iPhoto, Flickr, or Other

[DeSnousa]

Hey All

I am in the process of deciding how to handle my photo library and need some advice on what everyone currently does.

All my photos are family shots of my kids and as such I am not after any social aspect, just a means for me to organise and view my photos. With the viewing aspect I would like the benefit of choosing a device in the household.

I have not used iPhoto in years and I am currently looking at buying a Mac soon. How is iPhoto these days? I know it does a good job on importing and creating events. Currently I have my photos sorted in folders that is shared on the network. With this I can access the share from any computer in the house. How is this handled by iPhoto.

Not being to switched on with Flickr, I hear more and more people are using Flickr to manage their photos. Flickr provides ample storage and you can pay for ad free viewing. Are the photos uploaded in original quality and can you bulk download the originals? Again I am not after the social aspects of the site.

Perhaps other alternatives are being used by members, can you suggest anything.

Thanks for all input

 

[Apple fanboy]

iPhoto is great if you can get your head round how it likes to store the photos (faces, places etc.). If not and you are constantly trying to bend it to your will, then maybe it's not for you.

I use Flickr, but just to share photos (mostly on the POTD thread on here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1679471/). I wouldn't want to use it to manage my library.

Personally I use Lightroom 5, but that might be overkill for you.

 

[DeSnousa]

I used flicker and google drive. Google drive is better.

Only problem with online storage is I need over 100gb. Plus I want software to help manage the photos rather than having to create folders and not having any features such as face tagging and automatic events based on the day the photo was taken.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

You can use iPhoto and retain your own folder structure, there's a box you have to untick to make that happen, but I always feel, perhaps unfairly, that if you do that you are potentially making problems for yourself as it's too easy to change the folder structure "underneath" iPhoto and mess things up,getting out of sync between iPhoto links to the photos, and the photos within the folders. The benefit of iPhoto and similar is that it deals with things like keeping track of the original photos so you can revert, where things are stored and so on.

You could also look at Picasa, which is free, and Adobe PSE which isn't free, but which has a top notch photo editor, face recognition, place location, and will I am pretty sure use let you leave your photos where they are. The same sync problem would exist with those as well, but I have a few friends who seem to manage with Picasa at least. Lightroom gets good write ups also, never used it though so can't comment, the apples alternative, Aperture has the advantage that if you start with iPhoto and decide to upgrade to Aperture its a breeze.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't try all the free ones against your own folder structures and see how you get on there should be no clashes. If you like iPhoto I'd say stick with it managing the file locations (but do frequent backups which you should do anyway obviously ).

You will find, once you've invested some time setting up whatever app you use, adding faces and places, you have effectively become locked in, so it's definitely worth trying out a few before deciding on one. Sometimes an app just works the way you think it should and you are better off with that one than one thats "better" (more features, faster, whatever) but you have to struggle with it all the time as it doesn't fit your mind set. Hence trying out a few before settling on one is recommended (by me anyway .

I don't know about Flikr but I thought that was all about being online and storage in the cloud? Or do they manage local storage now as well?