Software for photo editing...

spudbynight

spudbynight

spudbynight

Soldato
Joined
8 Nov 2006
Posts
7,377
Location
Ireland/Northern Ireland Border
I am looking to get an iMac soon and I have been looking at some options for managing my photos.

I have a load of pictures - most of them taken with an old digital camera or on an iPhone or my Galaxy S II.

I want to properly categorise them and also do some touching up of the images. I am very much a beginner on this side of things. My needs I think are fairly simple.

1 ) I want to be able to do basic editing. Remove redeye, airbrush blemishes that sort of things. I also want to be able to do some corrective work with lighting - ideally though in a 1 click solution.

2) I want to be able to manage my picture collection and generate slide shows that can be shared with non Mac users.

3 ) I want to be able to manage my pictures which will be stored on a Windows Home Server running HP Microserver.

I have been thinking about getting Aperture - only because the price is very good. Is that overkill?
 
iPhoto does basic editing like red eye, Aperture looks good and then there is also Lightroom...but in all honesty I don't have experience of either, just have iPhoto myself. :)
 
Your number 2 + 3 requirement puts iPhoto and Aperture well out of the picture (see what I did there). You're best off choosing Lightroom for your requirements.
 
I wouldn't say it was easy, you'd have to commit some time to getting familiar with it but it's not like trying to learn Photoshop.
 
If I just store my photos on the Mac and backup to a WHS server that should open up Aperture.

Is that an easier or better option to look at?
 
Aperture can do 2&3 :confused:

edit:

I'd choose Aperture as that's what I do and you can do what you want, plus Aperture integrates very well with OSX anyway (as you'd expect). Sharing pics is easy depending on how you want to do it, whether sharing over iTunes (to AppleTV or iPad) or upload to Flickr/Facebook etc.
 
Last edited:
spudbynight said:
If I just store my photos on the Mac and backup to a WHS server that should open up Aperture.

Is that an easier or better option to look at?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have thought there was any reason why you couldn't keep them on your server and have your Mac access the photos...

In terms of price Aperture is cheaper as well I believe.. although you can get a trial of Lightroom 4 for free. I'd give it a go and see how you get on. I tried both and personally prefer Lightroom over Aperture.

That said they are both really easy to get the hang of as mentioned above. Play for an hour or so and you'll learn basic functionality no problem.
 
Iphoto manages the image files quite differently to Lightoom. I'm also not sure you can have the image library/catalogue on a Windows machine. Working across a network would be quite slow.

Use iphoto as it's free and will do most of what you need and use WHS for backups and a repository for images you want to access on your network.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom