Keywords - Need Ideas/Help

[JillH]

I searched the forums and couldn't find an answer on this:

My library of photos is already pretty-well organized (I'm rather OCD about that), and I have folders with my favorites/best photos separate from the rest of the crowd. Now I need to keyword/tag them - something I've never done before so I have a lot of retroactive work to do.

I'm finding both the Nikon NX program and Photoshop Elements 7 are both terribly cumbersome to work with and seriously lacking in flexibility and speed. In my perfect world, I'd love to be able to just type in or cut and paste keywords rather than deal with the crappy drop down lists in the two programs mentioned above. At the same time, I dread adding yet another software program, but if it simplifies my life, I'll consider it.

I am stuck with a few restrictions though; I'm working on a 2-year old laptop with Windows XP, and I cannot currently afford to invest hundreds of dollars into another photo software program (e.g. the full version of Photoshop).

Any suggestions, or do I just need to suck it up and work with what I have?

TIA

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[pbelarge]

Jill
I understand how one hates to keep adding programs, but...


I was in the photo book section of Barnes & Knoble last fall. I struck up a conversation with another book grazer in the section. One other guy heard our conversation and thought I would benefit from a program called Light Room. I had never heard of it, I did a lot of and I mean a lot of research. I have taken too many photos, and like you I am very anal about the method of my storage. Only, I am naive as well.

LR is the way to go. you can bring your well managed folders into LR and your work flow will improve. I think you will really enjoy it. If you do, come back a few months later, and I will mention about plug-ins for LR


There are other programs as well, so you may want to check them out.



Google work flow
http://www.google.com/#num=20&hl=en&...6e971561b14b8b

[myfotoguy]

I think lightroom (as suggested) is a good choice. I tried that and ACDSee and ended up going with ACDSee. They both are good.

I went with ACDSee because for the money it's cheaper, and it actually views your files using the file and folder management you already have in place (no importing into the program). They have Pro and Basic versions. I wrote a short article about my experience with organizing and tagging (link below, I hope people don't grow tired of me linking my articles):
Myfotoguy: Where Did I Put That Picture? A Guide for Managing Your Image Files

With ACDSee there is no drop-down. You can copy and paste text into the keyword field. Since it's all database driven and not the file fields themselves it's really fast to tag multiple images at once using standard multi-select like you do in a file browser. With the pro version there is a batch process you can run on several images at a time to move the keywords into the file (IPTC field) which is where they can live permanently with the file and be seen by other programs.

It also works like many email programs that look up user names, where if you start typing a word that has been used before it starts to complete it for you.

ACDSee has a trial, Ligthroom probably does too.

[pbelarge]

I am not tired of your links, keep them coming.


You need to author posts faster (on your site), I have read most of them already.

[myfotoguy]

I am not tired of your links, keep them coming.


You need to author posts faster (on your site), I have read most of them already.

Thanks, Pierre!

[JillH]

Thanks for the ideas gentlemen. Lightroom is still a bit out of my price range right now but it is something I've looked at already. I may try the ACDee free trial. I'm assuming they can both open my Nikon RAW files, yes?

Do either of you (or anyone else) have experience with a product called PicaJet? It's another product I found in my wanderings.

Also - once you have Lightroom, ACDee or whatever, do you post-process in that software, or do you still go into Photoshop to edit?

[KmH]

Adobe designed Lightroom to first be a robust image datatbase manager and second to be a image editor.

Lightroom does not have layers and is limited in adding text to images.

More and more photographers are using both Lightroom and Photoshop to do their editing.

Lighroom handles the easy stuff and Photoshop does the heavy lifting.

[pbelarge]

Adobe designed Lightroom to first be a robust image datatbase manager and second to be a image editor.

Lightroom does not have layers and is limited in adding text to images.

More and more photographers are using both Lightroom and Photoshop to do their editing.

Lighroom handles the easy stuff and Photoshop does the heavy lifting.

Keith
What about the number of different plug-ins being developed for LR that add to the functionality of it?

[myfotoguy]

Keith explained it well. I use ACDSee in the same way. Most of my everyday edits are done in ACDSee.

One thing about ADSee pro (basic is not a good option for advanced photographers) is their RAW processing. It's okay, but NX2 is far better at handling Nikon RAW files than ACDSee raw editor. I guess it depends on your experience. NX2, and Lightroom have algorithims to read the camera settings better and start the image closer to what you had your camera set at as a starting point. ACDsee, for Nikon files at least, is not as good in this area. But I usually process in NX2 for raw anyway.

Otherwise, for my JPEG editing, I do 90+ % in ACDsee, as it does a really good job with basic, and some advanced edits. It's also "non-destructive" meaning you can recover the original at anytime, and using the develop tools pick up where you left off. The rest of my editing is in NX2 or Photoshop or specialty apps (noise Ninja, Photmatix).

[KmH]

Adobe designed Lightroom to first be a robust image datatbase manager and second to be a image editor.

Lightroom does not have layers and is limited in adding text to images.

More and more photographers are using both Lightroom and Photoshop to do their editing.

Lighroom handles the easy stuff and Photoshop does the heavy lifting.

Keith
What about the number of different plug-ins being developed for LR that add to the functionality of it?

Sure they will allow it to do a bit more but without layers ...........

[pbelarge]

Keith
Would you mind going into a little more detail about layers and the importance of having the function of layers and not having the function?