New workflow advice sought.

[Jock]

I'm about to invest in a new iMac - my old one has reached the end of its useful life and can't upgrade the OS any more. I've pretty well decided on a 27" iMac and have accrued the cash for that.

My question here is about workflow - on the old machine, I used iPhoto from the beginning and despite having DPP and Elements 12 installed, they were only used for a little bit of editing. The problem was as the machine aged, things got slower and slower, especially the editing. I now have an archive of all my digital photos over the last 15 years and occasionally I still got back to some, however now seems to be an appropriate time to change my workflow.

What should I do and why?

Should i stick with the old familiar iPhoto, or should I use DPP or Adobe elements Organiser?

[Tigger]

Re: New workflow advice sought.

you won't regret it once your credit card gets over the shock !! they are not cheap. Hope you've gone for the i7 after all if your going to spend that cash you mite as well get the current fastest - one thought, I bought mine last year and waited for Apples one day sale and got £150 off, its not a huge discount on a £1800 purchase, but its still £150 and if you can wait till 1st November its worth it, I'm looking at getting a Macbook then ... it will be interesting to see what discount they offer...LOTS LOL

As for work flow - one of my biggest concerns was finding images so when moving to iMac I also changed over to Lightroom as the database features are in my opinion 2nd to none and I can find images within a few clicks, along with setting up film strip shows and loads more - plus its a pretty powerful editing tool, although now I've got PS CC as well - obviously you could take both with there monthly fee

[AlexR!]

Re: New workflow advice sought.

I have much the same set up (iMac, Elements 11) and I find that Elements Organiser does perfectly enough for me. I accept it isn't the most sophisticated cataloguing system in the world, but I don't have billions of images to manage, and seeing the thumb nails of them all in date order does the job for me. I used to tag people, but found I never used it to search. I usually know roughly when I took an image and can find it quickly enough simply through scrolling. And it does mean my import/editing workflow is seamless as it is all in one package.
If you require more complexity then you'll probably need something else and lots of people on here swear by Lightroom.

[Jock]

Re: New workflow advice sought.

Thanks for the advice so far. I had never thought of Lightroom, assuming it was just another piece of software to confuse my already befuddled mind, but I've been reading about it and I might just download the trial copy and give it a try. I'm not into this "CC" thing at all though.

Just for information, I currently have around 14,000 photographs to catalogue.

[Tigger]

Re: New workflow advice sought.

14000 !! we'll see you in a year!

But the sooner you start the better... If you are considering installing it I would recommend watching Tim Greys video on setting up LR and the best way to import and categorise images as it will get you started correctly - its only 2 hrs long, but worth watching

[the black fox]

Re: New workflow advice sought.

Personally I use aperture 3 for all my storing and a lot of basic editing as well .however Apple have announced they will cease to support it from the next o.s .no as yet has a definite solution to that .and I have 5 years of files backed up on there ,for advanced editing I use photoshop CS6 .i cannot see Apple not finding a way that will let us continue to access our old files .so let's see what happens .

I.photo from what I can see is far more advanced than when I first used it several years ago so perhaps that's where Apple will develope there next system from ,sometimes change is good it makes your brain work