Mac workflow thread

[gregr]

I've got a new laptop- a Mac. This is the computer I'll take on the road so I need some image organizing software. I want a program that does what Breezebrowser does (what I use on my PC); it works as a light table and allows me to quickly select and move large numbers of images, does batch renaming and simple html [slideshows]. I want to be able to point it to a folder and have it give me a thumbnail view of all the images in the folder- quickly. BB cost me about $40 when I bought it a couple years ago.
What are Mac users using for this kind of work? I've heard of Lightroom and Aperture- both very expensive and I'm sure they're great, but I don't need most of what they do and they cost a huge amount of money. Any suggestions?

 

[BlueCorn]

For browsing thumbnails, your Finder window will do that. Open the finder window and navigate to your directory containing thumbnails.

Hit CMD+J or select View/View options make sure that "Show Icon Preview" is selected. You can also select "This window only" if you don't want the change over your whole system.

You can now scale the icons to the size that you want and sort through them.

iPhoto will do all of this for you as well. Personally I use, and love Aperture. You should at least download the trial version and give it a spin. That's what I use to generate the photo contest voting pages. It's takes about 3 minutes.

 

[gregr]

I've been using Iphoto and finder for the small trips I've done so far and found it to be ok, but you gotta remember- I'm what you call an old dog and I'm finding it very frustrating to learn new tricks I've got very used to my workflow and was really hoping to find something that gets me the same features. I like to open a folder after I've transfered the files from the card to the hd and look at the thumbnails, doubleclick to bring the image fullscreen to determine how good it is or to compare it to another similar image. Quickly tag the images that are keepers, copy them to a seperate folder and work from those copies. With Iphoto that was a slow process requiring me to go back and forth between different windows. It works but it's not nearly as smooth as BB.
Good news though- I just found Qpict and downloaded the trial version. It looks to be similar to BB in terms of features and price. The problems I have with Aperture are price, too many features that I don't need, and it takes up too much of the computers resources (or was that Lightroom?). If Qpict doesn't work out for me I'll give Aperture a try I guess.

 

[BlueCorn]

Yes - iPhoto isn't great for what you're doing but the price is right.

Thumbnail browsing is part of the OS you don't need anything else to do what I mentioned.

Once you start using Aperture, you'll find that those "extra features" are pretty cool. Especially the meta-tagging and searching options. I tried many different beta versions of lightroom and just really didn't like it.

 

[gregr]

Thumbnail browsing is part of the OS you don't need anything else to do what I mentioned.

But it's more than browsing- it's tagging, batch copying and moving, batch renaming, etc. and it needs to be fast- the OS software is too slow for this work. The extra features you mentioned- I don't use them (I have my own system), and don't want to pay for them... hence my search.
Qpict appears to be the compromise (like Breezebrowser on the PC). I'm going on a trip in a few weeks so I'll try out Qpict and anything else I can find that has either a free trial or a reasonable price tag (less than a hundred bucks).

 

[BlueCorn]

That's what you get for trying to force a (broken) window workflow onto the Mac.

 

[BlueCorn]

Here's another possibility that was mentioned on a similar thread over at fred miranda...

http://www.camerabits.com/pages/PM4.html

 

[gregr]

Thanks- I'll go check that thread out.

 

[AudioAdict]

Hey greg, It's Kyle from Vivid. I saw you here and thought i say hello. Hope all is going good.

 

[gregr]

Hey Kyle- long time no see!