08-12-2013, 02:06 AM
Hi,
I need to upgrade to better photo file management. I found there's a lot on the market and all of it has limitations. Some products I've been glancing at include Lightroom, Bridge w/ Photoshop, Aperture, ACDsee, Photo Director, fotoBiz, StockView, NSCS Pro, and Capture One. Of these, only Aperture is out due to hardware limitations. I am open to looking at others.
Four things I might *like* to have beyond basic organization:
I am still not clear what advantages each management program presents over the others. Somewhat uniformly all do a relatively weak job in clarifying what advantages their program has in the marketplace, and after a while they all sound alike. Some are also not terribly clear up front on their licensing arrangements, which I find annoying since I have multiple machines.
Which built-in features do you need the most in your workflow? Automation of backups? Support for plug-ins? Editing features of the manager? Support for business transactions? What features would you happily do without, especially if you have Photoshop and the Nik suite? I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who has used more than one photo management program and can explain the important differences between the programs.
Please share your thoughts on this.
I need to upgrade to better photo file management. I found there's a lot on the market and all of it has limitations. Some products I've been glancing at include Lightroom, Bridge w/ Photoshop, Aperture, ACDsee, Photo Director, fotoBiz, StockView, NSCS Pro, and Capture One. Of these, only Aperture is out due to hardware limitations. I am open to looking at others.
Four things I might *like* to have beyond basic organization:
- I would like to have one integrated system for both film and digital photo management if possible--still trying to finish labeling slides, still have about half my images in film, and would like to have one search engine for the whole mess.
- I am intrigued by the Capture One tethered camera control for the 5D III, but not sure if it has substantive advantages over the EOS Utility, which I find useful for macro image stack collecting.
- I like the idea of folder overlays, where one can view the collection by date, or by location, or by species, etc...
- I would like to be able to edit EXIF data (according to accepted standards).
I am still not clear what advantages each management program presents over the others. Somewhat uniformly all do a relatively weak job in clarifying what advantages their program has in the marketplace, and after a while they all sound alike. Some are also not terribly clear up front on their licensing arrangements, which I find annoying since I have multiple machines.
Which built-in features do you need the most in your workflow? Automation of backups? Support for plug-ins? Editing features of the manager? Support for business transactions? What features would you happily do without, especially if you have Photoshop and the Nik suite? I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who has used more than one photo management program and can explain the important differences between the programs.
Please share your thoughts on this.