Something like iphoto only better?
 

I am looking for something to organize my photos like iPhoto, only better. My library keeps getting messed up and I am sick of having to start from scratch. I don't like how it keeps "originals" of photos either. I am a semi-professional photographer so I want something to handle RAW images and organize them. Please help, I keep getting frustrated with iPhoto.

You might try upgrading to iPhoto 5. Seriously. It has improved features, such as albums within albums and support for RAW images. It's a good choice if you want the improved iMovie and iDVD anyway.

There is also Adobe Photoshop Elements, but I have never used it and cannot vouch for it.

Other than that, I think your options are pretty much nil, unless you want to go with a non-Mac app. (There are a few open-source Unix apps, but I don't know if they would solve your issues.)

Kodak's free Easyshare software might be what you're looking for, or might be just as "bad" as iPhoto for what you want to do. It's worth checking out, 'though. I haven't touched iPhoto since I started using Easyshare 2 years ago. Their support is pretty good too.

I happily wrangle my jpgs, gifs, RAW files and various other graphic/media tidbits with iView MediaPro.

iview media pro
 

i have used this program alot. It has its quirks but is a very full featured program. Another issue is the expense.....overall it is quite expensive but it is a professional tool.

http://www.iview-multimedia.com/downloads/index.php

good luck

iPhoto 5 is what I have been using. I have a new mac mini and this is the second time already have had to recreate everything. I have 2,000 pictures, and I just don't want to have to start over again every month and half. Plus, I don't like the organization system of iPhoto...if you are looking for a photo in the folders or the Photoshop browser it can be hard to find. Plus it creates jpgs for RAW images instead of dealing with them in the RAW format and I don't like that.

The iView program doesn't look like what I want, I couldn't figure out anyway to organize them by category and not by date, it looks like just a timeline to me, and I need to be able to group photos from photo shoots together.

iView Media Pro has "sets" and "categories" in the Organize panel. I don't know if the non-pro version has that, but iView is definitely far more than a timeline. Far more. And it kicks iPhoto in the nuts (leaving your originals alone and where they are, for one thing). iPhoto 5 is nowhere close and has am embarrassingly short list of supported raw formats, unless your camera happens to be on it.

I'm wrestling with this question right now myself. There are a few things that iPhoto does so nicely, and so many that really piss me off. The file organization is an obvious one; if they'd only do like iTunes and let you keep your files in a folder structure of your own design, it would be vastly improved. Also file management needs help; it's very hard to figure out when you're affecting a file, and when you're just affecting the pointer to a file.

I like how you can modify images all you want and still have the original. That's very useful, such as when I want to constrain for 4x6 and modify for colors/brightness on a particular printer, but then revert at some point in the future. I like the quick masking for print sizes, and quick/simple edit tools. Obviously it has not replaced PhotoShop altogether, but it has seriously reduced my PS usage for casual work. I love how the folders/albums are visible from a top level. I love how you can have a photo in multiple albums/folders.

I wish I could have more depth in the organization of files; folder and album is too shallow. I'd like folder/folder/album at the least.

I gave iView Pro a cursory try, but didn't get very deep into it since iPhoto 5 had already been announced at the time. Now I wonder if I should look again. Can anyone who uses it give me some direction based on the points I made above, how it compares?

I feel stupid...
 

OMG. I can't believe I left out two of the graphics programs that I use most! Check out GraphicConverter and ViewIt. They are both shareware, so you can try them out before you buy. I liked these programs so much that I registered both!

Try checking out Extensis Portfolio.

Unfortunately, nothing all that great out there currenlty exists for the entire digital workflow from importing to locally searching and cataloging your photo files right now. Some people do like iView's Media Pro, but Extensis' Portfolio 7 seems like the most refined and user-friendly cataloging software on the market right now. And Extensis is being pushed hard by some industry leaders to become the premier application in this category. I've used it quite a bit but don't find it 100% satisyfing and you still end up having to use about 3 different photo softwares to get the entire workflow done. One other workhorse software app you should DEFINITELY check out is Photo Mechanic ... it's by far the leading application for quickly and efficiently importing, viewing, captioning and creating an edit for your photos. It's not that expensive and they give you a free year of upgrades (which they do a few times a year). An upgraded version is supposedly coming out in the next 30 days or so, so you'll be able to upgrade at anytime. And the upgrades are enhancements, not major overhauls. But Photo Mechanic is not intended to be a cataloging software, only as a highly functional image browser. In addition to that, you'd need Extensis' Portfolio 7 to quickly search and organize your archive by keywords and categories and it's significantly faster at returning searches on your archive than iView Media Pro.

Also, if you do decide to go with Extensis Portfolio 7 - you can download a Photographer's Sample Catalog template that will save you a lot of time trying to figure out how to best organize/customize the database for a photographer.

I gave iView another try. I do really like it, it isn't as bad as I thought. I REALLY like how it uses actually files and folders instead of just creating copy after copy like iPhoto does. It is FAR faster than iPhoto too. It seems like a really nice solution. I am going to download Portfolio and try it since some people thought it would be worth a try. Does anyone know how it organizes files. Does it use existing folders to create its database? Any other info I should know to compare the two?

You know, it's really sad how iPhoto has polluted this product space. I think iPhoto may be the only image organizer on the Mac that doesn't respect the original image folders, unless someone can dig up another example.

you may be right, but what it doesn't do is respect the way i want my files organized. i want to see ALL my images, edited or not, i keep my originals under their own file name. I don't need iPhoto to create, one, two, even three copies of an image like it did.

And then people wonder why is crashes?

My post might have been confusing. I was agreeing with you. iPhoto doesn't respect the way we organize photos on disk. Every other photo organizer simply takes your files exactly as you stored them, under their original names and everything, without an obfuscating shell and redundant database.

As far as "asset management applications" go, there are basically 3 leaders. iView Media Pro, Extensis Portfolio and, not yet mentioned in this discussion, Canto Cumulus. Each goes for $200. Be sure to read reviews of Cumulus at VersionTracker...learn from other's experience before you buy.

I have buddies who swear by PhotoMechanic as a great quick n' dirty way of browsing their images they still end up using an asset management app of one sort or another to actually organize.

iPhoto for me is mainly used as a slide-show type program for me. It's a good way to import pics and to see them quickly.

My question is, can't you just click and drag the photos you want onto a folder in the desktop and arrange them that way? Like just make a folder on desktop and in the folder have all your other subfolders and just drag and drop.

I am still new to the G5, and haven't learned to hate iPhoto yet.

I had another question while we are kinda on the topic. I am looking for a program to print of directories (print to PDF would be REALLY nice) of photos. I want to make a "master binder" with all the photos I have in it as kinda a backup. iView will do this, but you can only do it for the folders you are currently in, or all the folders combined. I want it something to do each folder separately and automatically. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks again guys for all your help! I have really learned a lot.

phil_geek,

I'm not exactly clear on what you need iView to do, are you asking for sort of .pdf "proof sheets" of your catalogs?

yeah...thats a much better way of putting it.

I don't know exactly how to do this, but iView can be scripted with AppleScript, and I sometimes see users discussing scripts to solve needs like yours over on iView's own forums. The other day there was a guy who wanted iView to make an HTML web gallery of each catalog automatically and they worked up a script.

Photshop can generate contact sheets by going to: File > Automate > Contact Sheet command where you can designate the specific folders and subfolders you want to generate as contact sheets and then could save them as a PDF or whatever you would like. Probably easiest is to create a Photoshop "Action" and script exactly to do what you want for saving preferences and size, format, etc. (i'm using CS/8, but i assume 7 can do this as well - not sure about Elements)

I don't think I can take this anymore! The activist in me is finally coming out. Please everyone go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html and let Apple know that we are tired of iPhoto messing up our photos (complex organization, duplicates, etc). I know it's lame and that they may not listen, but we can't let Apple go on thinking that iPhoto is a great (much less, acceptable) application, especially when compared to greats like the rest of the iApps. So please take 5 minutes and offer them your suggestions at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html

(3 years later) Does this mean that it is possible to , say, take a 4x4 photo and print it as a 2x2 without cutting away 3/4 of the photo? How???

Patrick,

Yes it is possible...depending on what program you use...what do you have?

Lightroom is
 

I switched almost a year ago to Ligthroom, and have never looked back. It's a program designed from the ground up for digital photographers, with impeccable non destructive (and not duplicative) library. Designed for easy transfer between different computers, and very powerful editing tools. Brilliant printing tools, easy to create OK slideshows for presenting your pictures to clients.

Tried Aperture for a while, but it was very difficult to learn and extremely slow on my Imac G5. Beautiful program though, if you can live the learning curve.

Now I use Iphoto for creating calendar for the family, and for printing albums, because I find it brilliant for those purposes. Then I just delete the pictures to avoid triplicates, and am back to LR.

Lightroom v Aperture
 

I concur that Lightroom is excellent.....its integration with other adobe apps is great and it is easy to use but feature packed. For sure Adobe will do well on this one.

Aperture is like a wolf in sheep's clothing......the fact that you need a top of range machine and it can still drags it heals.......and quirks like no other app i have ever seen has really put me off it. A few studios i support use Aperture but they have really have the best desktop machines money can buy but as soon as they try and use a top end powerbook on the road it dies on its arse. For sure Macbook pros are better...but any photo management software should be able to do simple tasks quickly and efficiently....Aperture does not do that !

I was using iView Media for a good while but again it has its issues.

I switched to LR last year as well, I was using IVMP. I'm currently tutoring someone who bought Aperture and the experience has shown me I made the right decision (for me).

If you need to manage Raw-files, why not Aperture. Optionally it leaves your files where you want, it's much more effective and direct treating RAW then iPhoto, and you can use it for adding captions and other information, optimze your images, prepare jpgs at different resolutiones… It's not cheap, but it does quite a lot of things you normally need other programs for.

Regards - Klaus

Since this thread was resurrected I should say that the iPhoto problem I ranted about earlier is fixed. iPhoto 6 has a new preference where it will let you bring in your photos without changing where you store them.

But I have also moved to Lightroom. Aperture won't run on my G4 PowerBook, but Lightroom runs fine.