iphoto/organizing question

i have a couple of questions.

i've been doing digital photography has a hobby for about 7 years now and i've racked up about 13,000 photos just in the last 2 years. i use iphoto to organize my pictures. but i hate iphoto with a passion. i can't stand it. the event feature is just inconvenient and confusing, and finding a photo is impossible.

i know there has to be something better out there. in your guy's opinion, what is the best digital picture organizer to use? i really don't know too much about these kinds of programs, i know there is bridge but i've never really heard much about it. what about light room or aperture?

also, i have a canon rebel xsi. i import the pictures through iphoto. is there any other why i can import the pics without going through iphoto? like just importing them to the desktop?

thanks!

Im not sure about the organizer part of your question, I just use the finder. But I'm also interested in what you guys think about the photo organizing applications.

However for your second part, about the other way to import your photos, you can use image capture. If you open image capture which is loacted in your applications folder, then select preferences from the menu, you can set what you would like to happen when you connect a digital camera. So, rather than iphoto, you would choose image capture. Then you can import them straight to a folder you wish, or the desktop as you said.

You don't even need to use Image Capture. Connect your camera or memory card, the mac recognises them as devices and then just use finder to copy to a folder of your choice.

eroesle said:

i have a couple of questions.

i've been doing digital photography has a hobby for about 7 years now and i've racked up about 13,000 photos just in the last 2 years. i use iphoto to organize my pictures. but i hate iphoto with a passion. i can't stand it. the event feature is just inconvenient and confusing, and finding a photo is impossible.

i know there has to be something better out there. in your guy's opinion, what is the best digital picture organizer to use? i really don't know too much about these kinds of programs, i know there is bridge but i've never really heard much about it. what about light room or aperture?

also, i have a canon rebel xsi. i import the pictures through iphoto. is there any other why i can import the pics without going through iphoto? like just importing them to the desktop?

thanks!

Click to expand...

I can see why you hate iphoto, using Events is inconvenient and confusing, and using them to finding a photo when you have a lot is almost impossible. Events are a lot like folders, you have to know where the photo is located in the first place before you can find it. But I find iphoto to be one of the best pieces of software on my mac and I hardly ever look at Events or even mess with giving Events a name and I can find any photo I want with just a few clicks on the keyboard. The first thing I do to a photo when it comes into iPhoto is give it a Keyword. You can do that in batches and save a lot of time and you can select a 100 or more photos if you need to and one click on a Keyword and you are done. I use Smart Albums and Keywords and can find any photo on my Mac in seconds.

Lets say I have a photo of Uncle Bob that I took on vacation in 2003 at Blue Lake in Idaho, I would add the Key Words, Blue Lake, Family, Vacation and Idaho (we travel a lot so I have Smart folders for each State).
I can now find that picture several ways and not have to remember what year it was. I can find him by typing Uncle Bob or Family or Idaho or Blue Lake or Vacations. I could even sort my whole library by Date and scroll down to about the time I took the picture. That is just some of the ways to find a photo fast. Uncle Bob would could show up in several Smart Albums, but you would still only have two Pictures of him, the Original and a Modified, well there is a small thumbnail of each too. iPhoto doesn't mess with your Original photo so you can alway go back to it if you mess up making adjustments on it. You can do just about anything you need to from inside iPhoto, but if you need to do something outside of it just use export from the File menu or just drag it to the desktop. I add photo frames to mine sometimes to upload but don't want to keep a copy in iPhoto so I just click on the photo in iPhoto and drag it to the Dock and drop on ImageFramer and it opens up in ImageFramer, I do what I want with it then drop the desktop copy in the trash.

If you are shooting Raw you may want to check out Aperture or Light room, but for jpg I find iPhoto great. I keep thinking I'll try Aperture, but then I see $200.00 and think Free is better.. ;D

Just a note to add that I, too, find iPhoto's organizational abilities wonderful. So easy to use, and so customizable. Use a Smart Folder for each keyword and you have even more control! Organization is what iPhoto was created for -- its purpose in life, you might say!