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Photo editing on a Mac on the cheap.

Alex,

What sort of editing do you need to do? Are you working with RAW files, JPG, 8 bit, 16 bit etc etc?

Cesare
 
RAW and 'Fine' JPG mainly.

BTW, I only intend to do a bit of tweaking - the last thing I want to do is spend hours manipulating images on a computer; I'd much rather shoot better in the first place.
 
I think you'll have to define 'on the cheap' a little better. The most obvious software for this sort of purpose would be Photoshop Elements, or Aperture/Lightroom. Have you given Aperture a go since there is a demo available?

I've been using Aperture for a couple of years now give or take and it's been a joy, I won't go back to other editing software out of choice. I'd rather be taking pictures.

Cesare
 
If you are thinking of getting Lightroom go for Aperture - it has pretty good editing capability and still allows one to easily transfer images to PS or other heavier duty editor.

It is also quite a bit cheaper than Lightroom.
 
I'll trial Aperture with a view to purchase with my teacher's mortarboard on. I had PS Elements for OS9 and wasn't too thrilled.

Derek, is iPhoto '09 a big improvement on '08?

(Actually, Lightroom for teachers is €99 + VAT)
 
The new picasa software from google is pretty slick it has to be said.

Otherwise photoshop elements would be ideal.

I have been with aperture from the beginning, but to be honest its just to damn slow compared to other offerings. Trying picasa soon proves that. Though to be fair aperture is doing a whole lot more.
 
I have not seen iPhoto 9 only 8 which I thought was better than I expected. However it's editing capability was not as complete as Apertures (Which is what would expect)

Working with Aperture is very fast compared to using a "regular" editor and whenever it creates a file for either printing or putting on the web or sending to any one it is a fresh copy direct from the Master file with the adjustments that had previously defined for the image applied for the copy that is being created.

If you have a batch of pictures taken in one situation you can apply the tonal changes defined for the first picture to all the remaining images, you can then do further tweaking if you wish.
 
What camera are you using Alex? Some more modern RAW files can't be processed by some older software - Eg CS3 can't process RAW images from the Lumix G1 or Nikon D3X. Is it the D40 you're using?

cheers
Cliff
 
Alex, Nikon capture NX2 is the thing for the D40 as it allows you to do pretty much everything you can with the cameras menus after the fact, although it isn't all that cheap. Can you not just upgrade your photoshop "05" which is presumably some derivative of "Elements" which comes free with a lot of cameras (I think I have four or five free copies in various boxes).

Cheers
Cliff
 
another vote for aperture, it's easy and makes RAW edit simple too.

I haven't looked at picassa beta for mac, yet. picassa is generally one of the easiest, and it's free. I don't rate iPhoto, haven't tried '09. FWIW.
 
Cliff, I think you'll find in the mac world things are different - apple sorts out the 'drivers' for the new cameras as they come out (more or less), rather than the package having to be updated to interpret. so if my machine doesn't do D3x this week, it prolly will within a week or two.

besides, if Alex were lashing about the completely silly sums of money asked for the D3x (good as it is), he'd not likely be displaying tightwad tendancies when it comes to a little software, would he!? :)
 
Alex S said:
RAW and 'Fine' JPG mainly.

BTW, I only intend to do a bit of tweaking - the last thing I want to do is spend hours manipulating images on a computer; I'd much rather shoot better in the first place.
Click to expand...
Aperture or lightroom are probably what you should be looking at. With both you get an awful lot of power for the money, especially in the way you can control and compare your photos (Aperture is essentially a photo database with good basic photo manipulation tacked on). However, on less than (insanely) great hardware Aperture can become quite frustrating. Download the 30-day trials of both to see for yourself, and why not check out iPhoto '09 and picasa while you're at it.
 
joel said:
Aperture or lightroom are probably what you should be looking at. With both you get an awful lot of power for the money. However, on less than (insanely) great hardware Aperture can become quite frustrating. Download the 30-day trials of both to see for yourself (and why not check out iPhoto '09 and picasa while you're at it).
Click to expand...

True, Aperture requires plenty of grunt. It runs fine on my MacBook Pro 2.1Ghz, but it enjoys memory - i've got 3Gb in mine. Things start to go sluggisg if i'm working on medium format scans, which are around 5000*6000 pixels, and RAWs from my 1D II are fine and very snappy by comparison.

Cesare
 
Cesare said:
I've got 3Gb in mine
Click to expand...
1gig of RAM in my Mac Mini (1.6g CoreDuo CPU, Intel GPU) vs 4gig of RAM in my MBP (2.5g Core2Duo CPU, Nvidia 9600M GT 512 MB VRAM).
The difference is not subtle.
 
Because of Aperture I justified to my self upgrading from a Dual 2.0 G5 Power Mac with 3.5 gig of Ram to a Mac Pro dual 2.8 with 6 gig of ram - very satisfying.

It is so much faster doing "basic" editing (and not so basic really) compared to the Bridge and Photoshop method. I still can leap into Photoshop for more involved editing (but for less than 5% of the pictures that I work on) but still under the overall image management of Aperture
 
I have a 24" Intel iMac with 2.4 GHz, 2 gig of RAM and ATI Radeon HD 2600. How rubbish would Aperture be on that?
 
I think it would be very fine indeed. Try the 30-day trial for yourself.
 
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