Photography
A lean library, without losing the shot that mattered.
I shoot more than I keep. Over the years I've settled on a simple, low-cost workflow built around Apple Photos, and wrote a few small Mac apps to make it hold together.
My workflow
- 1 Shoot RAW + JPEGThe camera writes both files for every frame, full quality plus a ready-to-use JPEG. On my Canon EOS RP that is roughly 70 MB per RAW + JPEG pair.
- 2 Everything into Apple PhotosImport on the Mac or straight from the iPhone, it syncs either way. One iCloud library across every device, no separate catalog to maintain.
- 3 Cull with Keepers Keepers →Group the near-duplicate sets, keep the best of each, and clear the rest, safely and non-destructively.
- 4 Sort out with RawPrune RawPrune →Less compression, more sorting out. Photos does the exporting — HEIC by default, JPEG if you prefer it — at full size for my favorites and downscaled for everything else. RawPrune backs up the originals, including the RAWs, and swaps a single space-saving copy back into the library.
- 5 Group trips with Journeys Journeys →Journeys reads where my phone has been and matches the camera's shots by capture time, turning each trip into its own album while leaving the everyday photos at home alone.
Why this setup
Everything in Photos
Every shot lives in Apple Photos, so face recognition, search and memories all just work, and the full library is on my iPhone to show anytime. Mine is well past 150,000 photos.
No monthly fees
Just iCloud+ for storage. No Lightroom or other subscription in the loop.
RAW when you need it
Full RAW quality on hand while a shot still matters and might get edited.
HEIC for the long haul
Only one space-saving copy of each shot stays long term — HEIC, or JPEG if you prefer — so the library stays small and cheap to keep forever.
The apps
Mac app
Mac app
Mac app