Photos - organising and editing - iPhoto/Adobe

[UMPELGRUMP6]

Hi all,

First up - wasn't 100% sure which forum to use for this but as the post relates to iPhoto and Adobe Elements running on a Macbook thought this was correct.

With the arrival of the new Photo app, and the iCloud Photo Library that integrates with it, I am sensing a possible opportunity to start organising the thousands of photos I have on various old HDD's aswell as the photos in various places on my Macbook and iPhone.

I currently use Adobe Elements Organizer (v12) for (badly and irregularly) organising photos on the Macbook. Also use Photoshop Elements 12 Editor for editing while I'm at it.

That means when I import photos from my digital camera I'm importing them into Adobe's catalog/organisation system. So most photos from the last year or so are in there.
I also occasionally backup the iPhone photos to the macbook, but NOT into Adooe's catalog, just one big folder backup somewhere.
In addition (relevant for this post) I had old PC Hard Disks with previous years and years worth of photos, which I'd like to organise into one place too (they are organised on those HDD's in folder structures, by year and date with each folder having a name representing the content as part of the Windows folder names.
I used to upload photos to Flickr as a 'backup' as it were and a good place to view albums and stuff. Wondering if this also effectively replaces that in some ways

I have two choices I think.
1. Carry on using Adobe Elements to organsie all photos, and import any that aren't already there into Adobe's catalog.

2. Find a way to get everything in Abobe's catalog into the iCloud Photo Library

(or maybe even use Flickr still)

I'm kind of Apple/Mac/iPhone newbie'ish compared to an old windows pc background and would really appreciate some help with the new cloud/Photo/library etc workings
So what's my question - well I guess it's
a) anyone else had this decision to make, or similar?
b) what am I missing in terms of options
c) Is it really simple to get everything into Photo and the iCloud photo library?

Cheers

 

[MCAsan]

I have used Adobe Lightroom for many years. It gives the following modules: Library, Develop, Web, Book, Slideshow, and Print. I can easily integrate Lightroom with many plugin apps such as Photoshop, Elements, Nik Collection, Topaz Labs apps, Perfect Photo Suite and many others. Remember Lightroom is the only photography digital asset manager (DAM) made by Adobe.

You can purchase Lightroom in two ways:

LR perpetual license: You would purchase LR version 6 and not be getting new features like Adobe previously did in LR 5.1 to 5.7. Why? Because of the other way to get LR.

You can purchase the right to use the Adobe Creative Cloud for Photography for $9.99 a month. The CC package includes Lightroom, Photoshop, and Mobile Lightroom for iPad. If you are on the CC subscription plan you will get new features that Adobe will release for CC subscribers.

At this link you can see what CC subscribers got in June: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom/features.html

At this link you can compare the features in LR CC, the standalone LR 6, and the previous LR 5.

http://improvephotography.com/29429/photoshop-elements-vs-lightroom-making-right-choice/

 

[Harriflex]

I am certainly not a fan of Photos. I tried it and it has caused so much disruption to my File Management structure. i.e. After Importing my Aperture Library, I now only appear to have 3 Albums, my many others have disappeared.
Personally, I would stick with Elements Organiser. But all my pro colleagues prefer Lightroom.

 

[maflynn]

I also use Lightroom - I'm on the Lightroom CC license. I found that LR gives me the right balance of ease of use, power and control over my images. OP, I personally think LR is a better choice then with your current workflow, it will streamline and provide non destructive edits as compared to destructive edits in Elements

 

[Harriflex]

I would welcome feedback regarding Adobe Photoshop's Elements Organiser. Would this be a more sensible replacement to Aperture. My Photo archives are now in such a mess, having migrated images to Photos for Mac. No such thing as a free lunch I guess!

 

[maflynn]

I would welcome feedback regarding Adobe Photoshop's Elements Organiser.

I'd say no. Aperture was a professional quality DAM (Digital Asset Manager) with non destructive editing capability, Its counterparts are Lightroom from adobe and Capture One. I'd look to those to see about managing your images, with C1, you can emulate your aperture work flow closer to what you're used too. With LR, you need to adjust a bit more to the LR way of things.

 

[Replevin]

I'm starting to sound like a shill for Lightroom, but here goes. We made the transition from Windows a year ago. We have a photo library of about 27K photos. To make a long story short, my wife was not a fan of iPhoto or Photos. iPhoto at least had to ability to link to Photoshop and Shutterfly directly from the app. In my very uneducated/novice opinion, I think Apple, with Photos, is trying to streamline the photo process among different devices and different users.

Sooooo, when I realized Photos wasn't going to work for us we tried Elements Organizer. We didn't really like it. I then tried Lightroom and it was like a bright shining light with angels singing. It is what I envisioned a native Apple photo product would actually be like. Lightroom isn't confusing, but it takes a couple hours poking around to figure out how to do things the Lightroom way. There are numerous tutorials on the web. Once you figure it out you can pretty much organize your photos any way you want. Hope this helps.

 

[Harriflex]

I'm starting to sound like a shill for Lightroom, but here goes. We made the transition from Windows a year ago. We have a photo library of about 27K photos. To make a long story short, my wife was not a fan of iPhoto or Photos. iPhoto at least had to ability to link to Photoshop and Shutterfly directly from the app. In my very uneducated/novice opinion, I think Apple, with Photos, is trying to streamline the photo process among different devices and different users.

Sooooo, when I realized Photos wasn't going to work for us we tried Elements Organizer. We didn't really like it. I then tried Lightroom and it was like a bright shining light with angels singing. It is what I envisioned a native Apple photo product would actually be like. Lightroom isn't confusing, but it takes a couple hours poking around to figure out how to do things the Lightroom way. There are numerous tutorials on the web. Once you figure it out you can pretty much organize your photos any way you want. Hope this helps.

I had got into a real mess with my Aperture and iPhoto libraries, when I started to import them into the new 'Photos' software (which replaced iPhoto). For some reason 'Photos' Library didn't recognise my Albums from Aperture, nor did it play the Aperture Slideshows I had created. There seemed to be so many issues in using the new 'Photos' Software, I decided to switch to Lightroom 6 (having now wished I made this choice some years ago, its stunning)

Having now been convinced of my choice and the successful import of my Aperture Library, I am now somewhat cautious of importing from the iPhoto/Photos Library. a/. Are there are likely to be duplicate images (for that I have purchased the additional Plug-in manager) for about £8.

I therefore gather that I need to export my iPhoto/Photos library, consisting of about 13k images and then re-import them into Lightroom 6? b/. Can I then assume that all the image files will be moved into LR. Can I recover any file space, or will I need to delete any software or just leave Aperture/Phots unused, as the files have not been copied twice? Hopefully the Image duplication plug-in will advise as to where any multiple copies are?



I simply cannot believe that Apple would withdraw support for Aperture, as well as release the iPhoto replacement, which seemingly is full of bugs!!

 

[Replevin]

I had got into a real mess with my Aperture and iPhoto libraries, when I started to import them into the new 'Photos' software (which replaced iPhoto). For some reason 'Photos' Library didn't recognise my Albums from Aperture, nor did it play the Aperture Slideshows I had created. There seemed to be so many issues in using the new 'Photos' Software, I decided to switch to Lightroom 6 (having now wished I made this choice some years ago, its stunning)

Having now been convinced of my choice and the successful import of my Aperture Library, I am now somewhat cautious of importing from the iPhoto/Photos Library. a/. Are there are likely to be duplicate images (for that I have purchased the additional Plug-in manager) for about £8.

I therefore gather that I need to export my iPhoto/Photos library, consisting of about 13k images and then re-import them into Lightroom 6? b/. Can I then assume that all the image files will be moved into LR. Can I recover any file space, or will I need to delete any software or just leave Aperture/Phots unused, as the files have not been copied twice? Hopefully the Image duplication plug-in will advise as to where any multiple copies are?



I simply cannot believe that Apple would withdraw support for Aperture, as well as release the iPhoto replacement, which seemingly is full of bugs!!

Sorry it has taken me a little while to reply. Try this website and see if helps. https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/import-iphoto.html When I made the switch to LR I had to export our iPhoto library to Photoshop Organizer and then import them to LR. I see they have a plug in now that will import directly from iPhoto or Aperture. There are some duplicate files but I think it has more to do with photos from the iPhone that were in multiple libraries. We have all our photos on an external drive but after about three weeks of using LR I did delete both the iPhoto and Photos library. So yes, all the images are moved to LR. If hard drive space is an issue I would recommend getting an external hard drive. We have a 1TB drive with 30K pictures that is about 12% used. Hope this helps.