Software

[Panthera]

I wonder if I can get your advice on what I could use to catalogue and edit my photographs that I take. At the moment they are just in directories stored on my external HD, so not the best solution if I want to find a certain picture.

I do have Aperture 2 which I did not fully get on with. I tried to get into using the application by reading tips, how-to's etc, but it just did not click with me. 

I have heard that Adobe Lightroom is supposed to be what the pro's use? So what else is out there that I can use to edit/tweak and catalogue my pictures and be able to find them using a key word search.

Most of my pictures are of motorsport events, but there are few holidays and a few days outs which I use Adobe Photoshop for the post processing element.

My dad has Elements 6 (on his PC) that looks to have a really good cataloguing facility and some nice features.

What do all you budding photographers use?

Thank you.

[h4rdy]

Interested in this too.

[RedRobin]

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Strange coincidence that you should post this.

I find that Aperture can be tricky to understand too, not so much the interface or features but the way that the Library works. This gets even more difficult to understand if you also have iPhoto on your Mac because apparently it combines the Libraries.

Adobe Lightroom has a similar learning curve to Aperture but integrates with the full-blown Photoshop better, as you would expect it to and yes it is more 'Pro'.

You may get some help on specifics in the Apple Discussions / Aperture forum but be warned that some of the experts can be a bit condescending.

I have literally just found and bookmarked this site: http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2012/6/16/understanding-the-iphoto-93-and-aperture-33-unified-library.html

The link ^ will doubtless open on the page I'm currently reading about merging libraries but check out the blue text list column on the left. I haven't got to the Home page yet. The guy communicates well in language we can understand.

Aperture 3.3.2 is the latest version and is really a Digital Asset Manager (organiser) with some non-destructive editing features added. Photoshop is a full-on destructive editor.

The latest version of iPhoto 9.3.2 has become a lot more powerful and has good editing features if you like to keep things straightforward and simple.

I think that TopCat also uses Aperture and it wasn't that long ago that he was a 'beginner'.

[rich83]

I use aperture and find it easy to use. What were your struggling with?

[h4rdy]

Anything for PC?

[rich83]

I used to use picassa when i was on PC. Was good enough for what i required at the time, its probably more advanced now.

[stealthwolf]

I use Lightroom on PC. Can make adjustments to photos, make tags, rate them, create libraries etc.

[Panthera]

REDROBIN, thank you for that extra info and the link.   I know exactly what you mean about the experts of these pieces of software as they can be a bit geeky in their responses and they think you should know the software.  We all have learning curves that we battle with day in day out and also there are learning curves of software.

I think my main concern with Aperture was that when first I opened the the program up on my mac I was unsure of where to start, what to do to start sorting, editing and cataloguing. I would have a play and find it difficult to understand its ways. I just thought its UI was not friendly.   But I do understand Photoshop,  as I have been using this software since PS 4.0 and worked my way up to CS3 (not updated yet). So maybe I might understand Lr better - it might 'click' with me. I heard there is a free trial to download, so I might give that a go.

One other thing I noticed is that, I could not see a way of tagging shots with my own words like I might have multiple photographs of, for example Tornado 60163 taken in different places and I want to search for them using words like A1, Peppercorn, 60163 Tornado.  But with that search I might see other A1 engines in that search - yes I know Tornado is the only A1 currently in existence - just used it as an example.