# Been using iPhoto... what's next?!



## Tbini87 (Oct 12, 2010)

Hey guys,
   I have been getting more serious about photography for about a year now. My wife and i just use our Macbook's iPhoto editing software which has been really fun so far. As we get more serious (shooting senior portraits, engagements and kid shoots), we would like to know what software we can upgrade to. 
    I look around to see what is out there, and it looks expensive and I can't really tell the difference of a lot of the different choice (elements seems like iPhoto, lightroom looks nice, photoshop looks very expensive). So, what would you guys recommend for people who are looking at shooting engagements, senior pics, family pics, and weddings in the near future. Thanks guys.

Travis


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 12, 2010)

thought i would add that it looks like my wife and i would be able to buy the software at student prices which looks dramatically reduced from the standard price.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 15, 2010)

hey guys any help would be great. maybe i posted this in the wrong spot. i'm guessing that i should get the most expensive one that i can afford... but just don't want to be throwing money away by going all out if i am only going to use a fraction of what cs5 could do or something like that.


----------



## Big Mike (Oct 15, 2010)

Photoshop would be the 'best' choice...but yet it's very expensive.  The student discount is great though, so if you can get that, go for it.

That being said, Photoshop is a huge program and it meant for way more than photo editing.  Photoshop Elements is a stripped down version that still does most of what a photographer might want, and it's a lot cheaper.

Lightroom is a fantastic program.  It helps to organize and streamline your workflow.  It can edit & tweak your images, but it's not really a replacement for an image editor like Photoshop.  There is also a great student discount.

My advice would be to get Elements and Lightroom and use them together.  Or Lightroom and Photoshop if you can afford it.


----------



## tom r (Oct 15, 2010)

I was at at photoshow in the spring, and one of the speakers lives for Aperture on the Mac and Lightroom on Windows.  His statement was they are almost the same but Aperture just works better on OSX.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 15, 2010)

Big Mike said:


> Photoshop would be the 'best' choice...but yet it's very expensive. The student discount is great though, so if you can get that, go for it.
> 
> That being said, Photoshop is a huge program and it meant for way more than photo editing. Photoshop Elements is a stripped down version that still does most of what a photographer might want, and it's a lot cheaper.
> 
> ...


 
thanks mike, you always seem to help me out a ton. so, if i were to say that i was planning on shooting portraits and weddings seriously within the next year, what would you recommend.
i would be willing to shell out the cash and take the time to learn it if i am going to be charging good money to shoot these events. i just don't want to buy some cheap thing and not be satisfied in 6 months because i can't do EVERYTHING i want to do. 

my wife is also curious on creating water marks. Can a watered down version like elements still do that? do you think elements can produce professional finished products that people would expect from a wedding photog? Thanks mike.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 15, 2010)

tom r said:


> I was at at photoshow in the spring, and one of the speakers lives for Aperture on the Mac and Lightroom on Windows. His statement was they are almost the same but Aperture just works better on OSX.


 Aperture 3 looked affordable, but i wasn't sure how intensive it was. Can it do major editing, watermarks, etc?


----------



## tom r (Oct 15, 2010)

haven't tried watermarking in Aperture.  I use photoshop for most of my stuff, I found Aperture to be Iphoto on steroids though.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 15, 2010)

tom r said:


> haven't tried watermarking in Aperture. I use photoshop for most of my stuff, I found Aperture to be Iphoto on steroids though.


 
that sounds fun to me! especially since iphoto is the only software i have ever used. it looked somewhat affordable too, though the reviews on amazon have been good and bad.


----------



## Mbnmac (Oct 16, 2010)

I've been using aperture for a week or so editing Raw, and yes it is like iphoto on steroids BUT;

It is very Ram hungry, I think there's a memory leak that needs fixing so that may change, but if you don't have at least 4GB of Ram in your mac, maybe look at upgrading it or it'll chug a bit.

There are some features you can't get without plug-ins, considering Apple's software history, these things will be added eventually, if not in 4.0

It's closer to how iphoto works than lightroom, some people dislike how lightroom stores and views photos, I don't mind it personally.

Overall, it's got everything you'd want from the app, and does pretty much everything the same as LR, if you can get a student discount get LR/Photoshop, if not, look at aperture, but remember that you'll need photoshop to do heavy 'editing' beyond adjusting your colours and stuff.

Go to the apple website, and the adobe website, get the 30 day trials and go shoot a bunch in RAW, see how you like the outcomes.


----------



## oldmacman (Oct 16, 2010)

Mbnmac said:


> Go to the apple website, and the adobe website, get the 30 day trials and go shoot a bunch in RAW, see how you like the outcomes.



I love my Macs, but Aperture has serious issues when a library gets too big. I split my one library into 4 different libraries for the types of images I shoot. They were fine until each of those libraries got big.

LR is very similar in functionality to Aperture. It took some getting used to, but finding good data management is what ended up being important to me. I still like the workflow of Aperture, but when the workflow includes a spinning beach ball on a regular basis, it is time to move on. For me, all heavy edits are done in PS anyway, so consider what your long term needs will be. A 30 day trial may not be enough to show all the shortcomings of the software.


----------



## table1349 (Oct 16, 2010)

LR3 on a Mac runs flawlessly for me and is what I use most of the time. CS5 gets used when necessary and the work flow between the two is excellent.


----------



## Mbnmac (Oct 16, 2010)

oldmacman said:


> Mbnmac said:
> 
> 
> > Go to the apple website, and the adobe website, get the 30 day trials and go shoot a bunch in RAW, see how you like the outcomes.
> ...



Yeah, this is something that has been told to me before, and the general feeling around it is edit in aperture, show in iphoto.

It's a generally smoother program for simply viewing photos and slideshows anyway.

I ended up with Aperture due to a non-returnable item and an on the spot discount. My iMac is over 4 years old at this point and it handles aperture fine to me, but I'm also not in a major rush to do things. I think a lot of these types of issues get sorted when people use the feedback forms, that stuff does get looked at.


----------



## KmH (Oct 17, 2010)

Tbini87 said:


> Hey guys,
> I have been getting more serious about photography for about a year now. My wife and i just use our Macbook's iPhoto editing software which has been really fun so far. As we get more serious (shooting senior portraits, engagements and kid shoots), we would like to know what software we can upgrade to.
> I look around to see what is out there, and it looks expensive and I can't really tell the difference of a lot of the different choice (elements seems like iPhoto, lightroom looks nice, photoshop looks very expensive). So, what would you guys recommend for people who are looking at shooting engagements, senior pics, family pics, and weddings in the near future. Thanks guys.
> 
> Travis


Some good DAM software and an understanding of effective DAM. DAM = Digital Asset Management.

Amazon.com: The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers (9780596523572): Peter Krogh: Books


----------



## table1349 (Oct 17, 2010)

Tbini87 said:


> Big Mike said:
> 
> 
> > Photoshop would be the 'best' choice...but yet it's very expensive. The student discount is great though, so if you can get that, go for it.
> ...



You might want to take a look at this as well.  Highly thought of but pricey compared to LR or Aperture.  Raw converter software for professional photographers

Give the trial version a go and see what you think if you are interested. I would probably be  using Capture One if I didn't have Photo shop.  Since I do I use LR on my Mac.  The work flow is very smooth between the two.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 17, 2010)

gryphonslair99 said:


> Tbini87 said:
> 
> 
> > Big Mike said:
> ...


 
i have been leaning towards the cheaper of the options like elements and/or lightroom. do these 2 options have a RAW converter built in? I have actually never even shot in RAW and am a little scared of having to convert them and edit them. seems like a lot of people do it so it couldn't be THAT hard... but i am usually scared of getting too far from my comfort zone when it comes to technology.


----------



## table1349 (Oct 17, 2010)

Tbini87 said:


> gryphonslair99 said:
> 
> 
> > Tbini87 said:
> ...



They will both handle raw fine.  You don't convert raw, it is it's on format.  Also editing is not done to the raw file.  The editing that you do is actually a set of scripts that you apply to the image.  When you save that file a new one is actually created from the scripts.  The original is left unchanged.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 19, 2010)

gryphonslair99 said:


> Tbini87 said:
> 
> 
> > gryphonslair99 said:
> ...


 
So even after editing it you will be left with the original RAW file? That is nice to know since I wouldn't be all that confident in my abilities at first.

I have noticed a lot of people saying that Lightroom 3 is mostly used for the photo management side of things... when I am really looking for software that I can edit my photos with and watermark. Does Lightroom offer enough editing ability to please a wedding photographer, or is it all just a matter of opinion?


----------



## Big Mike (Oct 19, 2010)

Lightroom does give you plenty of image editing ability.  The main this that it doesn't do, that photoshop  does, is layers.  With Photoshop, you can do everything on layers which gives you great control.  

It's really something that you have to figure out for yourself.


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 19, 2010)

Big Mike said:


> Lightroom does give you plenty of image editing ability. The main this that it doesn't do, that photoshop does, is layers. With Photoshop, you can do everything on layers which gives you great control.
> 
> It's really something that you have to figure out for yourself.


 
Thanks mike, I almost asked specifically about layers haha. I have never done them and have no idea how they work. I only shoot jpeg right now. Can you use layers with jpeg? Should i be shooting in RAW for better editing possibilities? Right now we just enhance (contrast and saturation) in iphoto and that's about it. Works well but doesn't give us the chance to do really awesome stuff. Im guessing lightroom won't let us do any HDR or anything like that either will it?


----------



## Big Mike (Oct 19, 2010)

Once you take a photo into a program like Photoshop, you can use layers.  You can think of layers like how they used to do animation, by layering several sheets of cellophane over one another.  The top layer covers the layers below, but if parts of that layer are clear (erased or masked) then the layers below can show through.  
It's obviously a lot more involved than that, but that's the general idea.

It doesn't matter if you shoot JPEG or RAW, you can create layers on an image once you bring it into Photoshop.  But, the JPEG format doesn't support layers, so when you decide to save the file, you have to 'flatten' the image, if you want to save it as a JPEG.  You can save the layers (so that you can go back and edit them later) if you save the image as a Photoshop PSD or as a TIFF, but those files (especially with layers) are huge compared to JPEG.  
You don't need to use layers with Photoshop, especially if you just want to adjust a few things and save the image.

Here is a good article about why to shoot RAW.
Why Raw -- Part I


----------



## Tbini87 (Oct 20, 2010)

Big Mike said:


> Once you take a photo into a program like Photoshop, you can use layers. You can think of layers like how they used to do animation, by layering several sheets of cellophane over one another. The top layer covers the layers below, but if parts of that layer are clear (erased or masked) then the layers below can show through.
> It's obviously a lot more involved than that, but that's the general idea.
> 
> It doesn't matter if you shoot JPEG or RAW, you can create layers on an image once you bring it into Photoshop. But, the JPEG format doesn't support layers, so when you decide to save the file, you have to 'flatten' the image, if you want to save it as a JPEG. You can save the layers (so that you can go back and edit them later) if you save the image as a Photoshop PSD or as a TIFF, but those files (especially with layers) are huge compared to JPEG.
> ...


 
Man, that was long but so worthwhile! I plan on shooting RAW and using LR to edit the photos and see how I like it. I may have some questions about "batch processing" since that sounded like something I would really be interested in if I was shooting rAW and had a ton of pics to edit. Thanks.


----------



## David Dvir (Oct 20, 2010)

Aperture is absolutely the way to go.  I've been using it for years, and it's very intensive.  You can do a ton of amazing things, it's so under appreciated.  Forget the price, I would pay a few thousand if I had to to use aperture.  

You really need to get the 30 day trial.  You won't regret it.


----------



## Galad (Nov 28, 2010)

A little late in this thread, I know, but since I went through exactly this choice a year ago or so...

What I did was this:

- Downloaded both Lightroom and Aperture. Both have a one month trial period.
- Worked with both of them, doing "my thing" (on the exact same photos actually).

It's possible that you will find what I did, they're quite similar. (The GUI in Aperture is very different from iPhoto, thank god.) For me it was a very close call. Lightroom is probably a little stronger in some ways, but perhaps you don't need all its features... while Aperture costs considerably less.

I ended up buying Lightroom in the end and am very happy with it, but it was almost a coin-flip decision.

Btw, I'm only interested in "developing" raw images, which is what both programs are for primarily. (That, and organizing the photos). I'm not into any advanced manipulations, which is why I didn't go for any variant of Photoshop.


----------



## KKJUN (Dec 13, 2010)

Lightroom 3. Very easy to use, as you don't have to fiddle around with crazy menus. Yet it is very powerfull and capable, and also makes it easy to organize your photos.


----------

