Photo Catalog Software (like iPhoto, etc): What's the Advantage?

I guess I'm missing something, but every time I've tried any photo catalog type software (on any OS), I always stop using it, and revert back to a separate viewer and editor. If I already have my images in a hierarchy of directories, like: People > Family > Dad, or Gear > Mac > iMac (you get the idea), what does something like iPhoto do for me, aside from doubling the amount of disk space taken up by my images, and making editing more complicated? For example, I then have the edited copy and the original, or find "dupes" in the library. How do others feel about this. Do you find such apps intuitive and easy, or do you also just use a viewer to view your collection, and a separate editor to edit your images? Thanks!

Switch to Aperture, that way you have editing software and DAM software all in one package. Aperture allows you to quickly search through THOUSANDS of photos to find the image(s) that you want.

If you are not a person who shoots thousands of photos then maybe your current way of working is best for your needs.

Aperture fits my needs brilliantly.

I use photo management software for two reasons:

1. Sorting and finding images is much easier:
- I can view photos by date, by tags, by categories or by albums.
- I can make separate "collections" or groups without duplicating files
- Moving, emailing, batch re-naming or exporting and publishing can be done from within one app.

2. Nondestructive editing:
- If I don't like a part of a picture, I can crop it out and always know I can retrieve the original later. I don't have to make sure to create a backup copy, and I don't have multiple versions of one image when browsing albums


It's such a pain for me to have to manually manage everything in folders: Does this picture from christmas go in the "events" or in the "family" folder? Do I organize by month or event? etc. etc.

It's the same argument as iTunes vs. manually ripping, tagging and sorting music into folders. Why put up with the hassle?

Organising photos using folders n all that? Seriously? That is so windows! I love iPhoto for family pictures n all. Just plug in the camera, and the rest is taken care of. Events are an awesome feature for browsing photos. No need for creating albums and all that. Time Machine backs up my photos and retrives them in style. I can have nice slideshows in Front Row. Bonjour photo sharing.

I do keep my professional photos in Aperture (earlier Lightroom, but now Aperture 2 kicks azz). That is like the ultimate in organising images. (although not really suited for family pictures).

geekboy2000 said:

If I already have my images in a hierarchy of directories, like: People > Family > Dad, or Gear > Mac > iMac

Click to expand...

Well, what happens if you have a picture of Dad with his brand new iMac? A pair of iPhoto albums can handle that...folders can't.

There's no reason you have to use iPhoto, but it can help organize large numbers of photos better than you could on your own.

goobimama said:

Organising photos using folders n all that? Seriously? That is so windows! I love iPhoto for family pictures n all. Just plug in the camera, and the rest is taken care of. Events are an awesome feature for browsing photos. No need for creating albums and all that. Time Machine backs up my photos and retrives them in style. I can have nice slideshows in Front Row. Bonjour photo sharing.

I do keep my professional photos in Aperture (earlier Lightroom, but now Aperture 2 kicks azz). That is like the ultimate in organising images. (although not really suited for family pictures).

Click to expand...

I got a chuckle out of your response, because though it's been 2+ years since I moved to using my Macs for 99% of my computing needs, I guess I still have the Windows mentality when it comes to photo management. There, I used an old version of ACDSee for viewing, and Paintshop Pro for editing. I never found an all-in-one that quite did it for me there either. I guess it takes awhile to shake old habits.

technologist said:

Well, what happens if you have a picture of Dad with his brand new iMac? A pair of iPhoto albums can handle that...folders can't.

There's no reason you have to use iPhoto, but it can help organize large numbers of photos better than you could on your own.

Click to expand...

Right. I guess I'm tending to "fight" it's automation of the process. But, I don't have an enormous number of photos, so perhaps I'm not seeing the benefit that I might if I had 10,000 pics to organize.

Thanks to all that responded. Yes, in a way, iTunes is the same thing, but I don't have duplicates of my songs. If I import a track or tracks into my iTunes library, I delete the original file(s). And, for thousands and thousands of songs, it's excellent, and the only way to catalog music (for me). But, I guess I do tend to fight the image management concept of iPhoto and other such apps. If I edit a photo, I prefer to edit it, do a "save as", and know exactly what I have and where it is. For example: "eli_chasing_the_ball.jpg" and "eli_chasing_the_ball_resized.jpg". That's clear to me, and if I see the file name with the image, I know what's what. With iPhoto, I tended to see multiple copies of images, not knowing what I did to what file, etc. I think goobimama nailed it. I still haven't shaken all the old Windows ways.

geekboy2000 said:

Thanks to all that responded. Yes, in a way, iTunes is the same thing, but I don't have duplicates of my songs. If I import a track or tracks into my iTunes library, I delete the original file(s). And, for thousands and thousands of songs, it's excellent, and the only way to catalog music (for me). But, I guess I do tend to fight the image management concept of iPhoto and other such apps. If I edit a photo, I prefer to edit it, do a "save as", and know exactly what I have and where it is. For example: "eli_chasing_the_ball.jpg" and "eli_chasing_the_ball_resized.jpg". That's clear to me, and if I see the file name with the image, I know what's what. With iPhoto, I tended to see multiple copies of images, not knowing what I did to what file, etc. I think goobimama nailed it. I still haven't shaken all the old Windows ways.

Click to expand...

Fair enough I guess.

The only other point I'd make is that especially if you haven't got that many images, the amount of space taken up by duplicates is negligible considering the price per GB nowadays.

My Library has a few years of pictures and is 12GB in size. Even assuming that's 6GB of duplicates and edits, the cost of additional 6GB is nothing compared to the value of the images to me.

(Actually my Library takes up 36GB in total with my 2 backups..)

geekboy, i'm in your shoes almost exactly. even went so far as to remove iphoto from my macbook.

i use folders to organize, use save as to edit alternate file versions of the same photo, i use xee in place of the old ms photo/fax viewer, and i used to use ACDSee as well.

if what you're doing works for you, stay with it.

i actually do the same for music, i only load them into itunes as needed to play them...

eric said:

geekboy, i'm in your shoes almost exactly. even went so far as to remove iphoto from my macbook.

i use folders to organize, use save as to edit alternate file versions of the same photo, i use xee in place of the old ms photo/fax viewer, and i used to use ACDSee as well.

if what you're doing works for you, stay with it.

i actually do the same for music, i only load them into itunes as needed to play them...

Click to expand...

I feel good to have company in my madness!
I guess we're both either having a hard time breaking old Windows habits, or we're both extremely anal about having to organize manually just for the sake of it. Yeah, either way, I think I'll continue with the viewer/editor system. The only thing that might sway me is Picasa, if/when Google releases a Mac version.

@geekyboy. Give lightroom or Aperture a chance. Both have 30 day trials. They don't touch your originals. But offer some really neat ways of organizing your pictures.

Definitely try out Aperture 2, it has over 100 new features...

http://apple.com/aperture/features/100.html

See, I was still not all that impressed with Aperture. I really wanted to like it too, ya know, the whole Apple thing.


*nice quote

goobimama said:

@geekyboy. Give lightroom or Aperture a chance. Both have 30 day trials. They don't touch your originals. But offer some really neat ways of organizing your pictures.

Click to expand...

It's definitely worth a shot. I want to break old habits. Maybe that'll be the winner. Thanks!

Btw, check out the Aperture tutorials provided by apple. Everthing you need to know about the software. As for liking aperture, it takes a little while to like it. But once you get there, you can't live without it. The power and control over your images, is simply stunning. Although, I will say that iPhoto is better for family pictures (cause they don't generally need a lot of editing).

For all the reasons enumerated by others, I would also highly recommend using Aperture 2 or LightRoom. They make the downloading, filing, editing, and sorting process so quick and efficient, that it is well worth the investment in time and money.

I'm not sure I saw this mentioned in any of the other posts, but with LightRoom, I can tag images with keywords at the time of download. For example, I can identify images with words like "Dogs", "Kids", "Vacation". When I want to retrieve images containing that subject matter, I simply run the search engine in LR, and it comes up within seconds. I don't have to worry about file heirarchy, dates, subject titles, etc.

Your image file may still be a manageable size now, but over the years, it will get larger, at which point you will be glad that you used Aperture 2 or LightRoom. I would also recommend the trial version so that you can see first hand what we're talking about. For LightRoom, there is a very good introductory tutorial that can be viewed HERE.