Photo Management Software?

[Colorado Kat]

I've been using Picasa to manage my photos on my computer, but am dis-satisfied with it lately. What other software would people suggest?

 

Thanks! Kathy

[chipmaster]

Lightroom from Adobe!

 

I've been using Picasa to manage my photos on my computer, but am dis-satisfied with it lately. What other software would people suggest?

 

Thanks! Kathy

[donaldsc]

I've been using Picasa to manage my photos on my computer, but am dis-satisfied with it lately. What other software would people suggest?

 

Thanks! Kathy

 

I use Lightroom. If you want other opinions, check out this site

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1006

 

DON

[Colorado Kat]

Thanks!

[awboater]

Lightroom is my choice. Sometimes it goes on sale for $150. It happened at least twice this year that I am aware of.

[TheRoff]

Let's see, a fourth vote for Lightroom. If you don't want to go that expensive, Adobe Elements has a really decent catalog function. I think Elements 9 is about $80.00.

 

Larry

[TheOldBear]

And, if you are on a Mac the bundled iPhoto is quite nice [and Aperture is quite a deal at $79]

[pilotdane]

I'll cast a fifth vote for Lightroom.

 

Lightroom is good with the most commonly used photo editing techniques like cropping & adjusting the brightness (and it does a lot more). Where it really shines is in it's organizational features which can become a big issue as you accumulate more and more photos. The program is also lightweight enough to run on a decent netbook (albeit slow) so you can backup, organize and edit your photos while still on your cruise.

[dodger501]

As far as online, Picasa does not mash the quality as badly as Facebook does but mashed nonetheless.

I am impressed with Google Plus as far as image handling.

[DrFootball]

And, if you are on a Mac the bundled iPhoto is quite nice [and Aperture is quite a deal at $79]

 

And not just 'cause he's a fellow Long Islander!

 

On the MAC Platform Nearly 25 years-Before that Comm. 8 bit and Amiga. Used Apple 2 GS's to print "maps" In the Army...(if you have to ask, you don't need to know-But if you can picture "Certain Pilots" from a "Certain command" who wear "Black" Flight suits & fly around certain Soldiers also dressed in Black for Night Ops-You'd be on the right track...)

 

In 25 Years on MAC OS I have only lost files once, and it was my own fault.

 

I have HARD DRIVES filled with Photos(and Archive DVD's-13 years worth of "recent stuff")

 

DW & I Own/Run a "Sports Media" company in addition to me being "retired" and her day job (I edit/Write, she Shoots)

 

We use iPhoto/ Aperture & PS Elements, Although I had "older" versions of The "full" PS on older Machines.

 

My Back Up drive for all our currently "Running Macs"(5) is an OWC 16 TB Raid. MY iMac(2008 alum. QUad 2.66-6Gb of Ram) gets backed up to a 2TB WD My Book Studio Elite, The Current Photo LIB(going back to 2006-nearly 70K Photos) fits nicely on a 1TB WD MY Book Studio(with room to spare!), The PM G5 Tower I still use for my Music Studio has 2 320 Internal Seagates and a 1TB external WD. I still run a "Modded G4 Cube"(2001) as a "road Music" machine for gigs(with a Dual 1.42 GHZ Processor upgrade) where all my "road" sound patches for my Roland Guitar Synth fit on the internal Seagate 500 GB..

 

And my 2 laptops (a 2007 "Black" MacBook & my new 2011 MacBook Pro i5) are backed up to a WD Passport Blue 160 & a LaCie Rugged 750 Triple 7200 Rpm respectively.

 

I taught Computer repair among other subjects In the NYC Dept. of Ed. (Sp. ED. H.S.) and worked Part time for Apple for 6.5 years, and hold a post graduate degree In Ed. Technology. :cool:

 

You'd have to torture Me to Use a PC and I'd find a way to kill myself first(also Ex-Army Chief Warrant Officer so it's entirely possible for me to do that thanks To SERE Training). My Storeroom contains several working & non-Working Macs going back to the early 1990's, including several Clamshell iBooks(G3's) & Ti- Powerbooks(G4's)

 

Just Saying....Why use a "Pee Cee" when you can Use a MAC....

 

Bill(DrFootball)

I.B.M-Stands for I Buy Macintosh!!!

Bill's Brainiac Random Quote Generator V0.95 final beta for Mac

[judynorth]

I use Photoshop Elements 9 and my DH uses Lightroom. He shoots in RAW and Lightroom works best for him but he sometimes gets frustrated with the organizer part of the program. I really like PE9's organizer. However, like most programs, there is a learning curve if you plan to take advantage of all its capabilities.

[Jade13]

I have Elements 7 but have been using Picasa.

 

My biggest issue is what is best if my photos are on a backup drive and I need to look and edit them on my PC. I am still using XP on an old DELL computer but plan to upgrade next year and also upgrade to Windows 7, which I now have at work. Lots of free classes offered on HAL ships, including photo, editing and movie making.

[tommui987]

I have Elements 7 but have been using Picasa.

 

My biggest issue is what is best if my photos are on a backup drive and I need to look and edit them on my PC.

 

Jade: Having seen you at work with your camera on a cruise, might I suggest that you load them up on a thumb drive while on the trip as well as backing them up on the HD on your computer if that was brought along.

 

When you get home, you can copy it off your thumb drive/computer to your PC. Your thumb drive would used for processing it on your software and when you finished with that photo or photos, transfer it to your "done" on your HD.

 

Incidentally, get an external HD as insurance and put your finished product there too.

[judynorth]

I have Elements 7 but have been using Picasa.

 

My biggest issue is what is best if my photos are on a backup drive and I need to look and edit them on my PC. I am still using XP on an old DELL computer but plan to upgrade next year and also upgrade to Windows 7, which I now have at work. Lots of free classes offered on HAL ships, including photo, editing and movie making.

 

If you are using a backup program (either the one with Windows or the one that came with the external drive) it should backup your files when you make changes to them. If you do not have automatic backup set then you could manually backup your drive each day/week or what ever works best for you. This will keep your files in sync with each other. If you put all your photos on an external drive instead of on your internal hard drive then when you retrieve a file and edit it and save it again it should save to the external hard drive.

 

Windows Live (available free for Vista and above) has both an organizer and photo editor. That is what is taught in the HAL classes. From what I could tell, it seems like a decent program and it is free. However, I will stick with PE9 since it is a much more powerful editor and organizer than Windows Live.

[judynorth]

Jade: Having seen you at work with your camera on a cruise, might I suggest that you load them up on a thumb drive while on the trip as well as backing them up on the HD on your computer if that was brought along.

 

 

You'd have to bring a computer along in order to transfer photos to a thumb drive. :) Of course, unless you shoot many, many photos you could just buy enough memory cards for the cruise (since they are fairly cheap) and then transfer to the computer when you return home.

[Jade13]

You'd have to bring a computer along in order to transfer photos to a thumb drive. :) Of course, unless you shoot many, many photos you could just buy enough memory cards for the cruise (since they are fairly cheap) and then transfer to the computer when you return home.

 

 

 

I bring along many memory cards and back up each night to our netbook when we travel. I do not delete any of the memory cards until we return home. I than transfer from the netbook to pc and pc to two (2) backup drives when we get home. After I do that I reformat the memory cards.

 

I try to leave the jpegs on the pc long enough to view, print, but eventually double check they are on the back up drives and delete off of the netbook and pc.

 

But, I have so many photos that I need to be able to get them from the back-up drive into software on our home computer to edit. Right now I am searching for photos from a 2009 SilverSea Arctic trip since I had never put together an album. I had posted two years ago but still have not figured out how best to enhance my polar bear photos. They are very blue from my Moose polarizing filter. I had to go from the ocean shots to bears on ice flow very fast with no time to change anything.

 

So, my biggest issue is viewing photos from the back-up drive to pc, and making a copy so that I can edit. I think right now the only way I can figure to do this is to copy from the hard drive the entire folder to my desk top, and than I can edit in Picasa, which usually involves formatting to a 5 x 7 and than transferring to a memory card to take and print.

 

I also paid someone last year (very little, about $100.00) to back up all of my docs and photos to two back-up drives plus download all the memory cards I had saved over the years and not deleted. I have so many duplicates, and because of the Nikon software and numbering, folders have combined pictures from different trips, so it is too much of a mess so I won't touch it.

 

I would never do an automatic backup as I would be too afraid of deleting jpegs, and plus I have two back-up drives.

[Jade13]

If you are using a backup program (either the one with Windows or the one that came with the external drive) it should backup your files when you make changes to them. If you do not have automatic backup set then you could manually backup your drive each day/week or what ever works best for you. This will keep your files in sync with each other. If you put all your photos on an external drive instead of on your internal hard drive then when you retrieve a file and edit it and save it again it should save to the external hard drive.

 

Windows Live (available free for Vista and above) has both an organizer and photo editor. That is what is taught in the HAL classes. From what I could tell, it seems like a decent program and it is free. However, I will stick with PE9 since it is a much more powerful editor and organizer than Windows Live.

 

I take the photos (one folder at a time) from Picasa on my PC and upload to each of my two back-up hard drives.

 

Right now I am using an old pc (circa 2005) with xp.

[Jade13]

Jade: Having seen you at work with your camera on a cruise, might I suggest that you load them up on a thumb drive while on the trip as well as backing them up on the HD on your computer if that was brought along.

 

When you get home, you can copy it off your thumb drive/computer to your PC. Your thumb drive would used for processing it on your software and when you finished with that photo or photos, transfer it to your "done" on your HD.

 

Incidentally, get an external HD as insurance and put your finished product there too.

 

Ho tommui! I have two back-up drives. I think at this point I need a new computer, Windows 7, and updated software.

 

If anyone has any suggestions, I will listen.

 

So, where are you going next? We will be back on Azamara Quest in just three weeks (Israel, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus)!

[judynorth]

I take the photos (one folder at a time) from Picasa on my PC and upload to each of my two back-up hard drives.

 

Right now I am using an old pc (circa 2005) with xp.

 

I am assuming that since you have an older pc that your internal hard drive is not large enough to keep many pictures there. Your method of putting the folder on the pc to edit the pictures and then putting it back on the backup drive and deleting it from the computer seems like a good option if you have limited space on your internal drive. One option that you might consider when you buy a new computer is to use one external drive to archive all your photos and the second drive to automatically backup your computer. This is assuming that you will keep your photos on you computer at least until they are edited.

 

My DH has installed a 1TB internal drive to hold all of his photos. Then he has a 1.5TB exteral hard drive which automatically backs up his data. That seems to work well for him and he has thousands of photos.

 

When you update your computer you might consider using Photoshop Elements 9 to edit your photos. Picasa is a very good basic editor (I teach it to may senior adult computer students) but PE9 is MUCH more powerful. It does an excellent job of removing color cast from photos so it should work well on the pictures of the polar bears. It will also keep the original file as well as the editied version, if you elect that option.

[awboater]

There are many different approaches to backing up your files, and where you keep your "working" copies. Which method you use depends on your budget, and how savvy you are when it comes to computers.

 

But the essential idea is you must backup your photos. Without fail, I read instances every day on photo forums about people that have lost their photos forever as they never backed them up, or did not use good memory card practices.

 

My solution is to use a NAS (Network Attached Storage). With the NAS, I can share photos among several computers, as I use a Mac for most processing. But I use a PC for most of my daily needs (I still do some consulting and web work although retired).

 

I use a Synology 2 drive NAS that provides 1TB of file space for photos. This system is also redundant, as it has mirrored drives - meaning there are two identical drives on the system, so should one drive fail, the other will contain all the data.

 

A drive failed about a year ago - after being in operation for less than a month. Drives do that occasionally. But with the mirror setup, I didn't lose anything at all as the second drive took over.

 

I also backup the NAS with 3 portable hard drives, so I have a minimum of 3 un-altered copies of each photo. When not being used for backing up, I keep the portable drives locked in a media safe. A media safe is similar to a normal safe except it will protect media (drives, tapes, CDs, etc) from damage should a fire happen. A normal safe, even one that will protect paper, will often get too hot in a fire to protect computer media.

 

I have two areas on the NAS. One area is a dump area that I use to dump the SD cards directly into the drive from the camera - completely bypassing the computers. There is a USB port on the front of the NAS, and I put the SD card on a USB adapter, stick it into the NAS, then depress a button on the front. This copies the files directly to the NAS.

 

Then I stick the SD card into a computer and while deleting the dud photos, I copy them to another area of the NAS as my working copy so I can share them between my PC and Mac. In reality, the only extra step is the direct dump of the SD card into the NAS, and this is quick and easy, so it is convenient and does not take much time.

 

The more convenient and quick means the more likely you are to keep at it, and I have found this to be an easy solution for me.

 

A NAS is essentially a server-in-a-box, and it is just a small thing, not much larger than the two 3.5" drives it contains. It just plugs into an ethernet port on my WiFi router (although it can work with an optional WiFi USB stick). You don't need to know much about networking or servers to set it up, but it is helpful if you understand a few networking concepts, so it might not be for everyone.

 

The NAS will support advanced networking such as DLNA, so I can also view the photos on my big screen TV via a WD Live TV box. This means I can create a slide show of photos and videos on the NAS and watch them with family and friends on the TV.

 

There are many different brands of NAS, but I found after some research that the best performing inexpensive ones are made by Synology. I paid under $300 for the NAS and two 1Tb drives (which when mirrored provides 1Tb total). You can use up to 2Tb drives (it will support 3.5 and 2.5 drives), but when I bought it, the 2Tb drives were still a bit bleeding edge. I wanted reliable so I went with 1Tb drives.

 

Anyway, if you are considering something similar, check out the Synology NAS solutions.

 

But otherwise, find a way to keep at least two copies of your photo files. Never just store them on a SD card. That is a sure way to lose them.

[RVRCLC]

PSE 9 is a great help.. I have an older (XP) computer, was not sure PSE 9 would run on it so I did the free trial download, worked great though slow. So I bought the program.

I have been using PSE since the very first version (when it was called LE) and have found nothing I like better.

 

You, already, seem to be aware that there are only two kinds of hard drive...

 

The one that has failed

and

the one that is going to fail

[Jade13]

There are many different approaches to backing up your files, and where you keep your "working" copies. Which method you use depends on your budget, and how savvy you are when it comes to computers.

 

But the essential idea is you must backup your photos. Without fail, I read instances every day on photo forums about people that have lost their photos forever as they never backed them up, or did not use good memory card practices.

But otherwise, find a way to keep at least two copies of your photo files. Never just store them on a SD card. That is a sure way to lose them.

 

I keep my photos on two WD back-up drives. Originally the idea was that one WD was for everything and the other was just for the photos. But, when I had someone help me last year he said there was no reason not to have both as full back-ups.

 

When we travel I keep all of the memory cards until we get home and back-up to my netbook each night as a duplicate. When we returned from our last trip I downloaded from the netbook to the (old) PC and than to each WD drive. Ideally I leave them right on the pc (3 three copies at that point) as my "working files", until I have printed what I wish, but that is moving forward as I am currently working on my Arctic Adventure photos from 2009.

 

I did make progress this morning. I finally looked at my Element 7, and was able to do the following.

 

1) Copy jpegs that interested me ("Working Files") to Elements 7 "Edit" screen. (I think I was just viewing them from the pc monitor on the back-up drive?)

2) Make a Duplicate copy with Elements 7

3) Add auto "Contrast" (on most of them) to one of the duplicates

4) Crop to 5 x 7 (My preferance is to print my photos on 5 x 7 and have found a skilled person at a local Ritz Camera who knows how to lighten them which needs to be done on the matt paper that I prefer, with white borders)

5) Upload to a memory card so that I can take my selected photos to print.

 

So far all of my editing consists of cropping and adding contrast and nothing else (I have gotten rid of red-eye in Picasa).

 

One of the biggest issues that I have with the WD back-up storage is searching for my jpegs so that I can work on them. When I found the downloaded memory cards/files that I wished to work on this morning, I had to click on each individual jpeg and look at it very tiny on my computer and than decide if I needed to pull it to Elements so I could edit. I don't know if there is a way to view a full days worth of jpegs togeher on the back-up drive without downloading them all to my pc. Is there another way?

 

I do need a new home pc because this one has crashed before with the blue screen of death.

[judynorth]

I don't know if there is a way to view a full days worth of jpegs togeher on the back-up drive without downloading them all to my pc. Is there another way?

 

 

Unfortunately, Windows XP doesn't allow you to view jpeg files as thumbnails in Windows Explorer. That was one of the improvements that came with ME and is continued with Vista and Windows 7. In all those OS's you can view as large, medium or large thumbnails. It is a HUGE help when selecting pictures for copying, editing, etc.

[Jade13]

Unfortunately, Windows XP doesn't allow you to view jpeg files as thumbnails in Windows Explorer. That was one of the improvements that came with ME and is continued with Vista and Windows 7. In all those OS's you can view as large, medium or large thumbnails. It is a HUGE help when selecting pictures for copying, editing, etc.

 

Another reason to update to Windows 7. I just got Windows 7 for my work computer (notebook) and now need to upgrade at home.

 

If I purchase Windows 7 for a new pc, does the license allow me to download to my Netbook. What is ME?

[judynorth]

Another reason to update to Windows 7. I just got Windows 7 for my work computer (notebook) and now need to upgrade at home.

 

If I purchase Windows 7 for a new pc, does the license allow me to download to my Netbook. What is ME?

 

If you buy a new computer it will come with Windows 7 installed and it is a single license so it can only be used on that computer. Your netbook probably can't use Windows 7 because the netbook doesn't meet the minimum requirements for the OS. Windows 7 needs more power to run than most netbooks have. Windows ME (millenium edition) was the short-lived OS between XP and Vista.