iPhoto? Aperture? PictureProject? PS? Oh, my!

[natallica]

Hello everyone -

I just received my D200 -- which will be my first DSLR.

I have questions about what software to use for which part of my workflow.

When using a digital point-and-shoot w/my Mac, I never installed any drivers or other software. I would just hook the camera up to the Mac and let iPhoto launch and import my photos.

Now, if I want to shoot RAW (or should I shoot RAW + JPEG?), should I just do the same thing and let iPhoto import my photos or should I install the Nikon software that came with the camera? It came with a disc for PictureProject and a trial of Capture NX.

Additionally, will iPhoto let me do edits on RAW images or should I really download the trial versions of Aperture, Lightroom, and/or Photoshop CS3 and give those a go?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated! :-)

-- N

[cube]

I bought two of these:

http://www.phaseone.com/Global/Campaigns/SanDisk%20info.aspx

But I asked the clerk to open boxes until he found vouchers, because not all of them were guaranteed to come with it.

It includes 1 free upgrade and two activations.

[robbieduncan]

iPhoto can't edit RAW at it's full colour depth. It will convert all your RAW images to JPEGs (using whatever convert parameters it thinks are best: you don't get control) and then edit the JPEGS.

Aperture or Lightroom will give you full control of the RAW decodes and work at the full 16-bit (well 12 actually) per pixel instead of downsampling to 8-bit JPEG.

[cube]

I bought two of these:

http://www.phaseone.com/Global/Campaigns/SanDisk%20info.aspx

But I asked the clerk to open boxes until he found vouchers, because not all of them were guaranteed to come with it.

It includes 1 free upgrade and two activations.

BTW, I bought it in a regular store, not some "SanDisk Store", if that exists.

[Clix Pix]

You might want to consider getting a memory card reader for uploading your images to the computer, rather than doing it directly from camera to computer. I upload images from the CF card in the CF reader to a specific folder on my desktop and promptly save and copy it to another HD disk before moving on, and then I use Photo Mechanic to do a preliminary sorting before importing images into Aperture. I don't use iPhoto at all. Aperture does 99.9% of what I need, and only occasionally do I need to also pop into CS2 (haven't upgraded to CS3 yet) for additional editing.

I don't use the software Nikon provides with its cameras because years ago I had a bad experience with Nikon View (predecessor to Picture Project) and realized that Nikon is in the business of optics, not software.

[cube]

If you want to use the Capture One sync utility, it will copy all the files, RAW and JPEG. But the Capture One editor only works on RAW input files (of course you can export JPEG).

[Plymouthbreezer]

If you just spent the money on a D200, spend the $300 for LightRoom or Aperture - it will be well worth it.