Which photo mgmt tool? PS Elements? Iview Media Pro? iphoto? something else?
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Registered Users Posts: 15 Big grins
This is my first real post to dgrin so please have patience with me. I'm posting this to "Beyond Photoshop" even though it is a general Software question. I couldn't find a category for that. So, Photoshop could definitely be the answer to my question but I thought it would get wider coverage if I posted it in this section.
I'm looking for advice on what tool to use to manage my photos. I've been researching for a couple of weeks and haven't found many good sites for head to head comparisons/recommendations of the various tools in the Mac arena. If anyone knows of one, please just point me there. I've found a ton of sites with reviews of a particular tool but not a lot in the head to head comparison. I've seen a few threads in digital grin that had some info but not quite what I'm asking.
Also, let me apologize for the length of the post. I wanted to include as much detail as possible about what I'm looking for to try to keep it from being like a "I need a rock" question.
Background:
- I'm not a professional photographer. I'd put myself in the low-end "prosumer" category.
- I take about 10,000 photos a year, mainly of my family and friends, but I do like to play around with just taking interesting photos also.
Needs:
- Mac based
- Photo editing:
- mainly just enough to roughly fix the photos (red eye, cropping, rotating, fixing a blemish here and there)
- occasionally do more but not very often. I could probably live without that.
- Primary outputs:
- prints for myself
- uploading them to smugmug for family and friends to view and purchase
- making albums with captions like iphoto's "books" (might just use iphoto books when I need to do that).
- Organization:
- Reliable storage (I'm a little concerned about products that store all of my photos in a database). If the database gets corrupted (as they've been known to occasionally do) you are probably going to lose something or at least have a lot of work in front of you recovering.
- Want to be able to group photos primarily by event (Halloween, recital, playing in the park, trip to the zoo) or type of photo (cake decorating, garden shots, etc.) instead of just by date. That is more important to me. I would rather it maintain this in a structure that you can see from the finder (i.e. each album or roll or whatever the terminology is for that product ends up to be a folder in the finder).
- Easy to add captions and keywords (ability to save them to IPTC data). Batch ability for this would be great but at least being able to sequentially do it (e.g. hitting an arrow for next photo in a caption edit mode or something like that) would be desirable.
- I've got about 50K photos I will need to import into this tool. The different "rolls/events/albums" are stored in different folders with descriptive names so I'm hoping to maintain that in the new tool by just dragging and dropping it in or importing it somehow that maintains that structure.
Other comments:
- I'm not opposed to doing my organization in one tool and my heavier photo editing or output creation in another tool but I'd rather not. If there isn't one tool that does all of those things well, then so be it ... but a girl can hope, can't she.
The organization tool has to at least have red-eye, crop, and rotate.
- I'm not completely opposed to iphoto because it has some nice features in it. I'm just not thrilled with it's underlying file mechanisms and organizational structure so I'm exploring all of my options. It also has some other warts that I don't like but most of those are more minor.
- I'd like to stick with something fairly mainstream so 10 years down the road there will be tools to read the files.
I've heard Photo Shop Elements and Iview (and Pro) are good tools. Is there anything else I should be looking at? What are the main (high level) differences between these? Like I said earlier, feel free to point me to a site that already has this info if one exists.
I would greatly appreciate any help that anyone can provide on this. I've got a huge task ahead of me in importing all of my stuff into a new tool and I'm anxious to get started before the problem just gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
I'm looking for advice on what tool to use to manage my photos. I've been researching for a couple of weeks and haven't found many good sites for head to head comparisons/recommendations of the various tools in the Mac arena. If anyone knows of one, please just point me there. I've found a ton of sites with reviews of a particular tool but not a lot in the head to head comparison. I've seen a few threads in digital grin that had some info but not quite what I'm asking.
Also, let me apologize for the length of the post. I wanted to include as much detail as possible about what I'm looking for to try to keep it from being like a "I need a rock" question.
Background:
- I'm not a professional photographer. I'd put myself in the low-end "prosumer" category.
- I take about 10,000 photos a year, mainly of my family and friends, but I do like to play around with just taking interesting photos also.
Needs:
- Mac based
- Photo editing:
- mainly just enough to roughly fix the photos (red eye, cropping, rotating, fixing a blemish here and there)
- occasionally do more but not very often. I could probably live without that.
- Primary outputs:
- prints for myself
- uploading them to smugmug for family and friends to view and purchase
- making albums with captions like iphoto's "books" (might just use iphoto books when I need to do that).
- Organization:
- Reliable storage (I'm a little concerned about products that store all of my photos in a database). If the database gets corrupted (as they've been known to occasionally do) you are probably going to lose something or at least have a lot of work in front of you recovering.
- Want to be able to group photos primarily by event (Halloween, recital, playing in the park, trip to the zoo) or type of photo (cake decorating, garden shots, etc.) instead of just by date. That is more important to me. I would rather it maintain this in a structure that you can see from the finder (i.e. each album or roll or whatever the terminology is for that product ends up to be a folder in the finder).
- Easy to add captions and keywords (ability to save them to IPTC data). Batch ability for this would be great but at least being able to sequentially do it (e.g. hitting an arrow for next photo in a caption edit mode or something like that) would be desirable.
- I've got about 50K photos I will need to import into this tool. The different "rolls/events/albums" are stored in different folders with descriptive names so I'm hoping to maintain that in the new tool by just dragging and dropping it in or importing it somehow that maintains that structure.
Other comments:
- I'm not opposed to doing my organization in one tool and my heavier photo editing or output creation in another tool but I'd rather not. If there isn't one tool that does all of those things well, then so be it ... but a girl can hope, can't she.
The organization tool has to at least have red-eye, crop, and rotate.- I'm not completely opposed to iphoto because it has some nice features in it. I'm just not thrilled with it's underlying file mechanisms and organizational structure so I'm exploring all of my options. It also has some other warts that I don't like but most of those are more minor.
- I'd like to stick with something fairly mainstream so 10 years down the road there will be tools to read the files.
I've heard Photo Shop Elements and Iview (and Pro) are good tools. Is there anything else I should be looking at? What are the main (high level) differences between these? Like I said earlier, feel free to point me to a site that already has this info if one exists.
I would greatly appreciate any help that anyone can provide on this. I've got a huge task ahead of me in importing all of my stuff into a new tool and I'm anxious to get started before the problem just gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
0
Comments
Here's what I use:
iView Mediapro - catalog
CaptureOne LE - RAW conversion
PS Elements 3 - editing
"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."-Hunter S.Thompson
Don't be fooled by Fish's gracious and to the point answer. He's an irascible, curmudgeonly fellow, and his adoption of iView Media Pro was painful and cursefilled.
I use iVMP, too. Here's my take on what you should consider:
Even if you use iPhoto for organization, you should get Photoshop Elements for editing, as the power of that program for the price is amazing.
It sounds like you are not yet shooting RAW. If you think you may shoot RAW, I would steer you away from iPhoto. It will handle RAW, but not nearly well enough to be useful. Really, if you're shooting RAW the limitations of iPhoto are frustrating.
If you're just gonna shoot JPEG, iPhoto does better. Keep in mind that it will automatically keep your original image as well as any changes, whether made in iPhoto or PS. This will quickly swell the size of your library, especially if you really shoot 10,000 per year. The upside is that backup to DVD or CD is very easy in iPhoto.
iVMP is what I use, along with Capture One Pro and Photoshop CS. Capture one is for RAW conversion, Photoshop CS over Elements is because I got an educational discount. Elements should cover your needs for quite a while.
One major benefit of iVMP is that you can sync your annotations back to the original file. What this means is that your concern about forward compatibility is addressed in that your keywords get written to the file in a standardized format, one that PS and other apps can read. So if you decide to move to another application, you can use those embedded keywords to organize your new library.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
So, in answer to your question, yes I did search this forum. However, when you search on fairly generic terms like photoshop, elements, or iview you get a ton of results (500 alone on photoshop). Most of the posts are about a specific feature or two. I did find a few threads that did some comparisons (like the one where you gave your impressions on iphoto5 when it first came out) and they were helpful. I slogged through a lot of other posts as well (and learned a lot about other topics) looking for some help and tidbits. However, most of them were from the perspective of pretty high powered users (from what I can tell). Y'all are in a different class than me. There were a lot of discussions about shooting in RAW and a lot of discussions about the different editing tools. Those are definitely the care-abouts for higher-powered users. I'm kind of a level below that, which is why I asked the question how I did. I'm not a high-powered user but I'm not just a "I'm happy with the picture just as long as I don't cut someone's head off the top" user either.
Since y'all live and breath these tools and know all of the good, the bad, and the ugly, I was looking more for some advice that said "given what you said your requirements are, this will probably be what you are looking for".
That might be too much to ask and too generic of a question to answer in this type of a forum. Sorry. Thanks for letting me know what you use though. That's always helpful.
I couldn't tell how iVMp really works under the covers though. Does it just use your existing folders or does it pull everything into a library like iphoto does? I'd really like the ability to have it put the photos into folders that I can easily get to in the Finder. It can have it's own database for it's own structure info and I'm cool with that. I'd just rather be able to burn CD's, do backups, etc. using other tools if possible.
Is the cataloging in PSE any good or would it be pretty hard for me to try to use it for that also? Do you know of anyone who does that or would that just be trying to get a screwdriver to do a hammer's job?
It uses your existing folders, which makes it much better than iPhoto. It has a nice downloading routine that allows you to create a new folder and populated it from the card, when you insert it in the reader. It's really about cataloging (sp?) and indexing, rather than being a standalone database, per se. I have a love-hate relationship with iVMP, but there really isn't anything better for the mac right now. iVMP's backup/burning features leave a lot to be desired. On lynnesite's recommendation, I bought Toast Titanium, and it's great for archiving to DVD.
PSE doesn't catalog. It's for editing.
"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."-Hunter S.Thompson
Amazing, and a little overwhelming for a newbie. I've been playing with the demo and I'm still trying to find my way around it. There are a ton of tutorials out there for how to use feature xyz but very few "overview" ones. Even the "Getting Started" section on Adobe's site pretty much starts with editing your pictures instead of showing you the way around the tool. I'm still plugging away at it ... 21 more days left of the demo version.
You are correct, I'm not yet shooting RAW. I don't know that I'll ever get there but it is a good thing to consider though. I'll have to think about that.
I didn't know that iPhoto kept both the original and the changes. That's good input. iPhoto's underlying structure just scares me a little. I've just seen some quirky things in playing with iPhoto 4. If I duplicate a photo it sometimes adds copy to the end of the filename and other times it just increments the number (like if the original was IMG_1234 it made the copy IMG_1235 if I didn't already have a file imported as that already). Yikes!! That's concerning to me that it would just make it look like a different picture instead of maintaining the linkage to the original one. I haven't figured out when it does it one way and when it does it the other but I have duplicated the problem more than once. I don't have iPhoto 5 to know if that is still a problem or not. Anyway, the point is, I feel like I don't have control over how it handles my stuff and that bothers me a bit ... maybe I'm a bit of a control freak.
Believe it or not I really do shoot about 10K photos a year. I find it hard to believe myself sometimes. I throw very few shots away no matter how bad they are (much to my husband's annoyance), and I love the "multi-shot" mode on my camera so I get a lot of shots of the same sequence. I figure bits are cheap and it's really hard to catch my lightning fast toddler and very active preschooler otherwise. The more shots I throw at it, the more likely it is that I'll get a good shot in there somewhere.
Thanks for the input.
That is a big plus. I can't believe that Apple hasn't gotten on the bandwagon with that one with iPhoto. At least Caption Buddy on the backside helps ... although it doesn't handle keywords. I don't quite understand why they wouldn't have added that to Caption Buddy because it seems fairly simple to add ... as long as you know AppleScript I suppose.
Thanks for the inputs. That helps a lot. $200 seems a lot of money for a tool that only does cataloging but I guess being able to easily find and manage your pictures is hard to put a price on. I can't tell you how much time I've wasted in my current tool watching the cursor spin because it apparently wasn't meant to handle large-ish volumes of pictures.
Thanks for including the links but I couldn't get them to work though. When I clicked on them, it always said there were no matches which I knew couldn't be right.
OK, I'll have to take a look at it again. I didn't look into it for too long because it didn't look like it did enough to warrent a $200 price tag. Maybe it does more than I think. It seems like it would be a pain to have to do basics like rotation, red-eye, and cropping in another tool but oh well.
Cataloging might be too strong of a term for what I was trying to say. I know you can add IPTC captions and keywords (albiet a bit painfully) and add new folders and flagging. I was just trying to see if I can limp by with just buying PSE. It sounds like it would be pretty painful. Ugh!!
Thanks for the input.
You should compare iView Media and iView Media Pro. You may find that the $50 version meets your needs. The one challenge may be the max number of files, but there also may be a workaround in how you structure the catalogs to work around that. I think you can have catalogs within catalogs. Take a look at their Workflow Solutions Whitepaper for more info on how to use the app.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Write support for IPTC, XMP, QuickTime annotations (Synchronized between catalogs and media)
it's not in the non-Pro version. I suppose I could get a shareware tool or something to do IPTC captions and keywords but then that takes away a big part of what I would use iVM for.
I've already gone down the path with my current tool of having a ton of comments that are useless to me now because they are only read by the tool, aren't exportable, and aren't part of the media file. I didn't know any better when I started 5 years ago. Live and learn.
So, unfortunately no IPTC write support and no lossless JPEG rotations point me to the pro version if I decide to go down that path. I really was hoping that wasn't the case but it is.
Thanks for the suggestion though.
Also, I just found the image editor in iVMp. I hadn't run across that before. While it isn't great, at least I can do basics like red-eye and cropping. Earlier I thought I would have to do ALL of my editing in another tool which would have been a huge pain.
I guess I need to play-around with iVMp's demo version some more and see if I can convince myself that I won't hate myself in the morning for spending $200 for it.
Using PS Elements is not a huge pain, and the iVMP editing tools are barely adequate, or not at all. I don't trust them. I've used it for jpeg conversions, set it to best and all, and they still come out looking funky. I just steer clear of the editing tools, but then, I have different needs/goals than you. Definitely check them out and see if they work for you.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
So are you saying that you think that PS Elements could be used for basic "cataloging" ( and of course awesome editing capabilities) without too much of a pain? Putting captions (descriptions in their lingo I think) in seems to be a bit of pain unless I haven't figured out the right magic incantations to make it easier yet. Ideally I'd like to select all of the photos in a roll/catalog/grouping, bring up a comment editing tool, and be able to cycle through them (i.e. next picture button or whatever), to type in comments. I'd just rather not have to go and select each picture one at a time and add the comment. I'm talking about where I need to have different captions per picture, not a "batch" type of edit this time. Again, if I have to, I have to. What other "cataloging" types of things am I not thinking of that PS Elements wouldn't work for or would be difficult to use?
I consider myself an intermediate to advanced Photoshop user and I take a lot of photos. However, like many, I live in a multiple digital camera family
At the time, I did not shoot RAW and I was using Photoshop 6. I saw a little blurb on the Adobe website and thought I'd try this little program out as something for the wife. Right from the get go, I really liked the browzer interface and the ability to tag (basically a fancy multi-keyword indexing system). It also had the ability to very do basic editing. So for a couple of years, I cataloged all the family photos, archived, etc. with Photoshop Album, edited with Photoshop.
As with a lot of products, the gap between features narrows over time. Photoshop Album became more like Elements, Elements has added many of the features of Photoshop, and now, Elements/Album are really one and the same. Although an entry level Album is still available, Elements 3 is really the best of both worlds. My wife uses Elements 3 for cataloging and editing. I use Elements 3 for cataloging and CS for Editing.
Here's what I like about Elements 3 from a workflow point of view:
1. Pictures will automatically load from a card reader into a default directory of choice without having the software running. I have it create a folder based on date added.
2. I can delete photos on import and tag them as I go. I reads my Canon 20D RAW files just fine.
3. I can burn a disk of these new files right away or wait and back them up as part of a larger set. Archiving also allows you to maintain a thumbnail and a link to your archived photos.
IMHO, I feel Adobe has done an exceptional job in creating a very user friendly program in Elements 3.0. My wife took to it like a fish to water. A slick wizard driven interface allows her to share, make picture packages (Elements had it long before Photoshop), do slideshows, etc. She often stumbles around PC programs (she is the perfect candidate for a Mac:D . Please don't take this as a shot Mac users!), but Photoshop Elements has been extremely easy for her to learn ... without manuals!
It should be noted that the Mac version of Elements is a bit different than the PC version. The Mac version uses the more widely used keyword method (instead of tagging) and allows editing of some metadata.
We currently have about 17,000 photos cataloged.
When Photoshop CS added the browser, I entered a whole new world of metadata. The only thing I don't like about Elements is that it can read the metadata, but not change it (at least on the PC version). So lately I've been telling myself that I need a better photo management system (just like I tell myself that I need more L-glass, etc:D ).
Over the last 60 days I have tried 3 software packages: ACDC 7.0, Extensis Portfolio 7.0 and Iview MediaPro 2.6.3. Since I already have a very usable system, I was comparing these packages to what I already have today with Elements 3.0.
ACDC was quite user friendly. It imported my photos quite easily and allowed me to add keywords, etc. No real problems, but the user interface just didn't fit with me. For the price, I think its not bad.
I have other Extensis software packages so I really looked forward to Extensis Portfolio. It seems to be used by a lot of Professionals and can be implemented in a multi-user network environment. I have to say that I was very disappointed with it. Despite it's many users, I just found it very counter-intuitive. I found a note on a forum where a user praised the great features of the program but noted that he have the user manual on hand for the first few months. I consider myself a power user for most of the software I use, and I struggled with its interface. For its price, I cannot see myself ever buying this software.
Then I tried IVMP. Ah, heaven. The program has many of the things I like best about Elements. A very user friendly interface. It automatically "tags" (creates indexes) for things like filetype (I had to do this manually in Elements), dates, etc. Keywords can be easily added by dragging and dropping (this is much like Elements. Type once, drag many!). At the time of this testing, it was the only software able to writeback the EXIF metadata to my RAW files. If you read both the Extensis and Iview Forums, there is still some griping about lack of certain features, but the one thing I read most was the lack of response by Extensis to user problems and complaints. Iview seems to get mostly excellent reviews for customer service.
If you've read this far. Thank you! What I REALLY think is the most important point of this post, is the the software needs to fit YOU! There are diehard users of all the packages I tried. I just happen to like Photoshop Elements and IVMP. So, if you are on a budget, I think Elements makes so much sense for a lot of digital families. You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck. And, if you're like me and use CS as your photo editor, you can use its file browzer to edit your metadata.
I am likely going to buy IVMP. Not being multiuser is not a consideration. I think it's the software of choice for highend requirements. But don't take my word for it!
You can test drive everyone of these packages! So do it! Quit reading all these reviews and just try them! The proof is in the (pudding) testing
Regards,
Brad
www.digismile.ca
i'll trade you one of my minions for a mouthpiece..
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Andy sez:
Indeed, PS Elements is different on the Mac, as Adobe avoided competing with iPhoto, and the Mac version lacks the cataloging capability of the PC version.
The best combo for you, in Andy's opinion, is iVMP and PS Elements.
BTW, if anyone else would like a mouthpiece, let me know. I'd happily speak on your behalf.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I tried to play around tonight with putting files into iVMP and then dragging them into Elements to edit. That part worked fine. Getting them back in didn't work so seamlessly but I'm working on that. I was expecting it to tell me it was a duplicate file and ask me if I wanted to rename or replace or something. Instead it just merrily accepted it but the original was gone. So I thought, ok, I'll just make a duplicate first and then throw the copy into PSE. I couldn't figure out how to make a duplicate of a picture in iVMP. That's when I decided that I was too tired from being up with sick kiddos and staying up late working on this. Time to go to bed and hopefully be thinking more clearly tomorrow.
Any tips or pointers about how to get those two apps to work together nicely would be greatly appreciated.
I'm also considering just using iphoto and just exporting every album into a file structure that I can live with when I'm done with the album. Disk space is cheap, right? .
Y'all have been very helpful. Thank you very much for continuing to add to this thread today.
Adobe had a version of Photoshop Album slated for release for Mac, then pulled it at the last minute. It's not that they haven't gotten around to it, it's that they're not gonna do it.
When you drag an image from iVMP to PS you're dragging the original. That's fine, just make sure you do a "save as" and then import that new image into iVMP. There's a thread about the limitations of this here.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Brad
www.digismile.ca
Thanks for the pointer. It's an ugly work around but at least there is a work around.
After all of this wonderful advice I'm leaning towards iVMP with PSE but it bugs me to fork out all of the $$ and still have to do kludgey things like this to make my environment work.
Thanks again for all of the help. You'll probably be seeing more posts from me as I get deeper into this. I hope y'all won't run away screaming in terror when I do.
I'm reading this thread closely (even though I'm a Windows user) because I'm in a similar position with respect to both having a lot of images and taking a lot of images. I too am trying to understand the most efficient & effective cataloging workflow to use for compatiblity. I have PSE 3.0 and understand that you cannot use it to write IPTC data such as captions, keywords, etc. So, then I'm back to trying to use Photoshop CS which I have (but feel very lost in). This learning curve stuff is steep -- but I'm willing to try most anything new. I'm a bit of a geek at heart.
I have worked with Paint Shop Album (& PSP), PS Photo Album 2, and now the Organizer of PSE3.0. Also am trying ACDSee v7 (it's easy to use, but won't write IPTC data into the files). So, what else to try?
I would still like to find an organizing/viewing tool that is fast to run, can be used to write IPTC data, and sorts/selects images quickly. Is that just a dream?
http://www.djea.smugmug.com
I'm really bad at describing such things, just have a look at it.
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
Dianne,
After a lot of good advice from this forum, I bit the bullet and forked over the $150 (on Amazon) for Iview Media Pro. I didn't like spending that much but I'm very happy that I did. It's very intuitive, easy to use, powerful, flexible, and I love the fact that it leaves my picture structure on disk ALONE (unlike iphoto).
Someone here said that the editing capabilities on it are very flakey. I haven't gotten to that part yet as I'm still importing my pictures into the catalog. I just wanted to mention it to you. If you have PS Elements though that should do what you need to do for editing from what I've seen.
My biggest problem with Iview Media Pro so far has been trying to figure out how I want to set up my catagories, keywords, etc. I posted to this forum in the hopes that someone had some good advice there but no one has responded to that question yet. I'm still hoping.
I will also caveat all of this with the fact that I'm a Mac user. I have no idea how similar the product is on a PC but I'm guessing they are close.
They have a 21 day trial and a really good manual so you might try it out to see if it works for you. Anyway, good luck.
Did you look at iMatch? I'm going over there to give it a try.
http://www.djea.smugmug.com