I rage-quit Emacs this morning. By that, I don’t mean that I hit C-x C-c really hard, although I did do that. I mean I stopped using Emacs.

The last time I rewatched “The West Wing” I was once again impressed by how good people were at their jobs. How productive everyone was. I wondered how I could be that productive.

I’ve gone through many photographic workflows. Each time, I’m certain that I’ve figured out what works best for me. Finally! Then a few months later I switch back or come up with something new. I wish I would stop doing this, but I probably never will.

So, I have a new workflow ????

There is a part of me that really wants to let Adobe deal with everything. Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to organize, store, back up, or otherwise manage tens of thousands of image files? I could just use Lightroom (desktop) and let the cloud take over the rest. Except I can’t. I have proven myself incapable of giving up control over the files. I have decades of images stored in nicely-organized, dated folders. I know where they are. I know how to back them up. It feels safe forever.

Scanning 35mm film with a flatbed scanner isn’t great, so I bought a PrimeFilm XAs scanner to see if that would help. It didn’t.

The XAs creates large, sharp scans…when it works. I was excited by the prospect of scanning an entire roll of 35mm film in one go. Just feed the film into one end and it comes out the other, leaving behind up to 36 5000dpi scans.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that way. I was only able to scan a full roll once without issues. Alignment just never worked and I’d end up with offset frames for 3/4 of the roll. I never did figure out why it worked sometimes but not others.

I put together a workbench in my basement office that was supposed to house all of the cool “maker” projects I was planning. You know, little electronic builds, equipment repair, that sort of thing. I’ve come to realize that these projects are infrequent and the workbench space is mostly wasted.

I’ve found myself occasionally standing at the bench to write in my notebook or read a magazine, just as a chance to stand up for a while. I haven’t had an adjustable-height desk since leaving Fusionary, and I enjoy standing.

• 2019-01-01 I’ve decided I’ll be using Lightroom CC.
• 2021-05-15 Don’t listen to 2019 me, I’m using Lightroom Classic
• 2021-06-03 Don’t listen to May 2021 me, I’m using Capture One now.
• 2021-08-12 Don’t listen to June 2021 me, I’m using Lightroom Classic again.
• 2021-08-15 Don’t listen to last week’s me, I’m using Capture One.

Obviously, I struggle with which tool to use. I was certain I’d “permanently” settled on Lightroom Classic just a week ago. In my comparisons, Lightroom wins nearly every category. But there was this entry:

I’m trying to stick with the Adobe suite for processing, editing, and managing photos.

I prefer Capture One’s editing process, but Lightroom Classic has everything else going for it, (ecosystem, tooling, ubiquity, etc.) so that’s where I’ve settled for now.

But I’d love to take advantage of Lightroom CC on mobile and my laptop. CC and Classic will sync, but if not handled properly the whole enterprise can quickly turn into a mess. What I was doing is to import into Classic, edit, export, then add the “keepers” to a synced catalog (or “all synched photographs”) so that those photos would be available everywhere. The problem is that this takes diligence and consistency. It takes work. I’m not good at consistency, and I end up frustrated and bailing on the whole thing.

I’m not an iPad person, even though I’ve used one since the day they were released. I just don’t understand how anyone thinks they can be anywhere near as productive on an iPad as on a “real” computer. Stockholm Syndrome or something, I always figured, but smarter people than I are doing it, so who’m I to judge?

Curio to help manage the project. I opened the Curio project and within thirty seconds of just looking at the workspace I had a handle on the project and easily found an answer to the questions I’d been asked.

Whenever I revisit something that I’d created in TheBrain or a mind map or Curio or Tinderbox, I find the spatial layout of the information to be instantly useful.

I’ve never loved editing photos in Adobe’s Lightroom (Classic). It does the job fine, and it has all the tools one might need, but it’s no fun. I prefer editing with Capture One Pro.

As much as I enjoy the editing process in Capture One, it otherwise feels like working on an island. C1 has no way to sync photos, the plugin/extension options are very limited, and while it works with other editors, it doesn’t do it as seamlessly as Lightroom. And so on.