Multi-app photography workflows using Lap

[akelagercrantz]

Hi!

I'd like to discuss workflows for ingesting, organizing, editing, exporting and sharing photographs, and what part Lap can play in this.

There are as many workflows as there are photographers 📸, so I'll start by giving some context on my own photography and needs, and then hopefully others could chime in with theirs 😸

The idea would be to figure out common needs and features that could make Lap better integrate into mine and others workflows.

My own photography workflow

I have over the years accumulated more photographs than what fits comfortably inside a Lightroom or Capture One catalog without having performance issues. For this reason I have been a long time user of Capture One's session concept, where each photography "outing" or "project" gets its own isolated folder on disk with its own "mini-catalog" inside. To cover up the lack of discoverability that sessions provide, and to see an overview of my entire photo catalog I've made use of Google Photos and Immich for edited and exported images.

This has been perfect when my photographs have fit neatly into trips and events. Over the past years I have started taking more and more documentary pictures of my life and my family (having recently had kids), with a few pictures here and there every day. These do not fit into this compartmentalization that sessions require, and as an bonus effect I have less time to edit, meaning discoverability has also taken a hit due to only edited and exported images being easily searchable via Immich.

I've thus decided to move to a DAM (digital asset manager) + editor(s) setup, where the DAM provides me with organization and discoverability, and the editors are only used for editing. This also means I can be more editor-agnostic, i.e. some photos edited by one editor and some by another, depending on needs, since all metadata handling is centralized in the DAM.

I have recently tried Photo Supreme for this, and while it is a very capable piece of software, the UX left me wanting more. Lap on the other hand, has great performance and UX, but is so far lacking a few features that would make my setup work seamlessly.

Features I believe my workflow would need

In random order, and most already have issue tickets

1. File-system agnostic collections

As my photos are now more randomly spread over time, over cameras and over subjects, I have a need to include photos in long-running collections that don't require the files to be colocated on disk. E.g. a Family album or a Cats album (all Lap users are required to have cats, right?).

While tags could technically be used for this, the user experience would be much better if we could have proper virtual collections.

This has already been asked for and detailed more under issue #182.

2. Stacking

I often shoot RAW + JPG, and handling of these "identical" files is usually poor in many applications. Photo Supreme has a concept called "Stacking" which combines photos that are logically similar into a single stack that can be handled as one unit. Photo Supreme takes this further to also handle bursts and panoramas as stacks.

3. Seamless integration between Lap and editor

We currently have a "Open in external app" feature that lets us open a single image in a pre-selected app.

There are some things that I believe are needed for this to feel seamless:

1. Allow for quick "open in" actions for multiple pre-defined apps (multiple editors)
2. Allow opening a virtual collection (see above) in an editor, e.g. opening the Family album which contains files in multiple directories at once, to be able to edit them into a cohesive look.
3. Pick up on the results of the edit once it's done, like an exported file, and be able to include that file in the stack together with the original.

How feasible it is, and how to achieve these things I'm not yet sure about.

I made an attempt at supporting an open action for multiple selected photos in #194 but as mentioned in the comments there are some limitations with the taken approach.

4. Metadata sidecars

To integrate well with other applications it's crucial that they all speak the same language when it comes to metadata. This is a complex area but the common solution is to use XMP sidecars.

This has already been asked for and detailed more under issue #40

I will research this area a bit more in the coming weeks.

5. Seamless integration with "sharing" sites

I will still use Immich to hold my edited and exported photos so that I can share them easily with friends and family.

Since Lap would hold the source of truth when it comes to photo organization (i.e. albums/collections, see above), it would be cool if it was possible to somehow export this organizational structure into Immich, Google Photos, Flickr etc for easy sharing.

I believe there was an ask for this in one of the reddit threads, but I it was pretty sparse on details.

6. Import photos from memory cards

With this new workflow Lap would be the first software I use to organize my photos. I would no longer use Capture One to import images from an SD card onto disk.

It would be great if Lap could handle the import step, not only to include the new photos in the Lap catalog, but also to handle renaming of the files according to a set formula, and to place the images in the correct folders according to my preferences.

Most photo software has this capability more or less, where you can choose on import if you want to copy the files or not, and if so, where to place and how to name. Since we already have strong metadata capabilities we can support naming based on metadata like camera model etc.

This has already been asked for and detailed more under issue #86

[julyx10]

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed overview of your workflow. This is exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping for. These are all great suggestions, and I'd also love to hear how other photographers approach their workflows.

1. Collections have already been implemented and will be available in the next release. I added a Settings → Library → Show Collections switch, and it's disabled by default. One of Lap's core design principles is to keep the UI as clean and simple as possible, so I'm always cautious about introducing features that increase interface complexity. When enabled, a Collection Tray appears at the bottom of the left panel. You can simply drag photos from the grid view into a collection. Adding a photo to a collection does not modify its metadata or change its location on disk.

2. Stacking is something I'm actively working on. I'm currently implementing support for Apple Live Photos (HEIC + MOV) ([FEAT] view live photo #123). RAW + JPEG pairs ([FEAT] Add a review workspace for RAW+JPEG pairs and similar-photo culling #107) will follow the same underlying approach. Once that foundation is in place, supporting burst stacks should be relatively straightforward. The bigger challenge isn't the backend logic—it's designing a UI that presents stacks in an intuitive way.

3. Supporting multiple external editors, opening an entire virtual collection in an editor, and automatically detecting newly created edited files are all excellent ideas. I think these features would fit Lap very well, and I can definitely add them to the roadmap.

4. I'll wait for your further research and feedback regarding metadata/XMP sidecars. It's an important topic, and I'd like to design it carefully.

5. Sharing and exporting are still missing from Lap today, but they're definitely features I want to build in the future.

6. Completely agree. Importing photos from memory cards should eventually become part of Lap's workflow.

Again, these are all excellent suggestions. I'd really like to see more users join this discussion and share their own workflows. Understanding how different photographers work will help shape Lap into a more flexible and capable DAM.