Software for on-site production of prints

[Longwatcher]

I am looking into going professional (versus semi-) and an opportunity may be presenting itself in the form of shooting team sports events in my local area. (they did not like the photographer they used last time). What I am interested in is what software you all would recommend for batch correcting the photos after I transfer them to the computer, displaying prospective photos to the customers and then printing them out from the selection.

You can assume I have a D-60 camera (or picture pad) to move the images to a laptop or mini-tower (with an LCD screen) and a Canon S9000 printer. I am most likely to shoot in RAW format, but may shoot in jpeg lg-fine.

Any assitance with this would be appreciated.

Factors I will be considering are:
Cost
Ease of use
number of software types required
recommendations

Thanks in advance.

[dn7elson]

what software you all would recommend for batch correcting the photos after I transfer them to the computer

You might want to look at an industrial strength batch processor like DeBabelizer if you want to do large quantities of prints and even digital video in an automated fashion. Hold onto your wallet as you see the price. :)

http://www.equilibrium.com/Internet/Equil/Products/DeBabelizer/index.htm

Adobe Photoshop will give you all the image manipulation that you will likely need or want, and there are plug-ins to enhance and automate some of the features, but they all come with a cost, sometimes quite stiff.

I find that I use Canon's Easy Photo Print that came with my s9000 for most prints. Output quality is excellent and it is set to optimize the features of the Canon printer, including borderless printing. It is only useful for printing an image that is already ready to print. Other than a mild croping ability it does not do much else.

[Longwatcher]

Price not bad for the Debabilizer,
I have been looking at Photoshop 7.0, but from what I could see it does not appear to have batch processing or a good thumbnail viewer for the customer, but then I can only see what is on the Adobe site.
I was expecting professional software to be between 500 and US$2000. I am a former Imagery analyst by trade and that software runs up to $15,000 for a full set(although that would be way out of my league). Except for some file types, atmospheric correction, and mensuration tools; The limited version of photoshop I have (Business Edition) does most of what they do.

If photoshop 7.0 does everything I need, then I would go with that, but it does not appear to., which is why I am asking. Also to see if there are other softwares that I was not aware of (like Debabilizer).

Please keep sending me suggestions.

[dn7elson]

For a great thumbnail program as well as image cataloger, take a look at Thumbs Plus by Cerious.

http://www.cerious.com

It is one of the utility programs that I will never be without.

[Longwatcher]

I have an early version of Thumbs plus. Most excellent jpeg file conversion I have found to date. Currently I use Ulead's Photo Explorer for thumbnail viewing, but mainly because it supported more formats then my older version of Thumbsplus (including playing .avi and .gif files) and it did a better quality job of printing out proof sheets. I still use ThumbsPlus when I need the better jpeg compression to get smaller file size at higher visual quality. I don't know why ThumbsPlus does a better job, but I do know that different programs process images into jpeg files in different ways.

I will have to look at it again, to see if it will do what I need. Thanks.