Saturday, August 1, 2015

Photo Processing Software - The End of iPhoto

So, after over a decade of using Apple’s iPhoto application for all of my photos, they’re forcing me to switch.  They’re discontinuing it in favor of their new app, named Photos.

I tried Photos a couple of times and it’s just bug-ridden garbage.  It’s slow, it crashes, it fails to import photos from my cameras, and it messes up the metadata on my photos (swapping east and west in geolocation data, making half my photos display as taken in Osh, Kyrgyzstan (as far east of the prime meridian as New York City is west)), and in the end, wouldn’t upload to any service it has plug-ins for.  No errors, it just failed to do it.

I tried using the free, open source app, Darktable, but it wasn’t very intuitive in terms of managing a large collection and breaking it down into albums and things like that.  And it didn’t let me fix the metadata that Photos screwed up on a batch of photos.  Still, if you want a laugh, go to the download page and read their instructions for setting it up under Windows…

Now, with a couple of recommendations from other photographers, I’m trying out Adobe Lightroom.  It’s not free, after the 30 day trial it’ll be $10 a month.  And, presumably I'd be at their mercy if they feel like raising the price.

So far it’s not too bad to use.  It takes more mouse clicks to do some tasks, like write titles and captions for photos, than iPhoto requires.  And deleting rejects is slow, requiring both keyboard and mouse, compared to iPhoto with just the keyboard.  Making adjustments to exposure settings in photos is a lot easier in Lightroom, or at least, a lot easier to get good results without being an expert.

The biggest issue I see so far with Lightroom is that it uploads the photo titles I type, and not the descriptions…  With iPhoto, it does both for Flickr.

So, I'll see how it goes...

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