iPhoto: anyone seriously use it?

[Tom Reichner]

I've had my iMac for about a year now, and use it exclusively for my photography work. It came with iPhoto, and to be honest with you, I've never felt the need for another editing program.

Well, I'm now ready to apply to Alamy (the stock agency), and have read quite a few threads here on the forum about the resizing/upsizing requirements that they have.

I'd like to hear from anyone who seriously uses iPhoto as a working pro. If that's even possible. I know it has all I need to get the images to look great on my 24" monitor, and to look great printed out at 20" by 30". But it seems that I will now need an editing program not only to get the images to look great, but also to get the images to meet specific file size and formatting requirements.

Is it really necessary to purchase another photo editing program, or does iPhoto have everything I need to do what I'll need to do?

Please respond if you're an avid iPhoto user, or if you've used it in the past, only to find it to be inadequate for more advanced use. If I can get iPhoto to do the resizing I'll need it to do, then perhaps I don't need another program after all!

[tfizzle]

I find Iphoto very limiting and more of a pain. I used it for a while and it's not as versatile as say Lightroom 2.0 (what I use now).

If you are just resizing then it's fine. But I'd say download Lightroom as a trial and see how you like it.

[CoryAllenPhotos]

I agree with tfizzle. I used iPhoto for a while and the bought LR 2 and it really was a big upgrade

[Ralpho]

I use Aperture, but for some reason it won't let me rename files unless I'm also exporting them. I also use iPhoto, but only for cropping.

[Tom Reichner]

I use Aperture, but for some reason it won't let me rename files unless I'm also exporting them. I also use iPhoto, but only for cropping.

Ralpho, the cropping in iPhoto is incredible. It saves the entire image, no matter how you crop it. You don't ever have to make an extra copy of the original. At any time you can go back and return the image to the original RAW version. You never have to save a copy. Are other editing programs like that? Aperture? Lightroom? I know Photoshop elements isn't. That's why I like iPhoto so much. No silly copying and saving the copy. Who the heck wants to double the amount of space being taken up on their hard drive?

[qtfsniper]

Ralpho, the cropping in iPhoto is incredible. It saves the entire image, no matter how you crop it. You don't ever have to make an extra copy of the original. At any time you can go back and return the image to the original RAW version. You never have to save a copy. Are other editing programs like that? Aperture? Lightroom? I know Photoshop elements isn't. That's why I like iPhoto so much. No silly copying and saving the copy. Who the heck wants to double the amount of space being taken up on their hard drive?

Lightroom is like that. A lot more advanced than iPhoto

[Jbs]

I've used iPhoto, and cannot understand how it could not be limiting. Not only in organization, but overall post processing, it lacks greatly. The importing process (so basic) is even a pain.

I use LR2 to organize my library (of around 25k pictures) and PS CS4 to edit.

IMO, iPhoto works if you are just a casual photographer (eg. photos from a family vacation), but if you are at all serious about photography, you need at least LR.

People seem to forget that software is as much a part of making a picture as the camera nowadays. Software is the digital darkroom.

[Tom Reichner]

IMO, iPhoto works if you are just a casual photographer (eg. photos from a family vacation), but if you are at all serious about photography, you need at least LR.


"at least Lightroom" - is Lightroom "less" of a program than Photoshop CS3? I'd somehow gotten the impression from a couple guys that LR was a full-blown program, perhaps even more capable than Photoshop for heavy-duty, professional level editing. Is this not the case?

[Tom Reichner]

Lightroom is like that. A lot more advanced than iPhoto

Wow! If Lightroom's cropping system always saves the entire image, then I'm much less hesitant to switch over to a program like that. I've used Photoshop on friends' computers, and felt extremely limited by the cropping system.

In PS, it seems like once you crop something out of an image, it's gone! In that case, what happens when you need several different aspect ratios of a single image? You have to actually make several copies of it, and crop each one differently? Ridiculous!

Let's say I have a single image that I want to:

Upload to a publisher's website for consideration for a calendar. The publisher requires the image be submitted in an aspect ratio of 6:7, horizontal format, for a 12" by 14" deluxe sized calendar.

Send to a magazine for use in an article. The magazine uses a 3 column layout, and wants the images in either a 1:1 (square) aspect ratio or in a 5:6.5 aspect ratio, vertical format.

Now the aforementioned magazine's Art Director contacts me and says they are considering my submitted image for use on their contents page. She wants to know if the image is of a high enough resolution to use as a full page, and if there is enough "extra" at the top and/or bottom to make it a vertically formatted image in the aspect ratio of 8.5:10.75

Upload to my website. There the only thing that matters is that the image looks it's best. I think this particular image looks best when cropped to a 4.5: 5.5 aspect ratio - totally non-standard proportions.

Print for a gallery exhibit. The exhibit does not justify custom framing, so I need the image to work with a standard frame & mat size. I can get pre-cut mats to fit an 11 by 14 inch image into a 16 by 20 inch frame. So I need to crop the image to an aspect ratio of 11:14.

Well, it's my experience that if using Photoshop, I would actually have to make 5 different copies of the image so that I could crop each copy for one of the above listed needs. I think this is insane and about as inefficient as anything could possibly be. Even iPhoto knows how to save the entire original image, so that each time I need it for a different use all I need to do is to open the image up and re-crop it however I want. Only one copy of the image ever needs to exist, no matter what!

If you're telling me that Lightroom is capable of this, then I think I want to get Lightroom instead of Photoshop!

[tfizzle]

Lightroom is capable of that. It saves the changes to a catalog file (doesn't make 2 copies of your photo like Iphoto does). When it sees the picture it references the settings from the catalog file made in LR.

LR also allows you to build slideshows, html/flash templates for websites, and has everything you would need stepping up from iphoto.

The only thing you'll be lacking is layering and masking (though there is an adjustment brush to change color/exposure/etc. on selected areas of the photo).

I'd say download the trial or find another way to try out Light room.

[qtfsniper]

Definitely give it a shot, I think you'll really like it. Link is here for the free trial.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

[badgerW]

Tom, the point that I think should be made here is that Lightroom (and Aperture, and iPhoto) and PhotoShop are two different programs for two different purposes. Using the wrong one for a given situation will just slow you down and make you angry at how inefficient it is.

PS is for image editing. That's pretty much it. Its whole system is organized around loading a single image and editing it. Lightroom (and Aperture and to some extent iPhoto) are for library and workflow management. If you have thousands of images in your library and you want to take a few hundred of them, resize and apply color correction and save them all as JPEG's then PhotoShop will do that, but again it will just make you angry with how time-consuming and inefficient it is, because PS is not designed for that kind of thing. Lightroom, Aperture, and to a lesser extent iPhoto, however, *are* all designed to do that kind of thing. Yes, they all have some limited editing functions, but these are mostly limited to blemish removal, cropping, color correction, etc. and nothing like the wide array of filters, layer blending and masking, etc. that you can do in Photoshop to create something like this (http://shakini.deviantart.com/art/background-34755707).

Personally, I use iPhoto for my library management and some basic crops. I use PS for any heavy-duty editing. I will probably get Aperture or Lightroom pretty soon because iPhoto is starting to get pretty slow with almost 30k images, most of which are 12MP+ RAW files. I am definitely not a professional though :)

[kandyredcoi]

i use iphoto almost 100%, i dont do too much PP and i rarely shoot in RAW, but i will shoot more RAW ASAP (need more cf cards, bigger external HD, blah blah)

it works fine

but if you want to do a lot of PP or shoot mostly in RAW then u will need aperture...im saving for it now as well :D