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Photo SoftwarePhoto Books: With digital photography the darkroom is no more. Instead you spend hours and hours in front of the computer. The digital workflow (see that section on books) can be made much faster, better and more secure by an intelligent choice of software to support it. Here's a selection of the programs and applications that I am familiar with (and some that I am not). Comment on this in our Photo Blog!
Digital Asset Management softwareIf you're really serious about managing your photos you should get a proper cataloguing application. There are a few out there. Neither is really, really good (but which software is that?). It's not cheap but useful. You can typically try-before-you-buy. The two I have looked at and find useful are these two: Extensis Portfolio - Buy
it:
Amazon.co.uk
iView MediaPro - Buy it:
Amazon.co.uk
Both have trial versions that you can try for free. So you can decide for yourself. Other options for Digital Asset Management (DAM) Canto Cumulus MediaDex
IDimager IMatch DAM
Useful ACDSee
- Buy it:
Amazon.co.uk
Raw File Processing - and some moreIn my opinion, unless you like taking Polaroid snaps, you will be shooting in raw format. So you will need some kind of raw processing (development) software. Here are a few:
In my opinion (but not in everyone
else's!) this is the best processing ("development") software. It takes some
time understanding the user interface and understanding how all controls work
but once that done, it is a very fast and efficient tool that gives excellent
results. And they have a very good user forum. They have different packages (LE,
Pro...). It used to be referred to as C1 but I believe they had a trademark
issue with that.
Often referred to in jargon as ACR (Adobe Camera
Raw) it works as an integral part of Photoshop (but you might need to download
it and install the latest version separately from the PS program). Some people
swear by this only but I find it slower to work with
RawShooter This Danish company was created by some "defectors" from Phase One who wanted to do, in their opinion, a better raw processor. They did one version that was called RawShooter Essentials (RSE for short), which was free (yes, entirely free), and then they did a Pro (upgrade) version that was not free. And then they ware bought by Adobe who wants to integrate some of their technologies in its own products (e.g. Lightroom?). I found RSE to be very fast in some respects (e.g. in producing screen previews) and it also has some clever image enhancement functions, but in the I decided against it because I did not quite like the colours it produced. But I still use RSE for browsing and editing (sorting out bad ones) raw files. I find it very fast to work with for that specific purpose. They still have the software available on their site which strikes me as curious. But take the opportunity to download the free version while it's there. It's useful.
Adobe Lightroom The new (not even released as a product yet, but free to try in beta version) is supposed to be "built from the ground up by photographers, for photographers..." etc to take care of the full digital workflow. What I have seen of it, that is not quite the case. Rather, it seems to be a fusion of a cataloguing software and a development software (as if you packaged together Extensis Portfolio and Photoshop in one app). It remains to be seen if it is really industrial grade and suitable for a professional workflow.
Have not tried this either
(in particular since I don't use Macs). It too (like Lightroom from Adobe)
claims to be the ultimate solution for professional photo management
applications. Who knows?
Some swear by it. I have not used it.
Other image enhancement toolsUpsizingYou may find that your "developed" file is not big enough and therefore that you need to upsize it (scale it). There are different tools for that:
Recommended by many. Also
referred to as Genuine Fractals PrintPro. From a workflow point of view the current
version of GF is much better than the older one. However, it does not have any
real batch function. (They have an interesting GF/PS comparison on their site,
but I would rather trust my own tests than their marketing material...)
Also recommended by many people. I found the
work flow much better than with Genuine Fractals, but again, it does not have a
proper batch function. (And neither of the two onOne products can be made to
work in proper batch mode with e.g. Photoshop actions even if you can create
actions with them. They still require manual intervention for each image.)
Photoshop has built-in functions for scaling (both up and down). When
you use it for up-scaling you will supposedly get the best result with "bi-cubic
smoother" whereas for down-scaling bi-cubic sharper is supposed to be better.
Anyway, for up-scaling many people now say that PS (in recent versions) are as
good as, or better, than the stand-alone tools. My small tests of it showed that
PS does indeed give just as good results. But the really big advantage is that
it works in "real" batch mode. That makes a big difference if you are processing
1000s of images...
BlowUp This is recently (Nov 2006) launched and I have not tried it. "Better than Photoshop", "Scale up to 3600% without obvious distortion",... Perhaps.
Noise ReductionIndispensable when you shoot in low-light conditions. You can do it in Photoshop with filter and some manipulations. I have found it easier (can't say better, since I have not done any tests) to use a dedicated sw to do it. (BTW, if you are going to use noise reduction, you should do it at the very beginning of the development process.) Noise Ninja Exists in a stand-alone version and as a plug-in to Photoshop. I like the stand-alone better, and it has a batch function that works well. User instructions aren't always obvious though. It turned out (if I understood things correctly) that the sw can not choose a built in noise profile based on EXIF from a tiff file (but you can do it with jpg I believe) even though you are given the impression it works. I resorted to always letting the program auto-generate a noise profile. Works pretty well.
Backup and StorageWith all pictures saved on digital media backup and storage becomes of vital importance for the photographer. Give it a though: How many pictures do you have on, say, a 250GB external drive? Perhaps 13,000 (250GB divided by an average file size of 18MB) How much work do you have invested in that hard drive? Over one year's worth of work perhaps! (Say you spend 10 minutes preparing each picture (for example "developing" it from a raw file to a finished tiff or jpg plus adding keywords): 10 minutes times 13,000 makes 2166 hours. How many hours do you work in a year?...) So you see, it makes sense to make sure you don't loose that information. I have had three external disks fail on me over the last six months (all LaCie Design by Porsche 250GB USB drives by the way). If you don't have a backup of your finished pictures you may well end up loosing a year's worth of work. So is it worth spending that additional 100€ for a backup drive? (Or even better, buy two.) Some day I will write a piece on storage and on backup strategies, but not today. Here are some software that will help you manage your data.
Their tag line is "Always have a
backup plan", which is a good start. They have different versions of the GBM
program: Pro, Home and Server. I know the Pro version. The program is quite easy
to use. You go through a wizard to define what data you want to backup (there's
no point in backing up the whole hard drive. Only backup your own user data.),
where to save the backup (disk, HD,...), what type of backup to do (incremental,
full, compressed,...), how many versions of the backup your should save etc. And
finally you can schedule automatic backup. A good idea is to schedule a daily
backup job and then perhaps less frequent ones too.
SmartSync is a bit simpler than Genie
and does not let you do all the things that GBM does. Nevertheless it is a very
useful and good program. I find it particularly useful if you have large volumes
of data that you want to "backup" (in quotation marks since this is not what I'd
really consider a backup). Say you have a large disk with lots of pictures (or
other files). Perhaps 200 GB of data. There is no way you will be able to do
"real" backups of that regularly, i.e. make a copy of the data and store several
(successively older) version of the data. A) It takes too much time to copy that
much data regularly, and B) it takes too much space to have, say 10 copies of
that data. So what do you do? You make one (or better, two) copies of that data
and then you make sure that the copy (the "backup") is constantly kept
"synchronised" with the original. This is really more of "synchronisation" or
"mirroring" than backing up, in my opinion. But it is in practice the only thing
you can do with that kind of volumes. So, what I do with my "develops" is: I
have one "original" disk which is the one I store the "operational" tiffs on. I
then have a "backup" copy of that which is synchronised every night. In
addition, I have a second "backup" copy which is synchronised less frequently
and stored off-site. SmartSync manages that kind of situation perfectly. Please commentPlease feel free to comment on this, or to suggest new things that should be on this list! Either by contacting us directly or by posting a message in the Photo Blog.
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En français
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Both
these two have surprisingly similar functionalities, so much so that I'd almost
say that it doesn't really matter which one you choose. Some things are
different though. The user interface feels more "modern" on iView MediaPro
perhaps. Portfolio on the other hand has a better (safer) way of updating the
database (done at every modification). Portfolio has a clever function of
assigning keywords to pictures by dragging and dropping from another application
(e.g. Microsoft Word) which is very, very useful. On the other hand it has a bug
that truncates the keywords after just over 1000 characters when the software
writes it in IPTC metadata on the file (which, of course, is only a problem if
you use large numbers of keywords). Perhaps that has been fixed in the new
version 8. Both have good user forums (an independent one for Portfolio) that
give good support. For me, Portfolio comes out slightly on top thanks to the
keyword drag-and-drop feature (its a BIG, BIG plus (for me) actually). From a
corporate perspective MediaPro seems to be a much more dynamic company though
(Extensis do need to get a bit more reactive IMO). Then again, iVeiw MediaPro
was recently bought by Microsoft, so we'll see where that leads... 
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Capture
One
Photoshop
Camera Raw
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Aperture
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Bibble
Genuine
Fractals
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pxl
SmartScale
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Genie
BackupManager Pro
SmartSync
