Colin Devroe has posted his updated photo management workflow, a process that has taken him considerable effort to develop:

In 2018 I decided to set out on a sort of mission; I wanted to create a photo library that would be relatively future proof. Should I decide to use a different app or storage platform, I’d want to be able to do so easily rather than painfully.

Colin uses macOS, but the principles in the article apply to any platform.

His philosophy on keeping the photo metadata with the image file is exactly what I would want to do - protecting the metadata from a corrupt database or unexpected software changes, and allowing portability. I take the same approach to my ripped FLAC music library, which is gathering dust these days but still a nice backup for the days you want something the streaming services don’t have or have suddenly dropped.

I’d like to see an another post on lessons learnt and why not to do certain things. Also curious about the step where Colin fast-filters the keepers - is that just using Finder to flick through the images? There’s probably no need for anything more complex, which is a refreshing thought.

Also interesting that despite working on the workflow and tool selection for years, there’s still a missing piece: search on mobile.

I appreciate the effort people take to post things like this. Every post adds to the pool of knowledge to help avoid easily made but difficult to change mistakes, like Colin’s own findings when depending on Apple Photos as the main tool.

Dr Drang is one of the best examples of this kind of writing, using his posts to show the inner workings of his processes and why he chose certain paths over others - and as a reference site for his own memory.