Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Mac People: Photo management software?

Since it's an established fact that we have someone here that knows something about everything, I thought I'd ask.

I finally jumped off the bridge and bought a Mac.

To make a long story very short, my wife is 100% Mac at her job, and enjoys it so much we bought her a Macbook Air for Christmas to replace her old Dell notebook. She loves it. And I 'borrow' it frequently. It's utterly fantastic, and I've found myself actually quite liking the whole OS X experience. So when my Dell notebook started acting up a couple of months ago, I started laptop shopping. And a few days ago, I decided to shake things up and buy myself a Macbook Pro instead. Variety is the spice of life, ya know.

After a week of tinkering, I can honestly say that I'm quite impressed with it. I like it, and am starting to get the hang of how to do things. But I'm in the unusual situation (for me) of being a 'newbie', as 20 years of Microsoft conditioning makes me want to do things a certain way. But I'm extremely impressed at how well it's working in general. Very cool.

Though I will admit, due to a couple of games, I can't completely wean myself off the Microsoft teat. One of the first things I did was to get XP up and running under Bootcamp. Super cool. I've done dual-boot Windows/Linux setups before, so the concept isn't new to me. But it's still cool. And working flawlessly. I've never seen XP run so quickly.

But anyway, I have one lingering question. For other Mac people, what do you use to manage & edit your photos? I have about 15,000 photos from the past 8 years. All organized into folders; 'Summer Vacation 2008 - Day 2', 'Christmas 2007', etc. Up until now, I've managed them with Picasa.

I'm trying to use/learn iPhoto '09.

It's pretty good, but I have some problems with how it wants to organize my photos. Basically, it won't let me see & browse my photos by folder like I'm used to. I discovered the popular option of unchecking the 'Copy photos to iPhoto library'. That helps in that it's at least not sucking away all my photos into some mysterious iPhoto library. But it still wants to put all 15k photos into one gigantic 'Event'. Uh, no.

Is there any way to make iPhoto '09 translate a folder structure into 'Events'?

I'm also thinking about my other options. I haven't tried Picasa for the Mac yet but I intend to, as it's been great on the PC.

Does anyone here use Aperture, Lightroom, or Photoshop to import & manage their photos on a Mac? Was it worth it? I can get LR2.0 or PS CS4 for steep discounts from the university where my wife works, so either are a realistic option. I like the look of LR, as I don't think I quite need the 'firepower' that PS brings to the table. Thoughts? Aperture looks cool too, but I can't get a discount on it, and I could get the entire CS4 Suite for about the same cost as Aperture @ MSRP.

Thanks friends!

Whenever I import photos (from the camera) it creates a new event. You may try importing your folders one (or a group) at a time. That would of course require re-importing everything. Another thing to check out is, at the bottom of the Events menu there's an option to "Autosplit selected events". Then you can re-merge them based on your own criteria. (Merging is easy - drag & drop).

In response to the new laptop being "so cool".... no comment

-signed, a PC guy...

If you know and like Picasa, there's no reason not to use it; however, iPhoto isn't too difficult to get your head around, and the advantage of using it is that it seamlessly ties in to all your other Apple media apps (iDVD, iMovie, etc.)

Oh, and congrats on taking the Mac leap.

I can't wean myself off the PC teat either.

signed,

The fat guy on the apple commercial

I completely switched to Mac about 5 years ago. I'm also considering the new 13" Macbook since my buddy can help w/ the educational discount.

That being said, I agree that iPhoto can be mind numbingly confusing. Honestly, w/ my photo library, I manually manage it on 2 network drives (Time Capsule and USB HDD on another Airport Extreme), similar to you mentioned. The problem w/ iPhoto (similar to iTunes) is that it can sometimes do too much. If you let it organize your photos, your directory structure will be complete obliterated and you'll never get it back to it's original state. I had a similar problem w/ iTunes and thousands of pre-organized MP3 files. I've had to get over that over the course of several years... My STRONG recommendation before you attempt to use another photo organization too, back up your photo library to another HDD to preserve your directory structure. That way you'll have a recovery method if you don't like what iPhoto (or similar) will do to it.

Now I haven't had a chance to use iLife 09 yet. There's a bunch of cool features there but frankly it's only installed on a Hackintosh that isn't powerful enough for all the features of iPhoto 09. But it might be worth checking out.

Another thing to consider is an off site backup of photos. I am one of those victims you hear about, who lost a bunch of photos from an HDD crash. I was moving files between my 2 backups and my photo archive drive crashed. (The drive is currently unrecoverable sans an $$$ service.) I have backups on various websites but it's a pain. Now I use something called JungleDisk. I love it because I have 13GB of photos backed up at Amazon for about $2.50/mo. Not bad IMHO and I don't even have to manage any of it.

http://jungledisk.com/

Gotta admit, my MBP 17" is a couple years old and, at 140 deg F, "cool" is not how I'd describe it. If you ever run Faces in iPhoto, crack an egg on that baby and it's breakfast time.

oh, and oldskoolboarder, a WD MyBook and Time Machine help alot.

I know, I know. I feel like a dirty traitor for buying a Mac. If it makes you feel any better, some of my Windows-centric coworkers think I'm a leper now.

I'm getting over it.

And the Microsoft-haters (the Unix/Linux/Novell guys) are all thrilled that I might be 'playing for the other team' now.

Thanks for the tips. I don't know if I could stand taking the time to import hundreds of folders individually. But I didn't know about the auto-Event feature. That may solve my problem.

And yes, the seamless integration between apps is pretty amazing. I like it.

As I was importing the 15k photos, it did start to heat up - lots of processor & disk I/O. The fan kicked on. And yes, since it's aluminum, the heat spreads. So yeah, it got hot as I was pushing it.

But it's no worse than the Dell notebook (Core2Duo) that it was replacing. In fact, when I wasn't pushing it (and using the 9400M video rather than the 9600GT), the MBP stays cooler than the Dell.

Neither are truly lap-friendly laptops.

Thanks for the tips, OldSkool. Yes, your impressions mirror mine. I currently keep three sets of all of my music & photos. A working set on my 'main' machine, a copy on my home NAS, and a third on a USB drive. I will probably start using the USB HD for Time Machine, once I'm settled on the MBP.

Good lord, is it ever possible to just answer a Mac question without this incessant Apple proselytizing?

la la la la la - I can't hear you!

I'm wondering if it's possible to ask a question about Mac stuff without constant chants of "PCs are better, Macs suck!"

I'm curious about the 140 degree F comment. If that is indeed correct that can't be good for any type of eletronic equipment and would consider it a design flaw.

What is the "normal" temperature a computer should run at? With no overclocking or anything else that will increase the internal temp.

140 is nice 'n' low. That's 60 deg C, which is well within the acceptable range of modern processors and their coworkers. It's when you're getting up to 70 or 80 that you should worry.

Now, I like my processors running around 50, but I also have the luxury of not running them in a 1/2 inch thick case.

I was hoping that it wouldn't come to that. In most forums it would be a near certainty. We're a bit more civilized around here (I think).

I will remain firmly entrenched with one foot in the Microsoft morass; I write C# code, maintain VB6, and manage Microsoft SQL Servers for a living. So there's no escaping that. I have no real qualms about Microsoft either. I'm certainly not a M$ hater. I often defend their practices to my anti-M$ colleagues.

But in my home life, I'm looking for a change. The Mac is a refreshing change.

And besides, I don't really see what ammunition the Anti-Mac crowd has these days, since all modern Macs can run XP/Vista natively through Boot Camp. I mean, it's not a VM, it *is* Windows. And it works (from my meager experience) quite well. Case-in-point, my wife's secondary work machine is a c2007 Macbook Pro. Last one before the unibody Macs. It's a Core2Duo 2.2, 2GB ram, 5400rpm HD, w/ 256mb nVidia 8600GT discrete graphics. My Dell is a Core2Duo 2.0, 2GB Ram, 7200rpm HD, w/ 256mb 8600GT discrete graphics. Eerily similar.

In my pre-purchase tinkering, I put Bootcamp + XP on it and installed a couple of my current favorite games (Supreme Commander & Sins of a Solar Empire). Both games ran more smoothly on the MBP+Bootcamp+XP than they did on my Dell 1520. I'm sure the difference was probably a 6-month old Vista install on the 1520 vs. a clean XP on the MBP. But the point is, since the hardware is functionally the same, a Mac is going to be able to run Windows at least as well as a comparable PC of similar hardware specs.

And as for the 'Macs are overpriced' argument. I agree. They are. I've spent a lot of time building machines in the past few months. The MBP I bought was originally about $1,000 more expensive than an equivalent HP or Dell. That's not insignificant.

But as I was once told by an ex-Apple Store employee, the trick to buying a Mac is to buy a 'refurbished' one from Apple directly. So that's what I did. As soon as the 'new' MB's were announced at WWDC '09 last week, many 'old' MB's hit the refurb store. So my 'new' MBP is of the previous generation - previous as in superseded last week. So I don't get the non-removable (ick) 7-hour battery nor the built-in SD slot. Oh drat. But I do have an ExpressCard slot, which is more useful to me than the SD slot. Otherwise it's the same as the 'new' ones. But what I did get is a savings of *over* $1,000 on its price from two weeks ago. And as far as I can tell, it's never been used. No scuffs, no scratches, no key wear, no trackpad wear. It even smells like new electronics. Compared to the refurb Dell notebooks that I've personally witnessed that did look like someone had used them for a short time - crumbs or a hair in the keyboard, or a scuff mark on a corner or two.

The fact is, I had built several mid-high end Dell and HP machines of identical hardware specs as I was deciding what to do. The best prices I could come up with on a Dell/HP was $100-$200 cheaper than what I paid for the MBP. Yes, still slightly cheaper. But the all-aluminum chassis design and overall 'feel' of the MBP is easily worth that premium. And all that is before any discussion/argument over whether OSX is better than XP/Vista.

So again, I don't get the anti-Mac sentiment, other than fear of the unknown/unfamiliar.

I'm going to straddle the two sides and say that both Macs and PCs suck. Neither of them have the power to polish my creepy messages to Regina and make her fall in love with me.

Who's Regina?

I also like VirtualBox for running VM versions of Windows and Linux. And it's free.

I have used VirtualBox in Linux (to run XP). I was quite impressed. I didn't know they had an OSX version. I see that they do, in beta right now. Very cool.

I will definitely check that out. Thanks!

Why? Do you think someone's already made an iPhone app for it?

For the record, I have 2 Linux boxes and 2 Macs (MBP & mini) at home, plus my wife and I each have a Thinkpad running XP for work. And I run a Parallels VM for Quicken on my Mac. I'm agnostic. Best of breed. BTW, I'm a Java developer at work, so I guess that agnosticism is somewhat predictable.

Well reasoned and articulate as always, Peter.

I'm just trying to resist being seduced. The Tuttle-Family CIO is always spouting off about not having the resources to support two platforms

If not, soon.

Bingo. That's exactly how I feel. Best tool for the job.

A Java developer? Sorry to hear that. I had a few bad experiences with Java in college. Scarred me for life.

Y

Yeah, the OSX version is quite fast. On my Macbook Core Duo 2GHz I have Parallels 4.0 with an XP build on my local drive. I ran VirtualBox w/ Windows 7 on an external USB HDD. It ran FASTER than XP on Parallels. Nice, though that may be due mostly to Win7.

Funny. I pretty much use Parallels just to run Quicken. The Mac version is horrible and I tell that weekly to my friend from Intuit...

Apparently the beta for the new Quicken for Mac is out but he wasn't sure if it used the same file format as the Windows version. I would had to translate my Windows version to Mac. I tried years ago and that was a nightmare...

I read in the FAQ it wouldn't import from Windows, and it seems to be missing a few things, esp. compared to Home & Business. And the wait continues...


Yeah, well, I'm scarred too , but it pays the bills.

Bummer to hear that Quicken hasn't gotten any better. That thing's a hunk of junk on the Mac.

I did some work on the back end supporting Intuit at their booth at Macworld one year, and boy, did they get some dirty looks and tough questions.

Yeah, unfortunately, sounds like Intuit's pretty much abandoning stand alone packages in favor of their online services. However, I don't like putting any of my financial info on the web.

Just saw this today as well:

http://lifehacker.com/5291841/lifehacker-pack-2009-our-list-of-essential-free-mac-downloads

Just a followup...

I spent some time tinkering with iPhoto last night. I get it now. The 'auto-event on import' feature saved the day.

While there still doesn't seem to be a way to tell iPhoto to use my folders as 'Events' , at least in my case I can see that in the majority of cases it doesn't matter. My folders were all of events, broken down chronologically anyway. So in most cases, the Events mirror what the folders were. I have a little bit of cleanup to do (where a vacation spanned multiple days, for instance), but it's minimal compared to what I thought it was going to be. It's looking great. And I did some digging as to how and where iPhoto is actually storing my jpgs when it's set to use its own library. I understand that too now, and see that all of my JPG's aren't actually disappearing into an OSX black hole. So I'm cool with that too.

And I installed Parallels 4.0 last night too, with an XP VM. Is that ever a slick piece of software. From my Linux/VM experiences, I'm used to VM's that run in their own window, with their own dedicated hard drive space. Basically independent of the host OS. Fine and dandy.

It can do that, but it can also share the Mac documents/files into XP's documents. And there's a mode called 'Coherence' where XP runs in the background and lets you start & run Windows apps as if they were native to OSX. Way cool.

For instance, for years I have been using MS Money to keep track of my finances. Installed it in the XP VM so I can continue to use it while I find a suitable Mac-centric finance app (I know, good luck...). Works perfectly.

But what I didn't realize is that Parallels is able to more-or-less merge OSX and XP together. OSX becomes 'aware' of Windows apps, so to speak. I can literally just double click on a MSMoney application link in Finder (in OSX), and Parallels will boot up/unsuspend the XP VM, then open MS Money in OSX just as if it were a native OSX App. It's not in it's own XP window, it's just the app itself. And other than potentially needing to cold boot the XP VM, it's just as fast & snappy as it was running natively on my XP/Vista machines. Very slick!

So far, I'm quite impressed.

Okay, I'll bite.

What's the difference between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro?

Options and cost.

A Macbook is a Macbook. There's one model, with a 13" screen. You can customize it with a bigger hard drive or more memory, but that's about it. 2 USB 2.0, 1 Firewire 400 port.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook?mco=MTE4MTY

There are several models of Macbook Pro, some with more options to customize them than others.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTE4NDY

The MBP 13" has a thinner, aluminum chassis, has Firewire 800, a slightly faster processor, backlit keyboard, and an SD slot.

Then, there are MBP 15.4" and 17" models. Faster processors, more RAM, more HD space, higher screen resolutions, and more options to customize.

I use VMware Fusion for that, but I'm firmly in the VMware camp, having drunk that coolaid (and having spent those tens of thousands of dollars at work...)

VMWare is very good too.

We frequently use it at work for software and deployment testing, both for internal and web designs. Has saved us a tremendous amount of time and energy.

The cool thing w/ Parallels and VMWare is that you can access your OSX network drives too.

When I use Quicken, I store the files on our NAS. Then when the wife updates her data into Quicken she opens her version of Parallels and makes her updates. Makes life much easier.

I do that too, but more for backup than sharing. Except my NAS is just a Linux server with Samba (Windows shared network drive).

Parallels is pretty slick. I have run into bumps, though. Somehow I had a file type in OS X associated with Notepad in Windows, so whenever I clicked on it, a VM would start up. Took a long time for the start-up, then shut-down, then fix the file association, so I turned off the "make Windows apps visible in OS X".

Glad you're getting comfortable with iPhoto, Peter. Yes, the files are accessible. I go through the same thing with iTunes. I keep my "System of Record" on my Linux server, and my laptop has a subset, and my iPod/iPhone has a subset of that. If I purchase anything through iTunes I have to copy it back to the Linux box. I usually rip from the Linux box - much more control over the format and tags. And a bigger CPU.

Not only do we use VMWare (ESX/vSphere) for development and testing, but it's embedded in our production side, as well. I'm also starting to convert many of our now out-of-warranty physical servers into VMs. We'll be virtualized to the hilt pretty soon.

My coworker's friend takes VMWare to another level. He has a Mac Pro and runs something like 4 or 5 VMWare sessions of Windows.

Then he uses lower end machines around house as terminals running VNC (I assume). That gives him 5 fast 'PCs'. Pretty cool.

Geektastic.

Funny how the old network computer idea that failed 10 years ago is rearing it's head as a viable solution now w/ virtualization and cloud computing.

sigh......

Hey, that's Ken's line!

Peter,
I do not have a Mac, but I use Lightroom – exclusively. LR is an incredibly powerful organizer with a very good Raw converter and photo editor. I shoot everything in Raw, and have found that LR is all I ever need for post processing. I would not hesitate in recommended LR to anyone. If you go to the LR web page, you can down load / view the tutorials and they will give you a good idea just what the software can do.

Excellent mdrew! Thanks.

I've now had a good couple of weeks to pound away on iPhoto '09. I like it. It's about on the same level of usability as what Picasa can do, and so it's sufficient for me for the moment.

However, I do still have a desire to take my post-processing toolbox to the next level, and so Lightroom seems like a natural choice. I've poked around a bit on their tutorials and FAQ. Adobe's description seems to match exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks for the advice!