I’ve been busy with travel and some other things, so I don’t really have any good tips or tutorials, so I thought I would do a good old-fashioned blog update. Remember when those were a thing? Anyway, here is a random collection of things I’ve been up to (photographically speaking) and ongoing projects and thoughts.

Trying out different cataloguing software

One of the issues I’m constantly trying to solve is cataloguing my incredibly badly sorted collection of photos. I’m pretty much the poster boy for disorganisation at this point. In terms of both RAW files and finished images, they’re kind of all over the place. The thing is, I actually can’t find a proper solution for what I want. I want something that will let me catalogue a large quantity of files, give me some AI searching and cataloguing tools, and finally be able to share the catalogue over a local (or wider) network privately with others to help in selection and categorisation.

You can generally get two of these functions but never all three. It’s especially difficult to get anything that allows you to create catalogues that you can share locally. I used to use Mylio but there were too many issues with it, and you have to pay a subscription which adds up with all the other subscriptions these days. Plus it didn’t have any AI search features. This has really become a must-have feature for me as it allows you to find images based on a text search without having to have keywords applied or detailed descriptions.

The two applications I’ve been trying out recently are Peakto and Excire. Both offer similar features and allow you to catalogue based on folders across your computer. Both allow you to search based on a text prompt, and both will create keywords using AI image recognition. At the moment I kind of prefer Peakto, but Excire is faster and Excire also has a Lightroom plug-in which I haven’t tried yet, but I will when I get a chance. I will write more about these in the future if there is a demand, so let me know in the comments.

Speaking of trying out new software

One of the things about writing a blog like this is that I’m often asked to try out new and different software. This sounds like it should be great fun, and it does lead to some interesting discoveries, but it has its downsides. One of which is that some software isn’t very well behaved when it comes to uninstalling.

There was one application, which shall remain nameless, which I had been testing and recently installed, and it left crap all over my system. This all adds up, so I was looking for a way to solve this problem. In an ideal world, one would use a separate computer, but I’m not so well off that I just have a computer lying around. So I found the next best thing. I created a virtual one.

Someone had done a video about using Parallels to run Windows on their Mac, and I had used Parallels years ago and never really bothered with it, but it had changed so much I wanted to try it out again. Aside from allowing Mac users like myself a way to run Windows, it also allows you to run macOS under virtualisation. This means that you can have a semi-sandboxed virtual copy of macOS running on your Mac for testing software, and when you’re finished all you have to do is throw away the virtual disk image, or revert to an earlier version. It’s very handy. It’s probably not the main use for the software, but it’s great when you want to try something without cluttering up your system.

On the plus side, I can now try stuff on Windows too, and I have a Windows virtual machine available now too. I know this is super nerdy but I was quite excited about it.

I’ve gotten really bad at processing my photos

I don’t mean my actual technique, I mean just setting aside the time to do it. I have gotten into a bad habit recently of experimenting on some images then never finishing the full set. I have quite the backlog at this point. Part of it is that sometimes I’ll go away for a while and then come back and think I could have done something different. I’m not even talking about major edits either. It’s mostly just finishing things off I have an issue with.

I’m also really bad at adding the keywords and descriptions, and other necessary metadata. I hate that aspect, and it’s the one area where AI could actually do a good job of automating one of the more tedious aspects of the photography business. Someone should write a Lightroom plug-in that connects to ChatGPT and gets it to write the description and title for your image and fill in the keywords. You can do it manually, of course, but it’s a bit long-winded, and not ideal for batches.

The metadata interface on Lightroom has always been a bugbear of mine. The tiny text editing field shoved down in the corner of the interface is so annoying. Lightroom desktop is better, but I don’t have my Classic synced as it has to download the whole online catalogue once you turn syncing on and I don’t want to waste the space.

Anyway, I have a few photo essays, or image series I need to share and they include the second part of my Berlin post, some photos and a video from London, and another forest, mountain excursion that turned out really well. If I could just stop getting distracted.

AI or not AI, that is the question?

I’ve been thinking a lot about AI recently, and as someone who is generally pro new technology, I’ve gone back and forth on my opinions about AI, especially generative AI. The one thing that regularly strikes me is the gulf between what is advertised and what is actually achieved. It’s especially bad in photography applications. Many applications have rushed to add and advertise AI capabilities, but when you go to try them out, they’re utter garbage.

Here’s an example. Here is a much-advertised feature from a particular piece of software (I’m not going to name it because I don’t want the grief right now – and they’re not alone – but it’s a well-known application that’s not Adobe). They advertise the ability to generatively expand an image. Here’s the actual result. This is obviously unusable, and yet somehow they’re allowed to advertise it. This is not the only case. Many other AI tools in many applications are similarly bad, and yet, they can sell and advertise based on these capabilities. How is this not illegal?

Expanded image - note the “quality” edges

Lightroom’s recent “Landscape” selection tools are another example. They’re pretty terrible. If it was any other product, you wouldn’t be able to get away with something being so borderline defective, yet slap the AI term on it and it seems anything goes.

It’s not just photography applications either. Have you noticed Google with their AI summaries on the search results recently? I have noticed that these are completely wrong about half the time. But it’s “AI” so everyone is somehow OK with it?

I’ve been reading a book about this and it’s quite enlightening. I can highly recommend it based on the first third or so that I’ve read so far. It’s quite eye-opening.

The hysteria around AI reminds me of the hysteria around NFTs, and unsurprisingly many of the same people are involved. I’m not against AI outright, but I have reservations and I don’t think all of the hype and the whole “people losing their minds over it” is justified.

I’ll have more to say on this in the future – I’m working on a big piece about it.

Thats all Folks!

Thats it for now. I’ve rabbeted on quite a bit here! If you stayed to the end thanks! If you like these kind of old school blog updates, let me know and I’ll do more of them.

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