iPhoto alternatives?

[Burt Johnson]

My wife has been using iPhoto for the past few months. Nice interface,
but the organization tools are too minimal for my taste. At a minimum,
I want to be able to define hierarchal folders for different classes of
collections. I am now about to embark on an assignment that will
require me to shoot, collect, and organize several thousand photographs.

What are your favorite alternatives to iPhoto for managing digital
photos?

Good integration with Photoshop is also a highly prized feature.

--
- Burt Johnson
MindStorm, Inc.
[url]http://www.mindstorm-inc.com/software.html[/url]

[sbt]

In article <1fy8q6z.co4o111m1y85eN%burt@mindstorm-inc.com>, Burt
Johnson <burt@mindstorm-inc.com> wrote:

> My wife has been using iPhoto for the past few months. Nice interface,
> but the organization tools are too minimal for my taste. At a minimum,
> I want to be able to define hierarchal folders for different classes of
> collections. I am now about to embark on an assignment that will
> require me to shoot, collect, and organize several thousand photographs.
>
> What are your favorite alternatives to iPhoto for managing digital
> photos?
>
> Good integration with Photoshop is also a highly prized feature.

Burt,

iView Media Pro is my recommendation. Even iView Media (bundled with
Toast Titanium) might be sufficient for your needs.

--
Spenser

[Frédérique & Hervé Sainct]

I am not sure to clearly understand your need, but GraphicConverter will
clearly handle as many (sub-) folders as you need, and moving photos
around is just a matter of drag and drop...
Herve

--
Frédérique & Hervé Sainct, [email]h.sainct@laposte.net[/email]
Frédérique's initial is missing in front of the above address
l'initiale de Frédérique manque devant l'adresse email ci-dessus

[Burt Johnson]

sbt <dogbreath@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:

> iView Media Pro is my recommendation. Even iView Media (bundled with
> Toast Titanium) might be sufficient for your needs.

Thanks - the specs on the site look good. I've just downloaded the demo
version and will give it a spin.

I don't find the basic iView on my disk. Guess I gotta go dig up the
Toast CD and see if it was an extra install. That would give me upgrade
pricing for buying the pro (which does have features I would want).

--
- Burt Johnson
MindStorm, Inc.
[url]http://www.mindstorm-inc.com/software.html[/url]

[Sandman]

In article <1fy8q6z.co4o111m1y85eN%burt@mindstorm-inc.com>,
[email]burt@mindstorm-inc.com[/email] (Burt Johnson) wrote:

> My wife has been using iPhoto for the past few months. Nice interface,
> but the organization tools are too minimal for my taste. At a minimum,
> I want to be able to define hierarchal folders for different classes of
> collections. I am now about to embark on an assignment that will
> require me to shoot, collect, and organize several thousand photographs.
>
> What are your favorite alternatives to iPhoto for managing digital
> photos?
>
> Good integration with Photoshop is also a highly prized feature.

The Finder.

No, really. Set up your folders as you like, watch them as thumbnails, use file
comments to add comments (and set list views to show them). Purchase Dragthing
and have it set up to show a special dock when the finder is active which
contains applescripts for rotate, resize and mail. Use Graphic Converter for
slideshows and printing or even iPhoto temporarily. Set photoshop to open your
images when doublecliking them.

The only thing missing from this is live queries in the finder, to list recent
additions and such.

--
Sandman[.net]

[AES/newspost]

In article <170720031324128967%dogbreath@chaseabone.com.inval id>,
sbt <dogbreath@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:

> iView Media Pro is my recommendation. Even iView Media (bundled with
> Toast Titanium) might be sufficient for your needs.

Strongly second iView MediaPro. Used it for several years now, can only
say good things about it.

[Thomas Reed]

[[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]

In article <siegman-3415CD.18154317072003@news.stanford.edu>,
AES/newspost <siegman@stanford.edu> wrote:

> In article <170720031324128967%dogbreath@chaseabone.com.inval id>,
> sbt <dogbreath@chaseabone.com.invalid> wrote:
>

> > iView Media Pro is my recommendation. Even iView Media (bundled with
> > Toast Titanium) might be sufficient for your needs.

>
> Strongly second iView MediaPro. Used it for several years now, can only
> say good things about it.

I strongly add my vote to this as well! iView MediaPro is wonderful!
I've got nearly 1000 digital photos organized in MediaPro, and growing
fast, and it makes things easy. I can organize photos how I want in
the Finder, and the categories let me keep pictures organized in
MediaPro. Plus, although I haven't done it yet due to previous lack of
a CD burner, MediaPro will let me keep a catalog of ALL my photos, even
any that I have had to burn to a CD and remove from the hard drive. It
doesn't really care where the pictures are stored, it's quite happy to
catalog them wherever they are.

One word of warning -- I've changed hard drives several times lately.
First was a reformat of my old machine's hard drive and second was a
move to a new machine. Each time, MediaPro lost track of all the
photos. Fortunately, it's easy enough to rebuild the catalog, but I
noticed one disturbing thing afterwards. I was in the bad habit or
renaming photos with a descriptive name for a while, and some of these
names are the same, just in different folders. MediaPro,
unfortunately, linked all entries to the first photo with the same name
that it found! I noticed when I double-clicked a thumbnail to view it
full-size and a different picture popped up!

IMHO, this is a fairly minor bug. I fixed it pretty easily by just
removing the troublesome pictures, changing the name to be more unique,
and then adding them back to the catalog. If you just stick with the
name given the file by your digital camera, you shouldn't have anything
to worry about. And you can use fields in the catalog to enter
descriptive information.

--
-Thomas

e-mail me at thomasareed at philadelphia.net minus phil

[AES/newspost]

In article <180720030635385961%thomasareed@dont.spam.me>,
Thomas Reed <thomasareed@dont.spam.me> wrote:

> In article <siegman-3415CD.18154317072003@news.stanford.edu>,
> AES/newspost <siegman@stanford.edu> wrote:

> > > iView Media Pro is my recommendation. Even iView Media (bundled with
> > > Toast Titanium) might be sufficient for your needs.

> >
> > Strongly second iView MediaPro. Used it for several years now, can only
> > say good things about it.

>
> I strongly add my vote to this as well! iView MediaPro is wonderful!
>
> One word of warning -- I've changed hard drives several times lately.
> First was a reformat of my old machine's hard drive and second was a
> move to a new machine. Each time, MediaPro lost track of all the
> photos. Fortunately, it's easy enough to rebuild the catalog, but I
>
> IMHO, this is a fairly minor bug. I fixed it pretty easily by just
> removing the troublesome pictures, changing the name to be more unique,
> and then adding them back to the catalog. If you just stick with the

(stuff trimmed above)

I _think_ the following is correct:

If you clear out an old iView catalog or start a brand new catalog and
then (re)catalog a big bunch of folders by dragging them all at once
onto the iView catalog window, iView _will_ correctly record and
catalog multiple images that have the same file name but are in
different folders.

If however you drag additional folders to an existing catalog or try to
refind originals in an existing catalog in a situation where multiple
images have the same file name, you can, unfortunately, get into some
trouble.

One of the good things about iView is that the company has the guts to
maintain a continuing open user forum

[url]http://www.iview-multimedia.com/forum/[/url]

in which they both answer queries and let users rant when they want to.

[Frédérique & Hervé Sainct]

Sandman <mr@sandman.net> wrote:

> The Finder.

I tried this. Looked quite good, specially wih big OSX icons etc. until
I got more than 1000 images in the same folder. crash. Repeatable. Exit
Finder. Maybe in the next OSX version...

Herve

--
Frédérique & Hervé Sainct, [email]h.sainct@laposte.net[/email]
Frédérique's initial is missing in front of the above address
l'initiale de Frédérique manque devant l'adresse email ci-dessus

[Jeremy]

Burt Johnson <do-not-email@nowhere.com> wrote:

> I'll give it another day or two before giving up, but I think I need to
> look further and find something a bit more reliable before I plunk down
> $100 and spend the effort putting a couple thousand images into it
> (which will be generated over the next few months for this project).

Try Extensis Portfolio while you're at it. I'm currently trying both at
the same time with the same data to see which I prefer, and I think Portfolio
is going to win -- not because it's definitively better, but just because the
way it works seems to suit me better.

--
Jeremy | [email]jeremy@exit109.com[/email]

[Julian]

In article
<earl.misanchuk-2207030841030001@h24-78-96-10.ss.shawcable.net>, Earl
Misanchuk <earl.misanchuk@*NOSPAM*shaw.ca> wrote:

> In article <1fyh29q.w447i8reg2kkN%burt@mindstorm-inc.com>,
> [email]do-not-email@nowhere.com[/email] (nobody) wrote:
>
>

> >
> > I'll go check it out. I must say that after a day of playing with it,
> > I'm not very impressed though. It sure seems non-intuitive to say the
> > least.
> >
> > I cannot find out how to remove a keyword once it is set. Nor can I
> > remove a category once assigned. I've tried various things (and yes,
> > I've read the manual), but once a category/keyword is set, it seems
> > indelible.

>
> I agree it's not all that intuitive, but you can remove a keyword or
> category (or anything else) by selecting it, then hitting the delete key.
> Kludgy, but it'll work in a pinch. Alternatively, you can use
> Actions>Annotation>Batch to replace keywords with others, or with a blank.
>

> >
> > It also seems very problematic about moving things into new folders for
> > organization. Seems to work one minute and not the next. There must be
> > some modal magic involved that I haven't gotten the gestalt of yet.

>
> Just a guess, but you may be bumping up against something that confused me
> for quite a time: if you try to move an image into a folder that already
> contains that image, it seems to just not do anything. In fact, it is
> preventing you from duplicating the images in that folder.

Another good alternative is Epson Film Factory