However, beware that moving and deleting stuff here can cause issues with the Photos database. If you don't want to store your images in the Photos database, just unselect the option to copy them into Photos, and they're live on a normal folder system wherever you want to keep them (as a referenced collection). You can't do that with the mobile version of Lightroom BTW. You can also attach Pixelmator, or Affinity, and some other apps too, for additional editing or creative work.

It also have the benefit of being able to work with third party editors, so you can have a wide choice of how to edit your images - my preference is for Raw Power (which despite its name, can also edit JPEGs and TIFFs) for my initial basic editing. In the end, you'll need to find what you prefer using from the list of suggestions, there is no 'right' answer.įor me, Photos does the job nicely, I decided to upload my entire collection to iCloud, and can access all my images on whatever device I'm using at any time.

Plenty of options out there, to be honest you'll get 20 different answers probably. I would prefer not to be on a subscription model, but a fixed purchase cost.

What she liked was that you could store the pics in 'real' folders and not have to deal with stuff embedded inside a hidden folder or database (here's looking at you Apple Photos), forcing you to export every time. My wife used to use Picasa for organizing and basic edits of files.

Picasa for mac os x