1

There’s a bunch of threads about buying new cameras, and photography, but not so much for managing the output of them, so I figured I’d start a new one.

What do most people do with their photos to get them off their camera? In the past, I’ve used software that comes with my camera, but that’s usually bloat-y garbage, and most recently I’ve just ended up dumping them in folders on my computer and pretending I’ll eventually sort through them, and never doing so, so it just becomes a big black hole.

I’m really looking for 3 things:

  1. organization / management of photos
  2. Simple editing / cropping, maybe even some RAW manipulation
  3. Online sharing.

From what I can tell, the first 2 are basically Lightroom (PC) or Aperture (Mac), and there isn’t much competition. Any other players in that space?

What do people use for photo sharing online? Does Lightroom integrate with any file sharing services? Are there any real differences between the major ones (Flickr, Picasa, Google+ / Facebook, etc?)

2

I use Lightroom on my Mac, it’s not just PC only. And the Mac version is fantastic, I prefer it to the Aperture trial I played with, especially because I’ve never really adjusted to the weird way Apple handles pictures in their proprietary file-system archive thing.

And yes, Lightroom integrates with all the big players. There are built-in sharing/export plug-ins for Flickr, Facebook, 500px, and they work pretty seamlessly. I was a big export to Flickr user, but it seems that most of my family is all about Facebook, so that’s where my photos get exported most nowadays. They’ve also upped the resolution they can accept/display, so that’s nice. I still think Flickr is better overall, but if no one looks at the pics, it’s kind of pointless and a waste of the $20/year I paid for Flickr Pro.

3

I use Adobe Lightroom for 1 and 2. I also have Adobe Elements for when I want to do more significant manipulation of the photos but I’m finding that I almost never use these days beyond stitching to create panoramics. Lightroom can also dot he online sharing but I tend to do a manual upload to Flickr.

4

Thanks, guys.

I hate when the answer is “the expensive thing really is much better”.

5

I tried to cheap out on the RAW editor at first. I used the RAW editor that came bundled with my camera. As expected, it technically worked, but was total crap. I also tried out some open source/ freeware one. It was better than what came bundled with my camera. But then I tried a trial version of Lightroom and I had my credit card out before the trial was even over.

6

Lightroom with a student/teacher discount wasn’t too bad, I think it was $79. You must know a student or teacher?

7

Lightroom is a reasonable $149.

8

It’s not expensive when you consider it was a $300 product until Adobe slashed the price a year ago.

9

At $300 it was spendy but worth it. At $150 it’s a no-brainer. It really is the best product on the market (for PC anyway, can’t speak for Mac).

10

Just as an alternate and freebie, take a look at Zoner Photo Studio 15.

http://free.zoner.com/

11

If all you want to do is what is listed above i think even iPhoto would be sufficient for your needs.

12

Agreed, Aperture or Lightroom could be argued to be overkill and overly complex for basic functions. You can always upgrade to these when you feel constrained by iPhoto.

13

Upon installing that, the program asks if I want to activate my paid version or enter an email address to activate my 10-day free trial.

Fuck you ‘free’ version. /uninstalled

14

On a similar note: I have a 1tb external and would preferably transfer photos to it through my mac as opposed to my pc. Does Lightroom or some other program allow me to setup the library on the external? I tried with iPhoto and it just laughed at me. Right now I am just dumping them from the SD card but the more pictures I get in there the more unrealistic it becomes to maintain.

15

Yes. I keep my Lightroom database and photos all on an external drive. There are tutorials for this all over the place.

The advice to try getting along with iPhoto is sound. And it plays the upgrade to Aperture game very nicely, if you want to do that.

16

The OP mentioned working with RAW images, so iPhoto might not be the way to go. It can import RAW images, but once you make any edits, it is converted to JPEG, and further edits are done to that JPEG. Sorta defeats the purpose of working with RAW.

17

Lightroom is it especially as a starter program. It is no way complicated to use, moving sliders is as difficult as it gets unless you want to do more.

Storage and importation is simple as is the catalogue feature. Loads of tutorials online for it. Plenty of presets for it so you dont manually need to fiddle with settings if you dont want to either.

If you are shooting RAW you really need a decent editor to make the most of your shots. Also Lightroom works well to overcome any mistakes made as an inexperienced photographer or photo editor.

This is still my goto program even after 2 years of use and though i do have photoshop I only use it when i have to do.

I also bought a book from amazon about the more advanced features which helped later on.

18

I’m just starting getting into hobbyist photography (as opposed to just casual snapshots), so I figured I should leave the door open, but I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. I recently bought my first camera that can shoot RAW, and am just starting to learn the basics.

I’ll probably give Lightroom a shot.

19

If unsure start with Raw+JPG you then get an idea of what the nex does in camera and then edit in Lightroom from teh Raw which will show you the difference using raw can do for you. Its what I did and its pretty noticabke straight away the improvement.

20

Hmmm. I’ve been running that for a couple of months and no requirement for paid or free trial. Are you sure you’re running the free version? I own Lightroom, but I use Zoner Photo Studio for most day to day photo management.

(Either click on the compare versions or go straight to here: