What photo organizer do you use? or you don't use?

I am using iPhoto '11 (9.2.1) on OS X 10.7.2, and it works. Maybe you need to update iPhoto after installing it? What do you mean by folders disorganized?

As a "photo manager", you can use Image Capture to download pics from your iPhone or Camera, and just sort them in folders. But iPhoto is much easier.

seasurfer said:

I recently did a clean install on my iMac 2011. After the clean install. My iLife 11 is gone, I have to re-install it from my bundle apps. However upon reinstall, because iLife 11 was for 10.6.8, when the reinstall finished, I realized that it actually messed up the Lion system. The folders are very disorganized...

So I decided not to use iPhoto, since I don't want my 10.7.2 to get messed up.

What kind of photo organizer you guys love to use? Or is it necessary to even use one?

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I think if you are serious about your photography I would recommend Lightroom, it is great for organizing photos and development work. If you just want a simple organizer Picasso works fine also.

I used Picasa on my windows machine. Its very smooth and syncs very well with Picasa in the cloud.

I use iPhoto 11 now but its not as smooth. I just liek to keep everything Apple as much as possible.

+1 vote for Lightroom. It is superb compared to iPhoto. There is a bit of a learning curve (as it the case with most Adobe products) but the effort will pay off if you are really into photo management / editing / publishing. Plus, it is not super costly (although more expensive than iPhoto).

I use Lightoom, I prefer the editing tools available in LR over Aperture, and I'm use to the LR interface. Since LightRoom does not create a proprietary database or file structure to organize my photos, I have them set up in a file tree that works for me.

Yet another vote for LightRoom. I do semi-pro photography (translation: It doesn't pay that well. ). Feature by feature it outperforms Aperture on every count.

Lightroom is so good in contrast to other Adobe apps I'm convinced Adobe has nothing to do with it.

Steve's Barber said:

Yet another vote for LightRoom. I do semi-pro photography (translation: It doesn't pay that well. ). Feature by feature it outperforms Aperture on every count.

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I used to do that in my BK era - that is Before Kids Now my time is spent with them, or taking pictures of them. I got tired of doing events, that paid very little.

iPhoto is one of the nastiest programs around... I've always found it clunky when the library gets large (even on 11 with a new system, the scrolling is not seamless)...

I hate the organization of files:
Year Folder >> Month Folder (12) >> Day Folder (~31) >> Picture

Who does this anymore? Even Camedia (the worst in the PC world) has abandoned this structure.

It makes Originals on any picture you even open (not necessarily edit).

When it imports from say your Pictures folder, it leaves your originals behind AND creates a copy inside the "no touching" iPhoto Library.

It does horrific things with thumbnail caches (I've seen thumbnail libraries get to 20GB without rhythm or reason).

And it has no proper duplication finder.



My vote for the simplest photo management with terrific tools is Picasa.

It's fast, automatically finds duplicates, leave's your pictures where you think they should be (Pictures folder), doesn't force you to adopt an archaic folder structure (you name the folders any way you like), has wonderful albums that allow you to pare down your photos in creative ways, and has built in web sharing (1 GB), and it allows you to revert any changes you make on an image (this uses a hidden Originals copy). And it's Free.

The downside: it doesn't integrate with iMovie, iTunes >> AppleTV.

--EDIT--
Clarification: your Picasa ALBUMS do not sync to AppleTV. Your folders can.
Apple TV can sync to your Mac's "Pictures" folder or iPhoto Library. So if you use Picasa all you have to do is point it to your "Pictures" folder. What ever is in your "Pictures" folder can be synced to Apple TV.


Also, migrating from a PC to a Mac with all albums intact is a bit of a challenge, but doable.

I use Photoshop CS5 and Bridge for organizing. I do not like Lightroom's organizational scheme, but obviously many others do. One reason for me is I have used Bridge for many years and all my photos are self-organized into folders of my own choosing. Also, because i keep photos on two computers in two locations synched, it is actually easier to use Bridge and a transfer external HD (with Chronosync) to keep things synched than to use the Libraries in Lightroom. But YMMV.

I have Picasa and iPhoto 11 but I use iPhoto 11 exclusively. I set import to NOT make copies in my iPhoto Library. This means I can't go "willy nilly" moving originals around if I don't want iPhoto to become confused.

I had iPhoto crash when it got to 60+ GB iPhoto Library. Now that I stopped copying any originals in, iPhoto runs smoothly with about a 10GB iPhoto library indexing 200 GB (10 years worth) of photos.

I recently tried to renew a flickr pro account so I could finish the last step in porting the family away from mobile me to iCloud. There was a Paypal problem so I'm waiting another week for it to clear up. In the future I will use either Picasa or flickr for my online galleries. Despite the billing problems I've had, Flickr has a slight advantage because it works with iPhoto and iPhoto works with iCloud's Photostream service.

maflynn said:

I used to do that in my BK era - that is Before Kids Now my time is spent with them, or taking pictures of them. I got tired of doing events, that paid very little.

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My rug rats are either married or off to college. The "college" kid is why I need to do a dozen weddings/events each year just for her room and board.

Have to say though, I've been a LR users since version 1 and can't count the number of hours it's shaved off my workflow. And the recent addition of an SSD has really cut down on that "wait time" when going from LightRoom into photoshop for those special edits.

I have Lightroom but I don't use it very much and I use ZoomBrowser EX that comes with Canon camera. It is easy to use and very simple.

I really don't like iPhoto at all either.