Hey, digital photographers!

[Chad4Mac]

My mother got a 17in PB this past weekend -- due to my presistant Mac plugging -- and has a question about Photoshop and iPhoto.

What is best, or should I say easier? Importing into Photoshop, making adjustments and whatever, then exporting to iPhoto for viewing and making albums and such...or vise versa, iPhoto, then Photoshop?

She's got a pretty neat-o camera that's got 5+ megapixels, so the files are pretty large and clumsy in iPhoto.

I'm beginning to think that importing into Photoshop is the best idea.

What do you pro/experienced photo guys and gals do?

Any suggestions?

Any help would greatly appreciated!

Chad4Mac

 

[LimeLite]

Is she doing some sort of graphic design, or is she just taking pictures for fun? Cause if it's just for fun I don't know why you're messing with PS in the first place. iPhoto 2 has an enhancing and re-touch feature that works pretty well, if that's all she needs.

If you need to use PS, you have some options. The ease of iPhoto is that it automatically starts up and gets you ready to import just by plugging the camera in. It makes importing easier, but if every picture is going through PS, there's no point, cause you'd have to delete the originals from iPhoto anyway. But if most photos aren't going theough PS, might as well put them in iTunes then just drag the picture you want to use onto the desktop and then put it back into iPhoto when you're done.

If most or all of these will end up in PS, then just copy them and drag them into iPhoto when you're done.

 

[Chad4Mac]

The majority of the photos are of family and friends, but she is quite good at photo taking, and enjoys using Photoshop to make adjustments.

I think that PS to iPhoto is the way to go.

...but maybe not

Chad4Mac

 

[benjaminpg]

I would go the other way, from iPhoto to Photoshop. iPhoto is really slick for importing images, and then organizing them. Then you can set up iPhoto to open up photoshop, when you double click on an image, and edit it.

This way has the advantage of having a nicer, more streamlined interface of importing the images. Then you can brows through the images, to find the ones that need to be edited, and open those. This is the way I do it.

 

[vniow]

Some people also seem to like iView Media Pro as sort of an iPhoto Pro.

I forget where you can find it, do a quick google, I'm too lazy, bah.

 

[voicegy]

Originally posted by vniow
[...]I forget where you can find it, do a quick google, I'm too lazy, bah.

Yeah, your eyes DO look a little bugged out this time of night, dear....

I think the real answer to this is to have dear mom try both, and stick with what she's most comfortable with/has the best results with.

 

[ftaok]

Here's a question that may not have been brought up (ever?!?!?).

Let's say that I have Photoshop set to open when I want to edit a picture in iPhoto. Now, I hit the edit button in iPhoto and the image appears in Photoshop. I do my edits and save the work.

Now, I go back and do some more editing on this same picture.

Finally, I've repeated this 1000x.

My question is this. Does the picture get recompressed to jpg every time I edit it? Wouldn't this make the picture look terrible? Or does iPhoto bypass this by somehow reopening the original file and it remembers what had been done to the file (btw, I think this is unlikely).

If anyone understands what I'm saying, then more power to you!

 

[Chad4Mac]

Originally posted by voicegy
Yeah, your eyes DO look a little bugged out this time of night, dear....

I think the real answer to this is to have dear mom try both, and stick with what she's most comfortable with/has the best results with.

You couldn't be more right. Trying both ways is the only way.

Chad4Mac

 

[Chad4Mac]

Originally posted by benjaminpg
I would go the other way, from iPhoto to Photoshop. iPhoto is really slick for importing images, and then organizing them. Then you can set up iPhoto to open up photoshop, when you double click on an image, and edit it.

This way has the advantage of having a nicer, more streamlined interface of importing the images. Then you can brows through the images, to find the ones that need to be edited, and open those. This is the way I do it.

Thanks. Seems very logical to do it this way.

But how are you launching Photoshop through iPhoto. I remember someone telling me about this awhile ago. I can't seem to find it in preferences or in edit, though. Can you point me in the right direction...

Chad4Mac

 

[bennetsaysargh]

you just go into the preferences and select open in other. choose where ps is, and then bada-bing! you're done. this thread was one that opened ideas for me

 

[zer0army]

Originally posted by ftaok
Here's a question that may not have been brought up (ever?!?!?).

Let's say that I have Photoshop set to open when I want to edit a picture in iPhoto. Now, I hit the edit button in iPhoto and the image appears in Photoshop. I do my edits and save the work.

Now, I go back and do some more editing on this same picture.

Finally, I've repeated this 1000x.

My question is this. Does the picture get recompressed to jpg every time I edit it? Wouldn't this make the picture look terrible? Or does iPhoto bypass this by somehow reopening the original file and it remembers what had been done to the file (btw, I think this is unlikely).

If anyone understands what I'm saying, then more power to you!

I understand what your saying and I have heard that every time you open a .jpeg, you lose quality and that the only way to prevent this is to convert all you images to a .tiff or other non compressed file formats.

I'm not sure if this is true or not but maybe you just lose quality every time you resave the .jpeg and not necessarily every time it is viewed.

 

[ftaok]

Originally posted by zer0army
I understand what your saying and I have heard that every time you open a .jpeg, you lose quality and that the only way to prevent this is to convert all you images to a .tiff or other non compressed file formats.

I'm not sure if this is true or not but maybe you just lose quality every time you resave the .jpeg and not necessarily every time it is viewed.

Exactly. That's what I'm talking about.

So every time you edit a photo in iPhoto, it has to be re-saved. So therefore, it's likely that you'll lose quality.

So if you crop a photo, then do a red-eye an hour later, that photo has been re-saved twice. If you do it enough times, the photo will become noticably deteriorated.

I suppose that you'd have to edit and re-edit a photo a bunch of times before that happens, though. I guess I should do all of my edits at once.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by ftaok
Exactly. That's what I'm talking about.

So every time you edit a photo in iPhoto, it has to be re-saved. So therefore, it's likely that you'll lose quality.

So if you crop a photo, then do a red-eye an hour later, that photo has been re-saved twice. If you do it enough times, the photo will become noticably deteriorated.

I suppose that you'd have to edit and re-edit a photo a bunch of times before that happens, though. I guess I should do all of my edits at once.

Well, at least the nice thing about iPhoto is it is non-destructive so you can always go back to the original picture.


Lethal

 

[mim]

Originally posted by zer0army
I understand what your saying and I have heard that every time you open a .jpeg, you lose quality and that the only way to prevent this is to convert all you images to a .tiff or other non compressed file formats.

I'm not sure if this is true or not but maybe you just lose quality every time you resave the .jpeg and not necessarily every time it is viewed.

err sorry, tried to post like 6 hours ago but the server didn't respond.

The answer is yes, jpegs will reduce in quality everytime you save, regardless of whether you edit it or not. Depending on the original photo you could see problems with the quality quite quickly. Telltale signs are the blue in skys becoming chucky or pixilated, and a haze around the border between 2 different colours.

<edit: just thought of another good tip - although jpegs are small on disk, they actually take up a huge amount of memory when they're being displayed (the algorithmns to uncompress the data and display it are quite intensive). This is why you may find that your mac is running slow even though you've only got a few photo's open at the same time. Not much you can do exept get more memory or use one of the other formats>

Best idea is if you are using photoshop to edit - resave the altered image as a png (portable network graphic). They compress quite well, but are completely lossless. Much better idea than saving as tiff, unless you are some serious DTP work (even then tiff only has a few minor advantages).

Not many people (even pro's) know about png, but it's supported by everything, and like jpeg, diplays natively in browsers (tiff doesn't).