[LadyStardust]

Hello all,

You may be aware that I recently purchased a 24" iMac, having been a Windows user for hundreds of years. I am really enjoying the change and find it wonderful to use. For example, I connected up my Epson printer the other day with the USB cable and was waiting for all the pop ups to start, asking me for a driver or CD or something. But... nothing. It just connected it without one message or pop up at all! Superb!

However, I do have a query regarding the management of photos. I have iPhoto on there, which is part of iLife 08, but it seems that you completely lose your folder structure when you import your pics. And.. they are not easy to find in Finder thereafter. So if I wanted to open a pic from within Photoshop, for example, it wouldn't be easy to do.

I installed Aperture (which I haven't used before) and the folder structure seems to be intact within the application, but once again, if I wanted to use a 3rd party bit of software or simply attach an image file to an email, I'm not sure I'd know where to find it.

Can anyone advise on how they manage their photos on their Mac please? I'd love to understand it more.

Thanks!

[LJR69]

Coo. Where to start? I guess the first place is to say 'stop looking for the folders and files' because they're not there. What Aperture and iPhoto do is change how you organise and view your files (as well as find them). It accomplishes that through various mechanisms but the most important for you to understand now is that it stores all the files you import in a hoofin' great database. To get the photos out of that database you either need to export them to a format you need them in (which you'll be doing anyway if you are exporting processed RAWs), or you need to get access to them through an application's integration with those databases. Sound convoluted? That's what I thought when I first moved over to the Mac too (Sept last year). However - it's really quite amazing when you get used to it.

For example, and taking the scenario you pitched regarding attaching to an email, if you open Mail and create a new message then click the attach icon a Finder will open up at the bottom of which you will see "Media" and beneath that "Photos" (as well as Movies and Music). If you click that you will see all the Albums, Photo books, folders, even Smart Folders that you created in the applications like Aperture. It's an incredibly powerful tool. No longer are you constrained to remembering the filenames and locations you now are able to locate those images in exactly the same way you would in those applications. If you've created a Smart Album with all your 4 star images from Wednesday last week then when you go into Mail, or other program, you will have the ready made list of images for you to select from.

Further to that if you just open your Finder again at the bottom you see some preset searches (such as "All Images", media from Yesterday, Last Week, etc). However the real power comes from when you select, for example, "All Images" and then click the Action drop-down from the top menu and choose "View Search Criteria". You can really go to town here. Keep clicking the + to the right of the search options. You can search for any image in almost any conceivable way and it's incredibly powerful.

As you can imagine this subject could run on and on. The way the Mac organises all your media files is very powerful and slots right into your workflow. What it does require though is that you forget the old folder structure ways for Windows and think more 'workflow'. Worst case you can go into the iPhoto or Aperture and export as a JPEG/TIFF or whichever format you want, to somewhere you'll be able to locate it.

Have fun!

[LadyStardust]

Hello there. Well, that was a very comprehensive reply - thank you!

It seems that I may need to change the way I work - which is not always a bad thing. I have looked at the tutorials on iPhoto on the Apple website and was blown away with the search capability of the tool, so I know where you're coming from on that.

OK, that's certainly food for thought.

Thanks again!

[WOODY]

LADYSTARDUST, I AM PLEASED YOU ARE GETTING TO GRIPS WITH YOUR MAC. IT IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAY OF WORKING TO WINDOWS, BUT SO FAR I HAVE FOUND IT MUCH EASIER.

I CANNOT GIVE YOU SUCH A DETAILED EXPLANATION, AS THE PREVIOUS ONE, BUT I HAVE BEEN READING SOME BOOKS ABOUT PHOTOSHOP CS3.
IN THESE IT SAYS THAT YOUR PHOTOS ARE STORED IN BRIDGE, FROM THIS YOU SELECT YOUR PHOTOS INTO PHOTOSHOP FOR EDITING ETC.

YOU CAN ALSO PUT YOUR PHOTOS INTO IPHOTO AND SELECT THEM FROM THERE IF FOR EXAMPLE YOU ARE USING ANOTHER EDITING PROGRAM.

I DON'T KNOW WHETHER YOU GOT A TRIAL VERSION OF APERTURE WITH YOURS,I DID WITH MINE, MAYBE YOU COULD TRY THAT AND SEE HOW YOU GET ON. SORRY THIS IS NOT VERY INFORMATIVE BUT LIKE YOURSELF I AM STILL LEARNING HOW TO USE IT.

[LJR69]

I think for Photoshop you may possibly be referring to Adobe Bridge, which is very similar to what you get from iPhoto and Aperture. Both iPhoto and Aperture can open the libraries of the other natively (i.e. it's simply an option from the Open menu). If you run Photoshop on the Mac then you get the same 'Media' option at the bottom of the left-hand pane in the Open dialogue's Finder as you do in Mail. You can open both iPhoto and Aperture libraries from there.

[WOODY]

LJR , I WAS NOT SURE WHETHER I WAS RIGHT OR NOT, AS LIKE LADYSTARDUST, I HAVE ONLY HAD MY MAC FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS.

I AM STILL READING AND LEARNING ABOUT IT.

[LJR69]

You and me both.

I'm still feeling my way around OSX too. I love the operating system but every now and then it seems to depart from all things logical and intuitive and bury deep a most basic operation or setting. I'm far far from being knowledgeable. It's just that with the iPhoto and Aperture I spent quite a bit of time working out how to organise my images and really my reply is born mostly out of what i learned during that.

Nice to see there are a few Mac'ers here.

[Boofers]

I for one like the folder structure of the standard type. Year, date, event, what ever.
You can go to preferences and ask aperture or iphoto to open with a double click in photoshop. I have made aperture work in my normal flow, it helps me by letting me import only photo's that I want to work on. I will export them and after a set time will delete the package that all the files are in,,it is extra space for me. If I want to use some of apples other app. with it I import the media I want to use from a folder I have set up out side the app....there are a lot of plus's,,I like aperture and use it for IR photography,,works better then anything I have found,,,but photoshop will always be my baby even though I use a MAC.

[LadyStardust]

Thanks all for your input. I will have to have a serious think about this.

I have read a similar thread on macrumors.com and it seems that there is a definite split between people who still manage their photos manually in folders and then get the software to reference those files only, and people who import all their pics into the software, using tags and keywords to sort and search.

I'm not sure I can let go the folders system which has served me perfectly well for about 10 years. After all, what happens if you decide to move on from say, Aperture 2 to a new piece of software? Your original files might be all over the place, under the Aperture hood. I think I would like to always have control of where they are...

Anyway, still thinking, so if there are any more thoughts out there, please let me know! Thanks a lot.

And yes, I'm loving the Mac, Woody! I look forward to going home and using it... how sad is that?

Cheers.

Lucy

[silkstone]

The idea of original image files disappearing into a proprietary database doesn't appeal to me at all. Using the folder structure to index and search is limiting, but at least it means that files can be backed up and ported between different applications and machines very easily. A relational database that runs on top of this for keyword searching etc is OK, but it shouldn't substitute for a file structure that can be accessed from the OS.

I know I'm an old fogey but I've been using computers since before the IBM PC was invented, and one thing I've learned is that nothing - absolutely nothing - is permanent. In the past I've used software that was state-of-the-art and promised to endure for generations, only to disappear after a few years, sometimes along with the company that produced it. A recent example of this was Pixmantec who produced Rawshooter - arguably the best RAW converter available at the time - until they were bought out by Adobe and Rawshooter was rapidly and unceremoniously dumped.

Some years ago I used Adobe Pagemaker - one of the 'industry standard' DTP packages that ran head-to-head with Quark Express. A few years later it was scrapped, and the data files cannot, of course, be read by other software.

So, with apologies for the soapbox, I suggest that we should be healthily sceptical about applications like Aperture, iPhoto and Lightroom that turn your valuable data into something that only they can read. By all means use them, but make sure you have an exit strategy.

[LJR69]

It's definitely a horses for courses thing. I've seen the whole media management thing across various platforms and product portfolios. For example, in the videography world Avid have exceptionally strong media management tools. There are always pro's and con's to each side of the coin.

The media management database and tools offer great and unique ways of cataloging and version controlling your media, as well as typically offering platform independent collaboration tools. My Aperture and iPhoto databases are readable by all my Mac applications (I think it's integrated more into Finder than it is an individual application, although individual applications can take that integration further if they so wish). It's also backed up on my external drive in the same way the rest of my folders and files are.

If I wanted to move my images from Aperture to anywhere else then I can use the Finder and the search utilities I specified earlier or simply "Save As.." to the drive. They are all available - nothing is kept under lock and key in a proprietary manner and non-accessible. I do like the fact that all the changes I make to an image in Aperture for example are non-destructive. There's no overwriting of the RAW file. All of this is achievable through how the media is managed within the application.

I definitely see the benefits of both approaches. Some will never like the media management tools. Some will embrace them.

Pick your poison

[Boofers]

The other day my son inlaw wanted to see how I managed my photo's,,I looked up at a storage book that had some dvd's and said At one time I used to store them on these disc's and copy them from I photo. I would incert the disc and "pop" they opened in iphoto, pretty neat. I grabbed one to show him,,,it wouldn't open,,,lucky for me I have a standard file back up and easy select file system. I didn't take the time to figure out why it didn't open,,I could open the package that apple uses for the folders, tread my way through file system and find my photo's,,,naw,,not the time. I'm sure that I could find out why it stopped working the way it was supposed to,,but why,,,I don't have the time to sort out all the up dates and changes apple wants to put in for there system if I have to update all my dvd's to work on upgrade... sound like I made a mistake, maybe, but it still didn't work like it did when it was new, hope this makes sence,,it goes along with what Silky says about dropping support. If i find later that I made a mistake, sorry, but I don't think so.

[JMitchell]

Couldn't be bothered to read all of that, but I don't know if anyone's said this:
Like LJR said, aperture stores copies in a database, and that's all been explained. What it might be worth remembering is that this means the originals are untouched, so if you happen to uninstall the program, or lose it somehow (prog or database), then you'll lose all the edits you've made to your photos.
Just something to look out for