This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Elliotte Rusty Harold.
Original Post: Looking for a Photo Organizer/Editor
Feed Title: Mokka mit Schlag
Feed URL: http://www.elharo.com/blog/feed/atom/?
Feed Description: Ranting and Raving
I’m looking for a program to organize and edit my photos on the Mac. The editing duties are light. Photoshop Elements fully meets my needs there, and I really don’t want something more complex. In particular I live by Auto Smart Fix and Auto Sharpen. However I’d like to not come out of one program just to edit a photo.
I like iPhoto’s organization, but it’s too buggy and has atrocious editing and previewing tools. Lightroom 1.4 doesn’t organize quite as nicely as iPhoto, but is a little more stable. Maybe 2.0 is better? What’s my best choice? Here are my desiderata:
Must run on a Mac.
Must support large RAW files.
Must be able to handle tens of thousands, preferably hundreds of thousands of photos.
Must have multiple levels of Undo
Must have excellent user interface on a 20-inch widescreen monitor.
Should have usable user interface on a 13-inch laptop screen.
Should not have to store anything on my primary hard drive, which is already cramped.
Should make this cycle very fast:
Preview
Zoom
Crop
Smart Fix
Sharpen
Export and resize
.
(I really want one-button photo-optimization. I don’t want to spend a lot of time tweaking levels and hues and saturation and the like. On the rare occasion I need to do that, I can go to Photoshop. However this does mean the Smart Fix needs to be good. Photoshop Elements’ smart fix is. iPhoto’s isn’t. )
The one other editing task I sometimes do is split a photo into several: either zooming into to different parts of the image or showing the same image at different zoom levels.
Reasonably fast on a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 4GB of RAM.
Should edit non-destructively.
Should use minimal disk space beyond the photos’ themselves.
Should be able to import a complete iPhoto library. Even better if it can integrate with one without copying everything.
Should be able to backup library to DVD.
Should have a fast and accurate “Actual Pixels” View.
Nice if it integrates with Picasa, Flickr, and other web services. Great if it integrate swith WordPress.
Nice to have a really nice slideshow capability, as good as Graphic Converters or better. Even better if I can tag, organize, and delete from within a running show.
Usability, stability, and performance are far more important to me than power user features. With a camera, I am a scientist and an explorer, not an artist. What do you think? What’s my best option here?
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