ot: Photo program advice?

[raygunner]

So OT request but I feel that there's a some good info around these parts regarding digital photos.

The skinny: My wife and I are expecting our first baby very, very soon. I love taking photos and I know I'll be taking tons of the new kiddo.

But for quite awhile I've been without a dedicated photo program to sort/organize my photos.

Does anyone have recommendations regarding photo programs? Is Lightroom worth it? Any other recommendations? I'd like something to easily upload & sort the pics.

In anticipation for the baby I purchased a used DSLR, a USB card reader and a new portable hard drive for backup storage. Also, I might even want to upgrade to Flickr Pro.

I've also been thinking checking out a refurbished IMac but our Windows based laptop works fine for the time being.

Thanks for any advice & help! Sorry if this question seems silly but it's been on my bucket list for things to get situated before the baby arrives.

[joosttx]

Adobe Light Room. You can use its cloud service for 9.99 per month to store all your pictures which can be view on your phones or computers. Congratulations!

[cp43]

Disclaimer: I don't actually take any photos of note, buy my wife, and some of my friends do. So, this is a bit second hand.

If you go for Light Room, consider Photo Mechanic also. It speeds up the culling and uploading process from the camera to Light Room: Photo Mechanic (http://www.camerabits.com/tour-v5/)

Also, Congratulations on the baby! :banana:

Chris

[weightshift]

Lightroom is definitely worth it and I used it for many years.

Lately however, I've just moved to both Apple Photos and Google Photos for back-ups/syncing/cloud and features. Most of this is because I've found myself moving away from a desktop-bound workflow to a mobile one. Photo apps on the phone are great these days.

Google Photos is FAST. Stopped syncing to Flickr a while ago but it has almost 20 years of photos on there so I keep it as a repo.

I suppose the question to ask is: how much time will you have to *actively* manage Lightroom, edit photos and such? If you're on the go and want to work fast through family photos, I'd recommend a mobile workflow.

[R3awak3n]

+1 on lightroom, its what you want.

[veloduffer]

You may also want to look at ON1 Raw 2018 (www.on1.com) It’s a Lightroom competitor. I’ve used LR for a long time but not sure about switching to the Cloud Service.

I’ve been using ON1 for a couple of years as a photo editor (it can be standalone or LR plug-in). But it has an organizer now and is faster. My only reluctance is changing my workflow for thousands of pics.

There’s lots of 3rd party support (how to videos, presets) for both. ON1 markets well and provides alot of presets for free every month.

ON1 cost is upfront rather than monthly fee.

I use zenfolio to share my photos. Note, SmugMug (similar to Zenfolio) just purchased Flickr.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[raygunner]

Naz, that's a great point!

How much time will I have?! That's something I totally haven't considered in regards to doing photos.

[raygunner]

Also, I haven't updated Flickr in awhile...are things expected to change? Would Google (or Apple) photos be more preferable?

And I haven't thought about Iphone photos and I know they'll be part of the collection.

[mhespenheide]

I know you've said that you've already purchased a used dSLR, but if you're not hardcore-into being a photographer, you might consider a simpler approach of shooting jpegs.

This is heretical for photographers, because it eliminates a good bit of the (high-end) flexibility of post-processing in 16-bit color space. If that's not something that's meaningful to you, though, both Fuji and Olympus have very highly regarded jpeg processing that will help you get good results "straight out of the camera".

[raygunner]

I know you've said that you've already purchased a used dSLR, but if you're not hardcore-into being a photographer, you might consider a simpler approach of shooting jpegs.

This is heretical for photographers, because it eliminates a good bit of the (high-end) flexibility of post-processing in 16-bit color space. If that's not something that's meaningful to you, though, both Fuji and Olympus have very highly regarded jpeg processing that will help you get good results "straight out of the camera".

Good to know! And I'm definitely not trying a hardcore approach but would like to verse myself more into the realm of photography.

Also not looking to spend a ton of money because honestly, that little money vacuum is arriving soon! But I would like a new point & shoot camera soon.

[Likes2ridefar]

Have a four year old now, and IMO, the last thing I’d want to add to the pile of crap required to keep a little one going while out and about is a heavy camera that takes a lot of space.

My iPhone X takes great photos and is easy to whip out quickly for those tough to capture seconds of photo opportunities for a perpetually moving kid..

Pick your cloud wisely, I’ve found it extremely difficult to detach myself from iCloud now that I have a ton of photos and videos there. Regret at this point not managing it better and keeping it local or using something more universally accessible.

[weisan]

ray pal,
Congratulations to you and your wife on your first child. Life will never be the same again.

I think it makes more sense to use a good phone camera. Since I got the iphone 7+ last year, I don't carry a dedicated camera anymore. The phone itself takes great pictures and has tons of photo apps that I can download, pretty much everything I would ever need.

[raygunner]

Good to know!

My DSLR was pretty cheap and I also purchased it to learn more photo fundamental. And my point & shoot is well loved.

So let's say I take the bulk of my photos with my Iphone...

Is Lightroom still a good option as far as organization?

And could I easily go from Lightroom to batch upload to Flickr (or Google photo)?

[fkelly]

Think hard about how you are going to organize and maintain your photos over a long period of time. You could wind up with tens of thousands of family pictures over 30 to 40 years and go through a dozen phones and/or computers and cameras. Thirty years from now will you be able to find the baby photos of your child and pass them on to the next generations?

I've found that smartphones have limited capabilities with regard to organizing pictures. You can use the so-called Cloud to back up but what organizational capabilities does your cloud storage have? Is your phone going to run out of storage after 1000 or 10000 photos? If you have 10000 photos will you be able to find all pictures related to ??? or dig out that family trip from 12 years ago?

Adobe, with Lightroom and Photoshop (a little over $10 a month) for a subscription to them both has both cloud based and desktop based tools.

Personally, I use Lightroom on a desktop, with an external drive for backup. But if you go with Lightroom be prepared to study a bit. While you can stick your photos into a hierarchical directory structure, Lightroom imports them into its own database. Changes (edits) are stored separately and you can always go back to the original. But if you start moving the pictures around using Windows file manager you will break Lightroom and be in a world of pain.

There are also Lightroom products for Android and IOS that can synch your phone photos up with your desktop. But expect to do a bit of studying to make that work properly.

Personally I also use a product called Juicebox Builder that creates photo albums that can be uploaded to a web site. So the flow goes: camera > Lightroom > edit on Lightroom with occasional Photoshop touch ups > export to jpegs and create Photo Albums in Juicebox > upload to my web site. And every once in a while, but not enough, hook up the external drive and backup the whole pictures directory to it.

[foo_fighter]

The iCloud PC program syncs/downloads all your photos and videos locally.
I use both google photos and icloud for redundancy.



Pick your cloud wisely, I’ve found it extremely difficult to detach myself from iCloud now that I have a ton of photos and videos there. Regret at this point not managing it better and keeping it local or using something more universally accessible.

[mhespenheide]

I'm a landscape photographer who takes photography too seriously, so I'm willing to pay the Adobe Tax for photoshop. I'm old-school enough that I don't do too much inside of Lightroom, though.

If it were me, I wouldn't want to commit to a proprietary product that might (probably not, but might) lock my files behind a paywall at some point in the future. I'd use Adobe Bridge to keep my files organized, which is a free download. Furthermore, Bridge doesn't keep any proprietary information (beyond 1-5* rankings or tagged colors) separate from the files themselves.

When I download photos off of a card, I create a subdirectory for each event or trip or location, with the name structure like "18.05a CA Yosemite", which tells me that the photos in that subdirectory were shot in 2018, May, the first trip of the month, in California, in Yosemite.

[Likes2ridefar]

Yes it does allow that, but the devices begin to rely on the cloud storage to function when you have way more in the cloud than the device can support on its local storage. It is a lot of work to download all then selectively delete or keep certain photos and videos still viewable on the device.

I’ll pay someone to do it for me if interested :)

[weightshift]

Naz, that's a great point!

How much time will I have?! That's something I totally haven't considered in regards to doing photos.

After years of DSLR, 4/3rds, etc., I've come down to a Sony RX100 MkIII and an iPhone X with VSCO (disclaimer, I work there), and Apple Photos and Google Photos as ways to organize, or having them organize and surface things for me. The Sony is the perfect ride/travel camera and has wi-fi so sending photos to my phone is a snap which sync to Apple Photos and Google Photos.

Google Photos is free if you're cool with their high-quality setting (not full-res, but truthfully, I can't tell the difference) and between that and Apple Photos, having those two self-organize my photo library has been fantastic. Instead of having to come up with a folder structure and tag, etc, allowing Apple/Google Photos do all of that for me is a huge win.

Plus time! I still work on photos but do it when I have bits of time here and there rather than having to sit at a computer and do it all.

Oh, and video will likely be a thing for you with the baby, so having that all be in the same workflow and organized together is great.

And sharing from any of these from the phone is fantastic. I'm amazed at how much I actually do on the phone now versus on desktop (almost none).

[gavingould]

i've used Lightroom since v1.

[raygunner]

Just want to say thanks for all the awesome replies and priceless help.

The photos my dad took when my siblings and I are the coolest so I want to make sure I do the same.

Thanks!!!

[fkelly]

When I download photos off of a card, I create a subdirectory for each event or trip or location, with the name structure like "18.05a CA Yosemite", which tells me that the photos in that subdirectory were shot in 2018, May, the first trip of the month, in California, in Yosemite.

versus

Google Photos is free if you're cool with their high-quality setting (not full-res, but truthfully, I can't tell the difference) and between that and Apple Photos, having those two self-organize my photo library has been fantastic. Instead of having to come up with a folder structure and tag, etc, allowing Apple/Google Photos do all of that for me is a huge win.

There's your choices. If you are comfortable letting a cloud based service do it for you, the way IT wants to do it, pick the second option. If you want to control your own organization and galleries of photos, use Lightroom or a similar product and spend some time thinking through the directory structure you use. Do some studying about Lightroom too before you put a zillion photos in it.

I've had photos in Google since the early 2000's. They had a desktop product called Picasa (a lightweight equivalent to Lightroom) and a cloud solution called Picasaweb. Then they decided to discontinue Picasa and Picasaweb. It's not a democracy when you use them. When they decide on a different direction, they take it. Your files will be "safe" but you will do things their way or not at all.

[PapaScottsy]

Lightroom is great and totally worth the money but here’s a couple of free alternatives (recommended from personal experience): Darktable (MAC) and Raw Therapee (PC).

[Andreas]

https://www.gimp.org

talking about priceless info.. The Gimp of course