Jack Baty gives up on Lightroom

Jack Baty:

I’m here to tell you that I can not make it work for me. There’s too much overhead in having to decide what to add to a synced collection and when. And where to keep any synced originals? Do I do that in both apps? And so on. I seem to end up with duplicates for no reason I can fathom. I’m constantly moving images from the automatic synced folders to their proper place in the filesystem. It often feels like the worst of both worlds. I’ve seen people do it. I’ve watched the videos and read the blog posts. I’ve tried, but nope, it’s all too finicky for me.

I hit a similar corner with Lightroom Classic when I was trying to make it work for me. As an app, photo editor, and manager it is very good. But it is tied to Adobe CC which for me, is a long term deal breaker. And I could not figure out the best way to manage my files for some reason.

I’ve been slowly piecing together my own solution, as you all may know that read this blog on the regular, but it isn’t something I can really share with anyone else.

My current workflow consists of a script or two on my Mac to move files from my digital cameras, film scans, drones, and other devices into their appropriate places and backups and cloud services, combined with two libraries in Photos for Mac* (one for personal photos, one for hobby projects) where the libraries are on my hard drive and the original files are on external storage.

It is working fairly well. But I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. For instance, to edit a photo I have to jump through a fiery hoop or two in order to not end up with a bunch of duplicates. I don’t know how to solve this problem yet but I plan on doing so.

Back to Jack. I’m with him. Some of these apps, especially those he mentions, are almost paralyzing in their commitment levels and features. I just wish all of this photo management was so much easier.

* which I have some issues with.

September 9, 2020

We got blogging right 20 years ago – Jack Baty

Jack Baty:

Looking at my blog from 2003 makes me think we got blogging right early on.

Yep. Everything else has been additive. But a blog from 20 years ago, like mine, would be just as good today as then.

June 20, 2018

Jack Baty on follower counts

Jack Baty:

Years ago on Twitter, I would use follower counts as an indicator of authority or perhaps as a way to gauge someone’s impact on a community or topic. With so many followers, he or she must have useful or interesting things to say, right? That probably wasn’t a great way to think about follower counts even then, but it worked as often as not.

I quit Twitter with thousands of followers. Many of which I’d say were bots. Accounts with millions of followers also have a huge percentage of bots following them. I restarted my account from scratch and now only have dozens. Follower count means nothing about the person behind it.

Reminds me of this 2014 post.

January 24, 2018

CNN lite

Remarkable find by Jack Baty, CNN Lite:

I could not love this more. Can we get all of the news sites to do this?

I can’t tell if this is official or not. Either way, bookmarked.

September 11, 2017

Jack Baty: “Please just start a blog”

Jack Baty on his rather handsome looking new blog:

Would you all please just start a blog? I don’t care which platform you choose. Pick one and publish. Cross-post or don’t. Implement Webmentions or don’t. Allow comments or don’t. Tweak the design to within an inch of its life or don’t. Publish long posts or short, it doesn’t matter.

I wish.

September 9, 2017

Jack Baty on Guardians of the Galaxy 2

Jack Baty:

Almost lost me in the first 15 minutes. Way too silly for its own good. Felt to me like they took what they thought made the first film successful and just cranked up those bits. I enjoyed the middle portion, so stuck with it.

If I had written a review, this would be it.

August 31, 2017

Likes vs. Saves

Many social networks are adding “Save” in addition to “Like”. You can see this now on both Instagram and Facebook. You can “like” something and tell the publisher of the content that you like what they published and you can also “save” the post (presumably to find it later).

Mature content publishing platforms need both of these features. They shouldn’t only have “Like” and force their communities to use that as a way to find something later. For years I’ve used Likes on Twitter to save things for later. If they only pick one they should go with “save”.

Jack Baty takes this one step further and says that likes should be private:

Likes should be visible to only the Like-or and the Like-ee. Liking something is a simple, unobtrusive way to let someone know I appreciate what they wrote. It’s also a way to get a little bump when someone likes what I wrote. No one else need be involved.

I totally agree.

June 15, 2017