Digital Photography is not only different from the aspect you use memory instead of film. The after taking the photo process is different too. You don’t have to wait to get them processed, you don’t have to dig out the light box and eye piece.
Ok so the processing is connecting to your computer, and the looking at is done using a browser. Well yes, but what happens when you get too many photo’s to deal with by file name, or even renaming them to a description, that’s when you need a real image browser.
There have been a few out there on the market for a while. The first one, other than Camedia (although I have never tried the newest release I was never instantly impressed with it) that comes with Olympus products I came across was Thumbs Plus from Cerious software was one I was put onto by a digital photographer friend of mine. It was a good start, I now knew there were better products out there. The Mickey Mouse, kindergarten look of Thumbs plus though meant to be friendly looking looked bad, and the program lacked plug ins and add ons that would make for so much more fun to be had. I then found a company who impressed me with several products they had, so I thought I would try their image browser. FCoders IBrowser seemed to be a better step in the right direction.
I had now tried 3 products, each of which had their good merits and bad. I still wanted one that mixed up all the good bits. And left out the bad.
Enter ACDSee 3.0 the first version I was to trial. It was fantastic it did everything, but no wait, my colleague gives me ACDSee power pack 4.0 just a week later. It’s like a Twighlight zone.
ACDSee has now got many power packs and suites, all containing more than the last but here is the basics.
ACDSee Image Browser.
·Browse manage and store images easily (I mean easily)
·Edit images easily, exposure (including Fuzzy Logic ..you’ll love it),
rotation, resizing … all Lossless as well .. so you EXIF data and image
don’t change in anyway .. they just end up looking the right way up, the
right size .. with well some exposure touch ups.
·Group images into favourites folder, or create albums, both just link to
images no duplication, or extra MB needed to store the same image
twice.
·Make Screen Saver with FotoAngelo
·Edit images (although not the best does a good job)
Basically if you are serious about digital photography you need a serious image management tool, and it doesn’t get any better than ACDSee.
http;//www.acdsystems.com
I use a Powerbook G4 with iPhoto and Adobe PS. I tend to use metatags to arrange and search my photos within PS file browser. However, I can imagine things will become a bit unmanagable sooner rather than later so will have to look at other options.
