Photo Library Software (OSX) - recommendations?

J

jbrough

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Hi all - I have finally vowed to catalogue all the digital versions of all my 25 years of photos so am looking for a library/database system for OSX. I shoot a mix of film and digital and do most of my digital 'processing' & retouching in Photoshop so I'm really after a good, searchable piece of library software more than a manipulation package. I am totally new to this end of things so any recommendations would be great.

Many thanks,

Jonathan.
 
From my limited experience (Having tried iPhoto, Aperture 2, Capture NX2)
I'd highly recommend that you give 'photo mechanic' a go. Easiest, fastest and simplest way to catalogue your pics.

Download the trial and see what you think......
 
I think Aperture 2 is fantastic for this purpose, but I also use it (with numerous plugins) as my photo editing software as well. I don't like iPhoto at all. I think iPhoto makes it too hard to do anything with your photos other than futz with them in iPhoto and get apple to make expensive prints and books with your shots.
 
Aperture 2 is a great software i have to agree but i prefer to use Capture NX2 for my post processing and face it, NX2 is just very very bad for organizing pictures. Thus i use Photo Mechanic with the NX2
 
I have limited experience with Aperture but found it to be excellent. Photo Mechanic is also excellent, I used it for a couple of years but now prefer the single solution of Lightroom.
 
I love Aperture -- though the vault feature is a little hinky. Every time I back up it tells me there are a handful of shots that it has trouble with. I have no idea why or what to do about it. Other than that, a winner.
 
Definitely check out Iview - very intuitive, very clear, it leaves the structures of your folders intact and you can open several windows for each project. renaming, moving, adding exif etc... great tool. All my Pro friends use it. They have an 30 day demo on their website.
Absolute recommendation after seferal trys with other apps!
 
After considering just how you wish to search and retrieve your images, you'll also need to think about the best way to add metadata in the first place (assuming you haven't been doing that manually already). I think, from this perspective, Aperture and iView would both be great choices (haven't used the others mentioned in this thread). If you'd also like to catalogue other types of files (say PDF's, Word docs etc.), Extensis Portfolio might also be worth considering. For images only however, I'd say it is overkill... although it has some great features if you want to say build an online photo library (much more comprehensive than Aperture in this regard) Great project BTW. Will be interested to hear how it all goes.
 
Lightroom 2 - another option. I use it for all my photos - some 25,000 in the catalog now I've trimmed it down some. Can launch Photoshop etc from within it and save from Photoshop back to Lightroom keeping track of edit versions etc. I tried Aperture, but it wasn't as flawless going between catalog and Photoshop.

If I remember rightly, there are trial versions of Aperture and Lightroom - so you can try before you buy.
 
For pure cataloging, Expression 2 (used to be Iview) is the best package I've found. It is fast (On my Intel Power Mac), doesn't bog the computer down like Lightroom can do with a lot of images, and just works.
 
I'm using Adobe Lightroom 2.4 and it's really great as a photo library software. It also makes a seamless transition to Adobe Photoshop CS4 for advanced post production editing...
 
I haven't tried anything else but Adobe Bridge and I'm rather happy with it. However, after all the recommendations, I really want to try Lightroom and Aperature.
 
Lightroom 2 is not JUST a cataloging application, but an image manipulation prioduct like Photoshop; it can save many mediocre photos from a fate of being ignored. It's the best money I spent on my collection for software since I started this. I do not have a digital camera that uses RAW, but scanning negatives with my Coolscan, I then apply setting to the original. All steps are retained, but the original file is untouched. Excellent.
 
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