Resolved: What do Windows folk use for photography?

[Micky Do]

A basic sounding question, I know, but I know very little about "the other side".

I occasionally use a PC with Windows XP at the office; just Word, Excel and e-mail. I do most of my work outside of classes at home on my Mac Mini.

I am new to digital photography, starting with an Olympus Tough TG310 bought on sale last. Within a a week or two of getting it I was asked to take some photos of a sports event as they wanted some for a newspaper report. It was easy enough to work out the process.... take the pictures, download them to iPhoto, then choose half a dozen of the best to crop and enhance a little. Finally I attach them to an e-mail for for the report writer to select and publish. Easy peasy.

Since then my photos have been used most weeks, though I have tried to encourage others with much better cameras to do the same. It just occurred to me that the reason they don't could be that they don't have such easy to use software to do the job.

Does Windows come bundled with some photo handling software? Or do Windows users have to load their own?

[Renzatic]

Originally Posted by Micky Do

Does Windows come bundled with some photo handling software? Or do Windows users have to load their own?

We have to load our own. Windows has support for viewing files, and basic tweaking with Paint (olol), but nothing as indepth as iPhoto. For that, we'd have to load up something like Picasa or Photoshop Elements.

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by Micky Do

A basic sounding question, I know, but I know very little about "the other side".
...
Does Windows come bundled with some photo handling software? Or do Windows users have to load their own?

What Apple has done with iPhoto is to create a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) that is focussed (sorry) on the needs of the consumer user. It is because iPhoto can manage the tasks of importing, organizing, tagging, etc of photos and the basic editing chores, and then export those photos that makes an iPhoto workflow so easy. As far as I know, there isn't consumer priced/focussed (sorry again) Windows equivalent to iPhoto.

However, there is Adobe's Lightroom and PhaseOne's Capture One that do what iPhoto does. But these are aimed at professionals and very serious amateurs with feature sets and price tags to match.

So, your Windows colleagues do have options... but they are probably much more software for what they need or want to do.

Hope this helps.

[tmagman]

Picasa is a fantastic tool for everyday work and the average user who wants to organize, touch up, and distribute their photos. Lots of my windows friends use it.

Unfortunately I also see lots of my friends not knowing the concept of file management. They barely even back up their photos they take.

[Laird Knox]

My desktop is a Windows box and my laptop is a Mac. Lightroom works very well on both systems although I don't really manage photos on the Mac any longer.

I would even go so far as to suggest Lightroom over iPhoto for anything but the most casual use.

[jodelli]

I have some software that came with my Canon Rebel. Digital Photo Professional and Photo Studio are pretty functional. Picasa can fill in too. It'll all work with windows in one form or another.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by snberk103

....
However, there is Adobe's Lightroom and PhaseOne's Capture One that do what iPhoto does. But these are aimed at professionals and very serious amateurs with feature sets and price tags to match....

Adobe Photoshop Elements is really very good. It has features for organizing and editing. If fact even if you have Aperture, I'd get Elements because it is such a good editor.

The workflow on a Windows PC is horrible. I've seen what peole who have PC's have to do. Either that do something very primitive like make nested folders and some kind of "paint" program or they invest in the Adobe suite. Most go the first route

[snberk103]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

Adobe Photoshop Elements is really very good. It has features for organizing and editing. If fact even if you have Aperture, I'd get Elements because it is such a good editor.

I'm not sure if this is a response to my post, or just using my post as starting point??

Originally Posted by ChrisA

The workflow on a Windows PC is horrible. I've seen what peole who have PC's have to do. Either that do something very primitive like make nested folders and some kind of "paint" program or they invest in the Adobe suite. Most go the first route

Nested folders is not unique to Windows. Lots of Mac users use them as well. It's just that Macs have iPhoto as an entry level superior alternative, while Windows users have to invest a bit more to get the same sort of application.

[Micky Do]

Thanks for the answers.

Originally Posted by snberk103

It's just that Macs have iPhoto as an entry level superior alternative, while Windows users have to invest a bit more to get the same sort of application.

I guess this quote kind of sums it up. With a simple to use camera and iPhoto from the Mac iLife suite, I was able to produce something useful quite quickly. Had it been the Windows environment perhaps I would not have been bothered.