[hutch]

What options do I have available for working on photos from my D50?

[philaitman]

Photoshop
Elements
Lightroom
Aperture
For free there is The Gimp http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/ (I don't like it but it has a lot of fans)

[hutch]

Thanks

I assume Photoshop is the one I really need after looking at the price of it

Which ones are recommended and what does each one actually do?

[Senninha]

It depends what you mean by "working on". If you just want to store and make basic adjustments, Iphoto will also do it, and I think there's a Picasa for Mac.

In terms of 99% of all you will ever need, Lightroom is the one I would recommend. Aperture gets good reviews, but it didn't "click" with me the way Lightroom did, and I now use that for almost everything.

Most will have a free trial (Lightroom does) so I'd suggest downloading and trying them, see how they work for you.

[hutch]

That is perfect thanks, i'll give lightroom a try and the price is a lot more realistic than CS3

[Peakoverload]

I'm afraid I don't entirely agree with that.

Lightroom, like Aperture, is a File Managment and RAW processing piece of software. The editing controls it has beyond that are very basic.

CS3/CS2 IS expensive but that's because it does loads more than Lightroom and loads more than you or 99.9999% of photographers actually need. This is why Adobe brought out Elements.

Elements is a cut down version of Photoshop that has 99% of the controls that a photographer needs, comes with a basic file managment system (nowhere near as good as Lightroom or Aperture or even as good as Bridge in CS3 but still pretty useful), can process RAW files and has many more editing controls that are simply not there in Lightroom and never will be. It's also a hell of a lot cheaper than Lightroom.

I'd download demo's of both and see which suits your needs best but when you are testing Lightroom ask yourself how you will work with layers, perform cloaning, use blending modes etc etc. Don't get me wrong Lightroom is good (actually I think Aperture is waaaay better) but it's not a replacement for a full blown editor like CS3 or Elements (which is why Aperture and Lightroom have the function to open your photo in these programs for greater editing).

[Senninha]

That's okay, don't be afraid :-)

Your comments are why I suggested the "suck it and see", but I don't agree that Lightroom's editing is basic. With good control over the basics (crop, straighten and the like), excellent control of lighting, colour, split-toning, vignetting etc, and in 1.1 some reasonable sharpening, and some acceptable noise reduction.

There will be some who want to do more (often much more) and is why I own Photoshop also, but for most people I think Lightroom will be enough (or Aperture, the difference between the two mostly comes down to personal preference over interface etc).

[hutch]

Ive downloaded the trials of both Aperture and Lightroom and im loving the management from Aperture but are finding the layout and editing of Lightroom a bit more accesible, although I cant help thinking that the editing side of things isnt going to be enough after a few months

When using Aperture is is best to import all your photos to the Aperture library and let the program manage it? If I do that am I right in thinking I can delete all my original folders because they will now be stored in Aperture? I originally just referenced my files but the Aperture library was still huge - smacks of Iphoto and the way that works....

Its nice to see an alternative to IPhoto actually, I know a lot of people love it but I dont like how it stores everything together and it is a bit resource hungry keeping copies of everything and bloating what I actually have on my hard disk.

[Senninha]

That's pretty much what I found with iPhoto - I hated all the copies, the destructive editing, and how it was impossible to actually see things on disk and get them out. Equally with Aperture I liked the file management, but eventually Lightroom's editing tipped it.

I think we're all very good at telling ourselves we need more (or at least I am!) and ending up with CS3, Lightroom, DXO, the works. On the other hand the tendency then is to use them because they're there, whereas if a photo really needs that much tweaking to be good....! These days I tend to make a few basic adjustments if needed, and Lightroom covers that for all but the 1 in 100 that I want to do more with (and I'm sure Aperture would do the job equally well).

[Peakoverload]

Whether you go with referenced or managed depends on your requirements.

The advantage of managed is that Aperture takes care of everything and you can easily back up your photos in one action from within Apeture. The disadvantage is that it moves your photos into Aperture's library so if you want to access your photos with other applications it's a bit of a problem. You can set Aperture to generate previews that these programs can use and of course you can define a program to be your external editor but lets say you wanted to use Aperture but also wanted to be able to use say Bridge with CS3 and have them access your original RAW files, well you can't. If you want to do that you need to use a referenced library.

The advantage of a referenced library is that if you already have all your photos organized on your hard drive then when you import them into Aperture you don't make another copy of them which can be a problem if you have a very large library in terms of having enough disc space (unless you want to delete you existing library afterwards). The other advantage of a referenced library is that all your photos remain totally accessible by all other programs. The disadvantage of a referenced library is that YOU are responsible for backing up your images and if YOU move a photo outside of Aperture, Aperture won't know where it is so you'll have to relocate it.

As for your Referenced Library file size, that file contains all the previews at various sizes for all your photos plus the information of all the changes in RAW settings, albums, catalogues, web galleries, keywords etc etc so it will get fairly large. For example I have 170GB's of photos that I have imported into Aperture as a referenced library any my library size is 12.11GB

HTH

[Senninha]

179Gb of photos Even assuming they're all large RAWs, that's must still be one very muscular shutter finger by now!

[pixelpixel]

I installed Lightroom last night and it almost killed my little old pc....

I think I will stick to bridge as it flys on the donkeys old pc. Lightroom is very clever in what it does, its just a little bit over the top for what I do.

[hutch]

Ive just spent all day importing my photos to be managed by Aperture and im quite happy with the results.

Took some getting used to Projects, Folders and Albums and what each of them allow you to do but now its done ive got almost 10Gb more spare on my hard drive and I havent got a large collection by any means, just goes to show how much IPhoto was bloating things....

Going to spend tomorrow messing with the editing functions but the more I use it the more I think im going to stick with this, it doesnt look as nice as Lightroom but does seem more easily accessible which is important to me.

Now, just need to find a way to get it cheaply once the trial is up!

[Clem_Dye]

I decided on Photoshop Elements 4.0 for my MAC, but then I started seeing reports about performance/operation not being guaranteed because the application was for PPC CPUs, and was not an Intel-optimised or universal binary. From what I can make out, some people are happy with its performance on an Intel MAC, others less/not so. Given that I don't have a bottomless wallet I decided on the Gimp. You have to load the MAC X11 libraries first, but it seems to run pretty well. Initial results are encouraging, although this is a tough package to get to grips with.

Time will tell, I suppose ....


Clem

[Radiohead]

I prefer Aperture of the Aperture/Lightroom choice. Both offer mch to the photographer and I very rarely need anything else. Almost all of my PP is limited to minor exposure tweaks, mono conversion, cropping and that's about it (oh I how I love those 5D files). The real benefit I see from Aperture is handling and rating 1000+ shots from a job and the excellent metadata tagging. It's cut down on my post-event time massively.

[tomson]

I tried both Aperture and Lightroom for quite a while and my preference in the end was for Lightroom - not really much in it in terms of what each one does tho, just got on better with Lightroom.

It's really cut down my PP time, the work flow from raw to web to print is amazingly simple. Last weekends shoot I whittled down 700 shots to 160 print ready ones in about a quarter of the time I was taking with PS & Bridge. I think I only had to use PS once during the whole batch (to clone out a person in a doorway) so it was a fairly simple job.

And I'm especially liking presets - like highly tweakable photoshop actions.