generally just tag a place onto photos. Otherwise, I don't worry much about it.

The other thing I like about my catalog, is that IMatch keeps photos together into version stacks. It holds my sidecar files and jpeg files in one group so I can quickly see that I already processed a file and link up the metadata automatically so a TIFF or JPEF taken from a RAW file is the same. It helps quite a bit with little work on my part. It's just enough to supplement my mostly folder based workflow.

[jatrax]

I found that though I use catalog to manage my images, my flow didn't change a lot from my years of hand management as I don't really tag my images and when I want to find an image, I have to filter via date and the equipment being used.

Like @emalvick says above, if you are not interested in the Lightroom catalog and search functions then just use whatever RAW processor you like. Particularly if Lightroom is hard to get where you live. Personally, the catalog and search functions are far more important to me than the RAW processing so I love Lightroom. But for just RAW processing it might be over kill.