Photo browser

So am I the only one who does not like to work with his photos in a library like Iphoto, Aperture, ACDC or Adobe LR?

So am I the only one who is just missing a few small things in Preview? Like browsing without pre-selecting the photos you want to browse? Like cropping but then in a proper way? Like deleting a photo by just pressing a button?

So yes have been searching the net but it seems there is no program that can do all this simple tasks (like I could do in Windows).

Finder does all of that, except cropping... to be honest, I have no idea what you mean by 'in a proper way', since I've been using PS to crop since 92.

OK lets explain it .....

I have about 10.000 photos in about 200 folders.
With Finder I can find any of that photos and even see a TN of it. And yes I can enlarge the TN but that is still not a pleasant way of browsing thru 100's of new photos.

But lets agree on using Finder to find the photo .... then you click on it and Preview will show the photo. Great! But in Preview I can not browse to the next photo or previous photo. To do that I have to return to Finder again.

Then in Preview indeed I can change size and color, but 1 other thing is cropping. Should I switch to another program to crop every time? Yes you can crop in Preview but that is in a way one would do that about 30 years ago.

Yes of course Apple just want to force you to use Iphoto or Aperture. Nice ... all your photos in one big library. Then you want to upload that from an web-site. No way to do that.

So would it not be nice to extend the functionality of Preview to an ImageBrowser and build in a good cropping function? O no sorry then Iphoto becomes useless.

Chang Noi

ChangNoi said:

So am I the only one who does not like to work with his photos in a library like Iphoto, Aperture, ACDC or Adobe LR?

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You're rare, but you're not the only one.

You should check out ACDSee Pro for Mac (which is often on sale, so wait for a sale). I think it will do exactly what you're looking for and then some.

Full disclosure: I used to work for the company that makes ACDSee. I don't work for them anymore but I do like the product very much for certain aspects. One of its main selling points is that it works with your photos WITHOUT using a library, vault, etc or indeed imposing ANY kind of forced structure on the user. It's got lots of other nice features as well.

This will do everything you want except maybe crop: Download Phoenix Slides for Mac - Image browsing/slideshow application. MacUpdate.com

Yes, you are the only one.

I removed your email - no point making the spammers job easier.

Have you tried Picasa? It doesn't create a library like other apps (it just reads the files from defined directories) and might meet all of your needs.

Actually, that's all Lightroom does too

Dysfunction said:

Actually, that's all Lightroom does too

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Good to know.

My lack of photography related knowledge is apparent here.

Dysfunction said:

Actually, that's all Lightroom does too

Click to expand...

Though I love LR, and am an advocate, I probably wouldn't go that far with such a statement. In order for LR or Aperture etc to even show folder hierarchies, you first have to use the import function. Doing this creates two distinct files in your "Pictures" folder:



The Catalog "data" file is a bit above 7 gigs and the Library file is about 450MB. I'd say this is a bit different than being able to browse directly in the folder you're looking at without the program having to pre cache anything. I looked for such files associated with ACDsee but could find none.

Picasa actually creates such a pre cache file as well, so it too is guilty. However, in defense of these applications, such measures are necessary in order to give the best user experience in terms of features, flexibility and speed.

I guess it depends on what you're doing with said photo app, but from my perspective, if you're gonna go, go all the way. ACDsee has a decent interface for viewing, but since it also attempts to throw editing in to the mix, you have to then weigh the pros and cons of that feature vs other apps such as Aperture, LR or PS Elements etc.. At that point, you're in for a longer task than you might have anticipated, but the only way to be sure is to actually try.

I can tell you with certainty that after having tried ACDsee for just a little while, I'd be wholly unsatisfied with the editing results when comparing to Lightroom. I can however, say the same thing about Aperture, so YMMV.

Were I you, and you were looking solely for an image "viewer", I'd personally stick with something akin to Picasa. I found something in the App Store called "Lona Photo Viewer." Looks prett nice, actually: Mac App Store - Lona Photo Viewer

You might find other apps if you look around I suppose.

Doug

Sure, but it does not "order" your images like iPhoto or aperture does, it does not create a package with them hidden in it. All it does is point to plain old directory structures.

Dysfunction said:

Sure, but it does not "order" your images like iPhoto or aperture does, it does not create a package with them hidden in it. All it does is point to plain old directory structures.

Click to expand...

I wasn't disputing that, and I'm with you there. However, it's still not the same as just using a Finder type GUI in which the sole purpose is to read a directory with photos and then be able to render them, as well as do basic editing without the need for any type of database/library/catalog whatsoever.

This is actually how Adobe's Bridge works, but it of course needs either PS or an external editor for further work on the photos. Now, if the OP's issue is not wanting to have all the extra's that come along with such large Apps such as Aperture, LR, ACDsee etc.. that's another story.

To be honest, I'm not sure of why using Finder along with Preview isnt' good enough, since that's pretty much the equivalent of using Window's Picture Viewer. You can do a free frorm crop from within Preview, so it's flexible enough.

Bah, I dunno man. I love me some Lightroom.

Doug

HAH! I loves me some Lr too. Beats the heck outa Bridge, or having to scroll through directories.

Metadata FTW!

I'm reading the OP's second post again, and it leaves me quite confused. But that's probably because ChangNoi doesn't have a good understanding (yet) of how to do things efficiently in OS X. I mean, it's one thing to flat out say that you don't like iPhoto for x,y or reason z... but to say that it won't do what he wants it to do is entirely another thing.

Is it more bloated than a browser type image viewer like Bridge? Sure. But to say that it doesn't have a proper crop tool, or that you can't upload your edited photos to a certain website is plain wrong. Same thing applies to Aperture, LR etc..

As for using Preview to search for photos, you most certainly can do so without issue, if you allow the time for them to actually load within it. ChangNoi, like you, I actually keep my photos in a folder hierarchy. This habit carried over from my Windows days. But believe it or not, I am able to maintain this way of working, because Lightroom (Aperture does this too, to an certain extent) allows me to create further folders within parent folders (pre existing ones at that) either as I'm importing new photos, or whenever I want!

Anyway, let's say that you have a folder structure set up in Finder, in the Pictures folder (you really should always use the pre-set up folders that appear standard on every OS X install) named : Places. Then let's say that within Places you've got : "Asia" then within "Asia", you've got "Burma" and so forth and so on... Well, If you really want to use Finder and Preview together, you can. Just go to the folder you want and then hit Command+A then just either tap on one of the photos, or right click and choose open with>Preview. But the double tap on a photo will do the same thing. And it will look like this:



And that's just one of the views. You can customize the toolbar and get some really great things going on. You can also make the thumbnails smaller on the side



And you know, you can also select all, hit the space bar and have preview open them all in a slideshow that you're able to control. Once you've found what you want to work on, you can just open that one in preview with one tap/click. That's why I love OS X. So many different ways to get to your destination.

P.S. Pardon the él cheapo EVO 4G pics! It will never happen again.. literally. I smashed my EVO a few days ago.

Doug