You apparently live on a rural farm and manufacture all your own clothes, electronics, and most other day-to-day goods. I'm sure you never used Amazon.

EVERYONE uses cheap labor in China. It's a problem.

Apple is an international company. That money they squirreled away in foreign countries was earned in foreign countries. They pay more taxes (US and abroad) than you or I could imagine.

If they are in violation of our overly-complicated, anti-buisness, onerous tax laws, prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

Actually, they are following the rules as written by congress. Any loophole you may perceive is in the law. No American, including corporate entities, have any obligation to pay more in taxes than required. Of course, you are welcome to send as much extra money to the government as you desire. I prefer to keep what I earn, including my Apple dividend checks.

Where I will agree about Apple (and just about every major American company) being anti-American is the China problem. They are all heavily invested in China for production and future market growth. Whether it's the sweat shops where your iPhone or Amazon order is manufactured, or the technology giveaways so China can produce cheap knock-offs, it is undermining our long term economy. These big companies have too much invested in China and will never rock that boat.

Take a look at Darktable. It is free open source software.

I have not used it, but have heard good things about it. I also don't know if it can transfer all the info you require from LR.

Here is a link to a migration guide. Since DT is free, it might be worth looking into and testing.

https://mathiashueber.com/migrate-from-lightroom-to-open-source-alternative/

If only the medium format digital camera was also a high-end video production workstation with a state of the art HDR display.

Yes, Apple devices have always been expensive. I was very disappointed with the new Mac Pro pricing. However, they decided to follow a different path. The old Mac Pros were designed for a wider audience. Now, an iMac or MacBook can handle much of the work the old Mac Pros were built for.

For good or for bad, Apple made a conscious decision to make the "Pro" line a very high end device. It is not for everyone. If you are editing photos, the configuration you posted is absurd overkill.

While Apple has traditionally demanded a higher price tag, there are some benefits that come with that. It is not a cobbled-together machine. It is something designed as a whole to work together. For some, maybe many, the "experience" is worth a premium price.

Along those same lines, I have seen reviews of the Mac Pro with comparisons to builds that provide the same functionality. This is primarily from video professionals, which seems to be what the Mac Pro is primarily aimed at. They seem to agree that despite the sticker shock, the pricing is not very unreasonable. Again, this is in comparison to other high-end video workstations... as in the kind real video production companies rely on.

I don't think the problem is as much the price of Apple products (which I agree is too high). I think it's a case of re-thinking what you need and not paying for a machine and features you do not need. Hardware has become so powerful that we sometimes fail to realize a "basic" machine has probably 10x the power we actually use or need.

If you _need_ a $5000 XDR display, it's likely you have an income stream that more than justifies the purchase.

While "Add" does not make a second copy of the photo, your step #5 does "save the raw files" on your hard drive. Sure, they take up a lot of space, but there is no way around saving the raw files on your drive... unless you are making adjustments in LR, outputting to something like jpeg, and then deleting the original. What you describe is simply a referenced file setup, which is fairly common.

If you keep all your library's photos in one place, there is a another way to approach this. Have a master folder for all a particular library, with subfolders inside of that. (You can do this with multiple photo locations, but I suggest avoiding that). For example "Travel" as a master, with "2020 Jan," "2020 Feb," etc. inside that. Copy new photos off the card into the desired folder. After copy, go to Lightroom, select either the master folder or any of of the subfolders and choose "Synchronize Folder."

That will not only "add" the new photos, it will also update the selected folder(s) and make you aware of any other changes.

I've been using Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Bridge, and Lightroom (Classic) all week on Big Sur. No problems at all. I do have the latest app updates though the "Creative Cloud" software rental system.


Edited to add: downgrading, if necessary, isn't necessarily difficult. Just time consuming. Clone your boot drive to an external volume first. If you need to downgrade, boot from the external and clone it back to the internal.

Sky replacement, HDR, retouching...

it's all best when you like the final result. One man's meat is another man's poison.

All affected drives were purchased at the same time and I think I just got a bad batch. All failed drives are Seagate Ironwolf. They are designed for NAS use. The enclosures are in a climate controlled well ventilated area. Regular SMART and health scans are run to stay ahead of any failures.

The problems are somewhat temperature related as the drives continually overheat prior to receiving failure warnings. All surrounding drives will show a normal temp, but the bad drive will often run up to 10 degrees warmer. Once I get the warnings, I contact Seagate and get a replacement under warranty. Never had data loss (knock wood) but it's never fun waiting for the raid to rebuild.

The takeaway is that while some solutions may offer convenience and flexibility, they also come with a maintenance responsibility.

Everything has a chance of failure. M-disc claims a much longer shelf life (for media) than hard drives. That doesn't make them infallible either.

Load up 40 x 100GB m-discs and load up a 4GB drive with the same data. The disc bring a few advantages. Even if you have to plug in an external reader with a USB cable, it's still quicker than installing a bare HD. (Sure, you can pay extra to store your drive in an enclosure, but that's a waste for an archival drive.)

Also, if a disc goes bad you still have 3.9 TB of saved data. That 4TB drive goes down and it's game over for all the data.

The HD is also a mechanical device with more to possibly go wrong. A disc has no moving parts to wear out or break. If your optical disc drive fails, you data is still secure and can be read in any other optical drive.

I am also running a QNAP NAS. It's great when it works. I have 4x10TB enterprise drives in a RAID 10 configuration. Two of the four drives have failed in the first year. A third one looks like it will fail in the next few months. Aside from the security of RAID, all that data is also backed up to other devices (including optical).

The real answer is to use more than one media for long term storage. A hard drive is great, so is optical. If you really want the "best" go with tape. Each has its plus and minus. There is no perfect solution.

I have looked at cloud services and they are not practical for me. Two services have already told me "don't bother" because it isn't practical to upload 10+TB of data. I went a different "cloud" route. I have a second NAS setup at an offsite location. Initial sync was done on a local connection, then the box moved offsite. Now I only have to worry about incremental updates.

Of course, 2 of those drives have also failed in the past 3 years. All replaced under warranty, but I am still very skeptical of hard drives, enterprise or otherwise.

I'm hesitant to recommend anything specific or call anything the "best."

About 2 years back I made the switch from Aperture to Lightroom. I also had some photos in Apple Photos at the time. Basically 20 years and tens of thousands of digital photos with little to no organization. A complete mess.

At the time, I used two pieces of software to clean up and get organized:

Photosweeper (by Overmacs Team) and Duplicate File Finder (by Nektony). I recall Photosweeper being the most helpful for me. Duplicate File Finder (not the "pro" version) was also useful. Honestly, I don't remember too much of the details for either. It was a crazy few days that taught me a lesson about keeping organized. :)

There have been major OS updates since then as well as changes to Photos and Lightroom. While both have had 2020 updates, I couldn't make claims as to how well the current versions might perform for a given use case.

Duplicate File Finder has a free version. Photosweeper has a trial version (I think you have to go to their site for the). I suggest you try both and see if either meets your needs. Both have a 4.7 rating in the Mac app store.

Just another opinion...

- Copy all CD/DVD files to a a hard drive. Consolidate files from other drives.

- Run a duplicate finder to weed out duplicates.

- If your CDs and/or file naming conventions are organized, sort the files as best you can by whatever criteria that makes sense to you. Folders for each year with subfolders by month or event are one good way.

- At this point, you could consider running a batch renamer on the files to embed dates and an index number into the file name. This may or may not be appropriate for you.

- Create a new library/catalog in Photos or Lightroom or whatever other software you would like to use and import all the photos. You can then keyword, etc. You can also break up the library into smaller ones and offload ones you don't use that often. (I have over ten LR catalogs that are used for different purposes).

Note that there are other "catalog" programs available to index your files. NeoFinder, Disk Catalog Maker, etc. These are not necessarily photo-centric. They do allow you do keep a searchable list on your computer of offline files, whether they are stored on optical media or non-connected hard drives.


Personally, I'm a fan of optical media for archival storage. Just like with all storage media, optical has evolved. With m-disc, for example, you can get disks that hold up to 100GB. That's the same as 142 CDs or 21 standard DVDs. Even using 25GB or 50GB discs, you could reduce your current optical collection to a handful of discs. You could also easily burn multiple copies and store them at different locations.

Either way you are only looking at a few hundred GB max for you entire disc collection (4.7GB DVD x 60 = 282GB). That's small enough to also consider inexpensive cloud backup.

Those spinning drives are a different situation, depending on how full each is. Either way, I would try to consolidate files first onto as few connected drives as possible.

It is the only drone in its class that circumvents FAA registration. Despite my aversion to DJI products, I was recently considering the Mavic Mini for this reason (as well as the much more agreeable cost).

What turned me off were the limitations. I would get limited use out of the mini. In a short time, I would hit its limitations and it would end up in a closet. Better no drone than wasting money on one that I wouldn't use much. What I really "need" is something like the Autel Evo II. I just don't want to spend that much money. :)

Keep in mind that the FAA thing may not be the benefit you think it is. There are many who believe the FAA will extend the registration process to include <250g drones like the Mavic. No one knows for sure, but let's face it... the Mavic Mini exploits a loophole. Loopholes tend to get closed.

It's like the "what camera should I buy" threads. The answer depends on what you want to do with it. The Mavic excels are some things, and not at others. You have to look at what's out there and decide what fits your needs. Giving up several features just to avoid FAA registration may or may not be the right road to take.

Depending on your particular needs, you may want to look at the Autel Evo II or the Skydio 2 drones. They are more along the lines of a Mavic 2 (abilities and cost).

The Mavic Mini does not need FAA registration for non-commercial use, which makes it very attractive. It does have other limitations that may of may not be important to you. Check the feature list of this vs other drones.

All DJI drones also have geofencing. Some find this to be an unnecessary burden. In my experience, their system is not very accurate and can cause warnings or lockouts in areas that should have no restrictions. (I fly in a rural area where DJI lists a cornfield as an active airport. They also list a grass strip that has been non-operational for over 5 years). YMMV.

You can pick up a second monitor fairly inexpensively. Using a second iMac as a display only is a waste of a machine. An old Mac is better used as a simple file server and/or a place to backup or off-load files. It can also be used for email, web surfing, or other tasks while your "newer faster" computer is doing the heavy lifting with LR and PS. It can also be a backup system. Used as a monitor only, you cannot easily update software or sync files.

Again, I'd still like to see what bpulv meant by the comment and what benefits are perceived from that setup.

Yes, I'm aware of those methods. I've run my Macs with two or three monitor setups for years. What bpulv wrote was two 27" iMacs that are cabled together - not two monitors. Considering the detailed post, it seems it was meant as written.

As chasgroh pointed out, there would be lag if running a two-computer setup. Even if connected by a direct network. Such a setup would also create issues when trying to send a file directly from Lightroom on one machine to Photoshop on the second - I'm not even sure LR/PS can roundtrip over a network connection.

That's why I asked bpulv for clarification. If it is the two-computer setup as written, I am curious what benefit is obtained in this photography workflow over a more tradition two-monitor setup.