Should I drop iPhoto for something else?

[ryanflucas]

I have iPhoto '09 and I'm trying to conserve disk space as much as I can. I haven't really used it all that much except for basic photo edits (cropping, brightening, etc). I keep backups of my photos so its annoying that iPhoto seems to make a copy of everything and places a 4GB library file on my hard disk. I can move that file to my trash but it just makes another file when it imports my photos.

There's Picasa, and I like the interface & speed of it, but it also makes me export everything. I want to retain one copy of every photo on my system. I have archived originals on dual layer DVD's, but I keep finding that these apps are making new copies of everything (unless I'm doing something wrong?).

I've been seeing images of Pixelmator and it looks pretty good. Does it make copies of photos, or can I make edits and have it save them over the photo already there? I'm trying to reduce general file clutter any way I can.

 

[miles01110]

If you're just doing simple editing, Preview has a lot of built-in features.

 

[Galarina]

If you're just looking for a photo editing tool, Pixelmator should do the job. In this situation I would also take a look at Preview.
If you're also looking for a photo management tool, Pixelmator is not sufficient.

I don't know any photo management tools that don't take copies since I use iPhoto myself and I'm happy with it. My iPhoto library is 13GB but these days hard disk space is not really an issue I think.
I also do video editing which requires much more disk space than iPhoto does.

 

[jc1350]

If disk space is the real problem, why not just get an external USB or firewire disk? If you are concerned about failure, get one that has hardware RAID 1. I just bought a 500 GB RAID 1 disk from OWC for my iphoto and itunes files. That freed almost half of my internal HD.

I used Picasa in my windows days. I'm not sure why you feel the need to export "everything." Picasa works by creating a file that has commands for what you have done, then displays the photo in question with those commands applied. This is non-destructive to the file itself and is why you can always revert to the original version. But you only need to export when you share the file with someone (exporting creates a new file with the affects of the commands applied). So, why do you "have to export everything?" Your answer may lead to other/better suggestions.

 

[fungus]

+1 for external firewire RAID 1. Just make sure to back THAT up to another external because the RAID controller can still tank and take out your data... unlikely, but possible.

 

[Madmic23]

I've tried the new version of Picasa for Mac and I must say, I am impressed! The facial recognition is way better than that found in iPhoto. Right now, I run both on my laptop.

Picasa leaves the photos where ever you currently have them saved, so you can put them anywhere on your machine. iPhoto puts them in the iPhoto library, and yes, makes duplicates when you start editing them.

 

[NogbadTheBad]

Have you tried out a trial version of Lightroom ?

You get a 1 month free trial via the adobe web site.

 

[jc1350]

+1 for external firewire RAID 1. Just make sure to back THAT up to another external because the RAID controller can still tank and take out your data... unlikely, but possible.

Yup - had that happen on a server a few years ago. The controller screwed up and the RAID 5 was broken.

I use a second single-drive disk for time machine and include the RAID1 disk plus I use Mozy on-line backup. I used to use Carbonite, but that service backs up ONLY the internal disk. Pity since Carbonite was faster for me. It completed the initial backup in 3 days. Mozy is now on day 5 and isn't even half way done - hard to tell because it keeps restarting due to 'network timeout' errors. I didn't have that problem with Carbonite.

 

[Ashka]

Before anyone jumps into Picasa please check all the terms & conditions.
Free has a cost.
Personally I am not about to give Google all the rights to my pictures and photos etc ..

 

[eXan]

I dont know about others, but Aperture saves only changes you make to the photos, so you have 1 actual photo file and as many "versions" as you want without taking up all your HD space.