Advice on organizing and storing photos with Adobe software

[rwmazik]

I am a fledgling photographer with an iMac, Snow Leopard and a lot of photos. Until recently, I have not been doing much editing aside from using the basic simple exposure, lighting, and cropping you get with iPhoto '09. However, currently I am pursuing a possible career in photography by interning with a well versed pro photographer. I just purchased LR2 and CS4, (hooray for the student discount), and wanted to steer away from iPhoto. The one thing I particularly like about iPhoto is the way it automates and splits events into nicely organized files in a very user friendly interface.

Is there a way I can eliminate iPhoto from my repertoire while utilizing other software that can do the things I like with it? I am thinking that I will have to organize and create folders myself. I still have a lot to learn with LR2 and CS4, but would love to hear what others are doing regarding organizing and storing photos.

Thanks,
Ron

 

[KmH]

Adobe designed Lightroom primarily as a powerful image database manager. Your solution is right there at your fingertips.

 

[myfotoguy]

As mentioned Lightroom has what you need to tag and organize. You may try a Google search for "lightroom tips".

For others finding this post, I also suggest ACDSee Pro as an alternative (cheaper option). It's a little different in that you organize like you would organize folders in a file explorer, but you can also assign tags and create albums.

Both programs are fantastic in my opinion. There are pros and cons to each. I chose ACDSee a long time ago before LR even existed and just kept with it. Was thinking about switching but their latest version (Pro 3) has some pretty powerful editing. NOTE: ACDSee for Mac has not been released yet but is in development.

My apporach is covered in this article, but not all of it applies to lightroom, it's a general intro to organizing really Myfotoguy: Where Did I Put That Picture? A Guide for Managing Your Image Files
The article covers my thought process behind the directory structure I use and tagging images. Hopefully it's helpful for someone. Not sure how much applies to Adobe Lighroom users, but thought it made sense to share here.

 

[mdtusz]

I'm a mac user too, but I personally HATE lightroom. I used it for a while but it just never felt right at home with my mac the way it should. I use Aperture 3 (for current Aperture users, I think it's worth the upgrade) now which is fantastic. A bit of a resource hog, but so is lightroom. You can sync with your iPhoto library back and forth and it has a very similar interface to iPhoto as well, just a bit more grown up . Aperture has all the presets like Lr now and you can even brush on certain adjustments and things to certain areas so you don't have to apply them the whole image. It's also non-destructive editing so you will always have the original file to go back to if you want. The only complaint I have is that it's hard to access the actual image files by going through your finder, but I just export batches of whatever I need onto the desktop, then delete the copied jpeg batch when I don't need it anymore (the edited and original files remain in apertures library). It's definitely worth a try to get the trial version and take it for a spin if you don't like Lr.