Photo management

[rotlex]

Good day,

I am a current PC user who is heavily into digital photography. (Some side work as well as tons of home, vacation etc.) Anyway, I'm moving to a MAC after thinking about it for quite a few years actually!

My primary concern is image management software. (It's Photoshop all the way for image editing of course). I use Imatch on the PC, and have never found anything better. My entire image database, over 20,000 or so images at this point, is categorized using Imatch's built in category system. (A tree like hiearichal structure that allows for assignment of multiple categoreis to images). I also export this category information into IPTC keywords and categories. I'm wondering if anyone is aware of an application that runs on OSX that would have the ability to read these IPTC keywords, and create a category like structure out of them when importing the image files.

This is the one thing that is REALLY holding me back from making this switch, as I have spent a very long time creating this categorization structure. Unfortunately, most product web sites that I have found are not very informative when it comes to the gritty details on what their product will do.

Thank you very much for any information you can provide.

 

[iGary]

Have you taken a look at the iPhoto support and help section on Apple's site?

I use it for everything.

You can edit in Photoshop right out of iPhoto, arrange things very nicely...have a peek.

And yes, it works with the keyword sorting you are speking of, unless I am misunderstanding your question.

 

[Bear]

I think you'll find iPhoto probably won't meet your needs.

I suggest you go to the forums at DP Review and ask there in the Mac software forum.

 

[iGary]

I think you'll find iPhoto probably won't meet your needs.

I suggest you go to the forums at DP Review and ask there in the Mac software forum.

Better yet, Fred Miranda.

 

[rotlex]

Thanks for the replies!

I kind of figured Iphoto wouldn't be robust enough, as Imatch is a fairly comprehensive product. I've checked dpreview previously, and a number of folks seemed to favor Iview Media Pro, but I had never really gotten a straight answer regarding the IPTC imports.

I'll keep checking, and thanks again for reading and responding.

 

[sarge]

What about Cumulus?

I work in a video archive and I am trying to establish what the best
solution is for saving my catalog of images as well. I would like something
that would help me manage burning disks as well. I just downloaded
Cumulus 6.5 and am going to give it a try, have you heard of it?

I too have heard lots of mentions of iview media pro

 

[bousozoku]

I've been using Extensis Portfolio for the past several months but I haven't gotten into the really good things yet. It's quite capable and could probably speed up my process a lot, if I would just slow down to learn how to do it.

 

[kjr39]

I am using iPhoto right now and have found it to be lacking for what I want to do. Like you, I am using Photoshop for editing and would not think of using anything else.

For the Mac, the main rivals (at a reasonable price) are Extensis and iView Media Pro. I downloaded the demo for iView Media and really liked how it felt and worked.

As soon as I have any $$$, I will switch to using iView.

 

[iGary]

I've been using Extensis Portfolio for the past several months but I haven't gotten into the really good things yet. It's quite capable and could probably speed up my process a lot, if I would just slow down to learn how to do it.

Geebus. I totally forgot about that one. Derr.

I haven't personally used it, but a friend of mine who works for Geographic says it is all they use these days.