Hi folks,

I’m just curious what software you are using for your exif/iptc data? I had a quick
view at the new microsoft tool and it seems to be very convinient to me? So let
know your preferences/workflows, etc.

/lars

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, iPhoto, played a bit with Lightroom and Aperture

My workflow is first get the images from the camara into a folder with the date/dive site as its name - such as 2007_01_24_TheCoolReef, and before I do anything else, make backups immediately.  Usually when I travel I have a laptop and some portable drives and blank DVDs/CD-R to burn.

Then I usually bring into iPhoto or browse through Bridge/Photoshop

iPhoto is easy and quick to take a look at what I have then start looking at what may be keepers.  In iPhoto you can quickly “star” the ones you like and create a smart Album to have the shots you like organized - then move those out to a folder on a computer for editing.

The one thing I do is never delete a photo either in camera or afterwards.  Sometimes I may miss something the first go round, and even if a shot is not good for whatever reason, going back from time to time and looking at why the shot was poor is a good tool to learn from.  And with hard drives and other media being less expensive everyday, not a big deal to keep them.

I mostly just use ACDsee Pro ..

It is very rare I shoot in RAW but when I have I have
used the Capture LE from Phase One to convert.

Photoshop CS2 for any editing work even if it is simple…
i just find it more accurate than ACDSee.

However ACDSee pro is used for all my IPTC tagging
and EXIF data manipulation as well as basic browsing
and folder locating and moving. ACDSee is my workhorse !

If I’m in a hurry its Konqueror -> properties ->metadata

Otherwise the tools I use are Exiftool, Kuickshow, Gimp, Rawview and Lightzone…

I usually dump my pictures into a directory with name & date.  If I’m dumping say a weeks worth from a trip, I’ll have a separate folder for each day, just to make it easier to find stuff based on notes in my logbook.  After a cooldown period then I come back and browse through them in Kuickshow deleting the bad ones and looking for highlights or ones that just jump out at me for some reason.

I don’t shoot RAW very much because my camera (Nikon E8700) is very slow to save them so I only use RAW when I’m shooting macro on subjects that aren’t going anywhere soon.  With .jpg the originals are archived to CD after first making a work copy in a lossless format, usually .png.  The work copy is what I use for cropping, adjusting color levels or any other editing I do.

RG