What's better than iPhoto?

Have you looked into Adobe Lightroom? I gather it has a cataloging
function.

Hello Ben,

Have you called Apple? Or checked the Apple Discussion groups, or
Apple's iPhoto Support pages? There are a bunch of procedures you can
follow...

As for what is better than iPhoto: Aperture. another Apple app. It is
aimed at dedicated photographers, and does have a lot more to it than
iPhoto. The main reason you might prefer it is that it leaves your
photo storage system alone, so you can organize them any way you wish.

I used to use iView Media Pro, but found that I spent too much time
organizing files, and there was no way to view my entire collection
easily. Microsoft bought them since, and I have no idea what the new
name is.

Upgrading to iPhoto '08 might help, as it does rebuild your database
when you upgrade. The Events view is also a fantastic feature, and I
can not image using a photo system that does not have it.

Now if only I could figure out how to archive photos without losing
the descriptions and keywords. I thought iPhoto '08 was using IPTC/
EXIF tags! Ah well, another thread..

Dave

Yes, there is an alternative. Better? I some ways. It's not as memory or storage hungry, and doesn't keep multiple copies all over the place. Nor is it as "user hidden" as many of the Mac "i" programs are. (That's where we lost out to the Windows world - we got dumbed down!) Anyway try Picture Arena from http://www.picturearena.com/.

Davyth

Tobermory single malt scotch?
Sunset over the Florida Keys?
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
A cure for cancer?
The love of a good woman?
Exile on Main Street?
Lamb rogan josh with garlic nan?

Other than that, I'm rather drawing a blank...

Steve

If you don't like iPhoto, you could try Shoebox. http://www.kavasoft.com/Shoebox/

This from about.com

<Shoebox lets your organize your photo collection by content and quickly find the photos you want by creating categories which you assign to your photos. Shoebox allows you to view metadata information embedded in your photos and you can search based on metadata and categories. It also includes features for archiving your photos to CD or DVD and backing up your photo collection. It doesn't offer photo editing or allow you to share your photos, but it looks like a worthwhile tool for organizing photos if iPhoto isn't doing it for you. It also imports iPhoto albums, keywords, and ratings.>

Since dakis entry is the opposite of a helpful answer, I will sum up my experience here:

- I have more than 20 thousand images on my HD which a photo software has to manage.

- I tried iPhoto in several versions since 2003. For me this piece of software is highly dangerous and useless. It is slow, it damages its library, it has features that I do not need and lacks features I do need. E. g. I do not like to sort my images in "events" but in a hierarchival subject structure.

- If the images are already well-sorted in folders and have proper names, the GraphicConverter can be used as a basic library tool. It is stable, but is is not fast. I lived with that solution over four years.

- Now I switched to Aperture 2. All I can say after 6 weeks is that the library function is convenient, the possibility to use descriptions and metatags is great, and the software is stable. Also nice is that the Aperture Library is recognized in Keynote and Pages. I leave my photos where they are and let Aperture index all the folders and files - so that no file is damaged if Aperture crashes.

At 1:21 PM -0700 3/9/08, Ben Rubinstein wrote:
>iPhoto has lost the library on my wife's MacBook, where I centralised our
>family photos. (Still got all the images - in any case they're backed up -
>and from what I can see tags etc; it just starts up with its little spinner
>spinning, and never completes.) I've tried all the things that Google
>suggested, without any luck (and from Google, it's evidently not an uncommon
>problem).

Did you try launching iPhoto with Command-Option held down, and then
rebuilding the library? That's the primary thing to fix a messed up
database.

cheers... -Adam

As for organization, I recently "discovered" the Roll View (View/Roll). You can: - rename a Roll number to something more meaningful (like what the Roll contains, e.g. "trip to xxxx"). - create a new Roll if you have more than one event on a roll. - you can move photos between Rolls. The Roll automatically deletes when the last photo is removed.

where is the "view / roll" feature located?

For a simple and straightforward approach I suggest GraphicConverter. It's cheap and the proverbial Swiss army knife for photo collections (actually, it's German). It's good for organizing photos the way I want to organize them. I don't care for the database approach used by iPhoto. GraphicConverter has a good rename function for batches and is also good for rotating skewed pictures and cropping them, including cropping to user-set aspect ratios. Photos have EXIF, XMP and Comments meta-data. The Browser and Slideshow functions are excellent and well integrated. Besides any individual and batch conversions one may want to do, many other operations can be done on batches of photos, such as resizing and removing resource forks for displaying photos on web pages. It will even generate the photo web pages for you. Now it has a rudimentary layers function for text blocks. Some image editing functions are slow so I use Photoshop After Effects for those, but I still would need After Effects if I used iPhoto.

>iPhoto has lost the library on my wife's MacBook, where I centralised our
>family photos. (Still got all the images - in any case they're backed up -
>and from what I can see tags etc; it just starts up with its little spinner
>spinning, and never completes.) I've tried all the things that Google
>suggested, without any luck (and from Google, it's evidently not an uncommon
>problem).
>
>Maybe the current version of iPhoto isn't wrong, but it's certainly wrong for
>me. I'm basically just looking for somewhere to stash photos; with some basic
>aids to organising and finding; with very light editing (mostly cropping)
>needs; convenient ways to occasionally export, email, or print. iPhoto used
>to do that, but it has lots wrong (sloooow, and er, losing the photos would
>seem to be a basic problem) and it seems to be travelling on a
>different track.

For me (a serious amateur photographer), a good photo cataloging
program must have a few basic features. I use Lightroom, which is
pretty good at most things and is getting better since it's still at
version 1.3. (Note that Aperture closely matches Lightroom on many of
these features. I don't use it because it took a year to support one
of my cameras and it won't run on my G4 PowerBook.)

-- It should store files in a sensible file structure that I can make
sense of in the Finder. If I ever change programs, I want to be able
to understand where all my files are. iPhoto fails here with its
nonsense about "rolls". Photos from a single day can end up on
different rolls with other photos in between, depending on how many
cameras/cards you upload from and when. Scanned photos also end up in
another roll. Lightroom, on the other hand, can organize photos in a
variety of structures, including leaving them in whatever folders you
already have them in. I use the straightforward system of folders for
year/month/day. You can import a year's worth of photos, and
Lightroom will sort them out by the creation date in the metadata and
put them in the appropriate folders.

-- It should store photo info with the photos so they're less
susceptible to database corruption. Lightroom can store the edit info
and metadata in separate "sidecar" files with the photos, or in the
DNG files if you use that format. I can remove photos from
Lightroom's catalog and add them back in again, and they don't lose
their tags, stars, edits, etc.

-- It should make good use of disk space. iPhoto isn't very good at
this, making a duplicate copy of the file if you do so much as rotate
a photo. Lightroom doesn't touch the original and just maintains a
list of editing changes. As a result, you're only ever keeping the
original around. When you need a copy of the edited file, you can
export a version in the appropriate size, format, colour space,
etc., do whatever you want with it (print it, upload it, email it),
and then delete it. The master edited photo in Lightroom consists of
the original plus the list of editing changes. This not only reduces
the use of disk space (important if you're working with 10MB RAW
files) but it means you can go back and re-edit the original if you
choose.

The other features, such as allowing you to rate photos, assign your
own tags to them, export in various formats and colour spaces, etc.,
also should be included. Lightroom (and Aperture, so far as I know)
offers them.

I should note the two areas where Lightroom doesn't quite match up
yet. First, it doesn't offer smart folders like iPhoto and Aperture
do. I'm not sure how they work behind the scenes, so I'm not sure if
that's something that may be added in the future, or whether it's
something that only Apple programs will ever be able to offer.
Second, the resizing of photos on export needs a bit of work -- they
currently suffer from sharpening halos, particularly on the highlight
edges. I expect that will be addressed in the next update just as
sharpening and noise reduction were dramatically improved in the last
one.

Lightroom or Aperture may be more than you need, but they're both a
nice step up from iPhoto.

Andy
--


Andy Carroll
Toronto, Canada
http://flickr.com/photos/andys_camera/

Ben, I hope Adam’s suggestion will make it possible to rebuild your libraries so you can use iPhoto 2006 if you so wish.

As for your question about a better Digital Asset Management, you might consider iView Media PRO.

It will make a separate catalog — or catalogs—from your different source folders whether they are on your main hard drive or on CDs/DVDs. Catalogs can be sent to and viewed by anyone with the appropriate free reader (available for Windows and Mac OS).

Images in a catalog can be sorted by numerous criterias including capture date, file name, keywords, ratings and file properties. You can reorder images and rename them (original files will then be renamed).

It is a very powerful cataloging program.

The down side…

iView Media was sold to Microsoft about a year ago and is now called Expression Media. Microsoft sells Expression Media for $299 USD (for the equivalent of iView Media PRO v3). «http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=media»

BUT… you can still buy iVMP v3 from Phase One for $99 USD and then register for a free sidegrade to Expression Media from Microsoft. The original iVMP website is still up and is full of resources.

«http://www.iview-multimedia.com/index2.php»

Good luck in your decisions !

Pierre G.

>You might also want to look at getting iPhoto Library Manager (3.4
>is latest I think) to eliminate duplicates and remove originals if
>you no longer need them, for example, you rotated or cropped shots.


I'll second that suggestion.

My iPhoto library grew to the point where it became painful to do
*anything* in iPhoto. I took the divide and conquer approach and
divided my libary into 3 (one of my car-related photography, one for
my family pictures, and one for my work-related photos.)

Life suddenly got a lot better after that. iPhoto is once again
usable, all because of iPhoto Library Manager.

http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/

--chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org

I use Adobe Lightroom, but I would imagine Apple's Aperture would be a close match. I used iView MediaPro (MS Expression Media) but gave up on it in favor of Extensis Portfolio. Both these products are great for cataloging more than just photos. I still use Portfolio for "other stuff" but have dedicated Lightroom to my photography.

All these apps are about the same price and all are considerably more expensive than the FREE iPhoto; but I feel they all work that much better! You may miss some of the automatic integration of placing photos from iPhoto libraries - but that is a non-issue for me. Check them out; you won't regret it.

Ben ,
Rebuilding the library is indeed the best thing Try it!
As a pro photographer i use Lightroom it also has its own library
just like iPhoto
But depending on what you do iPhoto is great as it is easy for family
pictures and the new iPhoto even accepts RAW pictures
but i thought that was not what you are looking for

greetings Daki

Photoshop Elements for Mac Ver 6 will be out in a few weeks and it will be Universal Binary. It comes with Bridge which you can use to organize and go thru first look at all your images. Many online classes to learn PSE, and your work will improve dramatically. Sara at eclecticacademy.com, and Jessica at cre8it.com both teach reasonably priced photoshop elements classes online. I've taken classes from both.

All of my work has been done in Photoshop Elements and Bridge. See, daveclarkimages.smugmug.com.

Dave Clark

On or about 3/12/08 4:51 AM, thus spake "Joe Garnero" <jgarneromac.com>:

> I use Adobe Lightroom, but I would imagine Apple's Aperture would be a close
> match. I used iView MediaPro (MS Expression Media) but gave up on it in favor
> of Extensis Portfolio. Both these products are great for cataloging more than
> just photos. I still use Portfolio for "other stuff" but have dedicated
> Lightroom to my photography.

To me, hierarchical keywords are absolutely crucial. Canto Cumulus has this
feature, but I got sick of their asking $50 for an upgrade every six months,
plus they switched to Java and the app was basically ruined. I now use MS
Expression Media; it is way overpriced, but it's the only thing I've found
that maintains the database info I want maintained. I've been intending to
write a review for TidBITS... m.

chuck goolsbee <chucklistforest.net> wrote:

> My iPhoto library grew to the point where it became painful to do
> *anything* in iPhoto. I took the divide and conquer approach and
> divided my libary into 3 (one of my car-related photography, one for
> my family pictures, and one for my work-related photos.)

I go for a yearly iPhoto Library ;-)

and also, a personal Lib, and another Lib for photos found on the net
such POD websites: National Geography, APOD, Wikipedia...
I am using the excellent Revolution-based "Pic-a-POD"
 <http://www.troz.net/Pic-a-POD/index.html>

I am allowing some overlap between years, and I do "special" Libs for
trips, for instance

after that, I create a yearly dmg, I burn a DVD within iPhoto (in order
to be recognized by iPhoto)

and also: as for the iLife08 edition, iPhoto is now almost usable!
;-)

PS: and I never lost photos -- quit the opposite, I recovered some
photos I wiped by error, by searching in a dmg archive ;-)
and also some "orphaned" photos (but they were duplicates, in fact)

PS2: an I do have Adam's book on iPhoto... 2 ;-))

 
On Thursday, March 13, 2008, at 06:46AM, "Matt Neuburg" <matttidbits.com> wrote:

>To me, hierarchical keywords are absolutely crucial.

I have this in iPhoto with the Keyword Manager. Versatile plug-in for iPhoto. Was updated quickly for iPhoto 08.

<http://www.bullstorm.se/KeywordManager.php>

Ray

Ben, have a look at the trial version of Photo Mechanic:

<http://www.camerabits.com/site/index.html>

This is a photo browser, and doesn't create a database. It provides a way of adding data about a photo to the photo's file, with good batch facilities. Browsing is extremely fast as the program anticipates which photos you're going to want to look at next and caches the appropriate data. It's much, much faster at viewing photos from a folder than Expression Media is from its laboriously built database! There's an excellent PDF manual. Not cheap, $150, which includes a year's updates. I believe a year's updates after that costs $90.

I can't suggest iView, now Expression Media. The web-site is a labrynth, and it took me a month to discover that there was a PDF manual. Only this month has it become possible to view RAW files from the Nikon dSLRs released last November, and then only on a beta of version 2, which will expire in July. Version 2 seems to offer support for various file formats of interest to Windows users, but little for Mac users. I can't imagine I'll be spending money in July to go to version 2, which will be a pity as I've used iView since version 1.0, which must be more than a decade ago.

Good luck with your decision!

Tony

benr

Ben, why do you say "Picasa gets lots of news, but it's not for Mac."?

Picasa works fine for me, and has Mac software tools for uploading and adding captions.

See the brief but impressive demo at: <http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_us/web/mac_tools.html>

Or just go get the tools at <google.com/mac>

HTH,

Bob