Advice needed for photo management?

[Al Buckner]

Who uses which one and why did you pick it over the others?

I'm interested in changing what I'm using and am mostly interested in cataloging my photos, weather they are on-line or off-line (my computer hard drive or external hard drive).

Lightroom @ $299 or Aperture @ $199 or ACDSeePRO @ $129

I had a trial version of ACDSee (cheap version) and somewhat liked it... but don't think I had it long enough to really find all the bells and whistles. I have a friend that has Aperture and he raves about it (but I don't have a MAC yet). Another friend has LightRoom and swears it is the very best (not sure I need that many features, since I have Photoshop)

Any other programs out there that I should be looking at for cataloging?

[Thorpeland]

Ive never used Aperture, never used ACDSeePro. I have used LR and LR2. I also swear by them. But not just for photo management (which it does great), but mainly for a RAW processing workflow. And LR2 is made to work WITH photoshop. Not so much as opposed to it. If you deal with tons of photo's from a single shoot, LR2 is great. Its loaded with features and makes life easy. Granted its, ouch, $300.

[Duffy Pratt]

I tried Aperture and thought it might be fine for photo management, but didn't like it as much as ACR for raw processing. So I stuck with Bridge for as long as I could stand it (which turns out to be until last week). I'm not diving into LR2, and I'm very impressed. Keywording is much easier than I thought it would be, and much of the interface is just plain intuitive and easy to use. But so far, I've only scratched the surface.

Duffy

[geezer]

Another Digital Asset Management software with a 30 day trial worth considering is idimager.

The author, Hert, is very responsive in the idimager support forums.

[Citex]

Lightroom 2, it runs pretty fast on my 3 year old laptop and makes flagging images for editing so easy plus all the new editing/masking features make it a great start or final edit.

[DavidsStudio]

Tried them both and, as much as I love Apple stuff generally, LR, for me, is head and shoulders above Aperture in ease of use. Especially LR2. To quote Apple, "It just works."

[athompson]

I use Microsoft Expression Media (from back when it was iView MediaPro) for asset management, and Lightroom for RAW workflow/editing. I recommend both.

I also use a plug-in for LR for exporting to SmugMug (<-- recommended!).

On the downside... LR is not a great management tool (for me anyway). MEM is a great management tool, except for its 2Gb max catalog size (I really wish they would come out with a real Pro version which used SQL/MySQL for the backend).

I am PC-based so I've never used Aperture.

[Al Buckner]

Thanks everyone.... seems there is no clear winner, so far! You're not making this very easy.

[janetg]

i have used acdsee for years now - and more recently LR - i love them both - and use them for totally different purposes. i use lightroom for development and exif/meta deta.

i use acdsee as someone might use windows explorer, only now that everything is keyworded, you can search through acdsee and find things just about instantly. for photos that are too old to have been done through LR - acdsee pro - allows you to batch set exif and itpc information. i use acdsee to resize, rename, etc.

i love them both and wouldn't do without either one.