Dorchester — May 14th 2013

TOPICS: Photo management, Keynote

The Dorchester meeting on May 14th was opened by John. 20 people were in attendance, including two from an embryonic group in Beaminster.

Michael spoke first on Alternatives to iPhoto.
His requirements were to store photos in large numbers, with the ability to keep, file and find them.
He doesn't use iPhoto, and wanted a more "transparent" system, which stored the photos in his own, visible, folder and file system.
He had identified different kinds of system which allowed this, ranging from the very large and expensive eg Aetopiia, primarily intended for commercial users, to systems more aligned to domestic use, e.g. systems which list all folders and photos eg Lyn, Photomechanic, ACDsee. There are also Media Pro, and (someone offered) Lightroom. Michael has not an in-depth knowledge of all of these, but they have different degrees of flexibility in terms of editing and displaying photos, annotating them with keywords, or even attaching geo-tags to identify where they were taken. The most flexible is Media Pro (and by implication Lightroom). Prices range from £10 (Lyn) to £148 (Media Pro).

Members may be interested in a competition arranged by the UK distributors of Media Pro which Michael mentions in the Discussions section of this website.

Mark then explained how to manage a large no of photos, this time with the aid of iPhoto.
He has created 100GB of photos over 10 years.
If you alt-click on iPhoto, list of all iPhoto libraries on your computer is shown, and any one of them can be selected to open, or a new library created.
The process for moving photos between libraries is somewhat time consuming, in that one has to export the chosen photos to a folder, and then import photos into the new library
iPhoto Library Manager enables a more rapid switch between library views. You cannot edit photos but easily create and manage multiple iPhoto libraries, browse the images within multiple libraries, copy images between libraries, locate duplicate images within and across libraries, or merge libraries. The cost is $30 from fatcatsoftware.com

Mick then demonstrated some of the features of Keynote.
He explained how to use Keynote and its various features which can be used to vary the way in which the presentation appears, sometimes dramatically. This can however distract from the material which is being presented. Euan gave an example of Instant Alpha in Keynote, which can make selected colours of an image transparent to enhance dramatic contrast.
Having been introduced to this inviting playground, we then found ourselves somewhat thwarted by being advised against over-use of the opportunities which it provided!

SR

Comments

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Mark Ford said…

MacWorld has an interesting critical analysis of iPhoto followed by an equally interesting discussion. Time for a serious update?

Michael Corgan said…

I did not consider Lightroom, nor Aperture, since these are not primarily cataloguing and organising apps, but, I thought, more aimed at photo manipulation. I have, subsequent to Tuesday's presentation, taken a look at Lightroom, and this has reinforced my opinion. What Media Pro offers, which none of the other apps do (and this includes Lightroom and Aperture) is the ability to have individual catalogues of photographs classified by any criterion that you may wish to apply. For example, taken from 26 folders of 1000 photos each, from 7 different cameras and phones I have made one catalogue of Faces, and another of Flowers and yet another of our breed of dog. And within each catalogue I can sub-catalogue to several levels and create as many photos as I wish. I am using an early version of the app, and the current one has a limit of 128,000 photos per catalogue! Each individual photo can appear in any number of catalogues.The thumbnails can be seen, whether or not the original is in an online drive or not, but the original can only be seen, logically, when the drive containing it is online. Nuff said!

Michael Corgan said…

A small correction! I can create as many CATALOGUES as I want! And have been experimenting and got down to nine levels of sub-catalogue before I got bored! Well, before it became an unlikely requirement!

Derek Wright said…

I can see that we are going to have a good discussion on Saturday Michael - Aperture is very strong on the photo cataloguing and DAM side as it is in the editing side (perhaps even stronger) It supports the various cataloguing fields used commercially. The amateur user would probably not have exploited the cataloguing side of the application as it is quite a time consuming process (as it would be for all DAM products). It also has the advantage of playing nicely with Spotlight.

My view is that if you use Aperture you do not need an additional DAM product as you have the features already - you just have to RTFM <g>

Michael Corgan said…

I have replied to Derek in the Meetiongs reprt section. AS he says, it should be a good discussion. It will be greatly helped if you can bring along Aperture to show the way that it works.
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