Comment by jwr
18 hours ago
Relying on EXIF is a good thing. But if you limit yourself to ONLY using EXIF, you can't group images, make one image in a group the primary image, assign common metadata to the entire group, etc.
All turned out to be essential in my photo archives, especially as I started scanning old pictures. You get the front and back side of a photo, or you scan a large-format drawing in 16 scans and store them alongside the merged one, etc.
Aperture used to handle it pretty well, but Apple dropped it. I learned my lesson, and now I'll be doing things differently.
I solved the "one photo in multiple albums" EXIF problem by using Keywords. Each album is a Keyword.
But yes, there are some other limitations that would be much harder to solve. But it's a tradeoff I've decided to make - if I can't figure out an EXIF-based solution then I'm not going to invest time using it because it will likely be lost in 5-10 years.
it's OSS software that's hosted locally. It will run fine in 10 years
That's not my philosophy :)
> Aperture used to handle it pretty well, but Apple dropped it.
If you still miss it, note that Nitro (macOS, iPad, iPhone) is Aperture's spiritual successor, created by its former Sr. Director of Engineering. https://www.gentlemencoders.com/nitro-for-macos/
What are you currently using?