canon 7D, RAW and iphoto 'workflow'

hello all. i had a question about my 'workflow' (if you can call it that!). as a background, im your 'casual' photographer. most pics are of my family and pet during gatherings/special occasions and vacations. occassional portraits here and there. cam is a 7D and im a mac user. i use iphoto for importing/archiving/ed​iting. am thinking of switching to aperture one day. i have some understanding of photography basics, mostly from the books of bryan peterson.

i'm not too good at post processing. so currently, from my CF card, i import it to my mac (external HD). i use just iphoto to import, process the RAW organize and edit the pics. i keep reading that others use DPP to process their raw. and then edit the photo in some other software. is this step essential? i think my iphoto stuff seems acceptable, but maybe i just dont know what im missing? the other factor i guess is that i dont have much time to tinker with my photos. but if it definitely makes a big diff, then maybe i should include this in my 'workflow' of things? thoughts/ideas?

thanks.

e

I don't have a Mac, but let me take a stab at something -- you are shooting jpegs, correct? This makes a difference in the software you want. Canon DSLRs can shoot jpegs in any mode or, in the "creative" modes, shoot jpeg, Raw or a combination of Raw and jpeg. Raw is a special type of file that requires "special" software to process into an image -- this is where people often use the Canon software, Digital Photo Professional (DPP), Aperture, Lightroom, and other applications.

So, I don't believe iPhoto has the ability to do Raw processing, leading me to believe that you are shooting jpegs. In that case, you can use one of many applications to edit your photos, it's all up to what you want to do. If you are happy with the results you are getting, there's no problem. If you have some particular things you'd like to do, you can ask -- at some point many people "move up" to an app like Photoshop Elements, for example, but you don't need to unless and until you want/need to do more than your current needs require.

thanks tony! actually i shoot raw. iphoto does process raw. maybe the RAW processing is better though with DPP.

junji98 wrote in post #11237555
thanks tony! actually i shoot raw. iphoto does process raw. maybe the RAW processing is better though with DPP.

Ah, OK, my mistake -- I'm just used to the Mac users being hooked on Aperture!