Ken Seals was nice enough to alert me to a $119.00 special on Amazon for Adobe Lightroom last month. I received it the other day and upgraded to version 3.4 and decided to hit a dead stop. My normal setup has been to bring jpeg fine images into iphoto. I right click my mac mouse and send them to my preferred external editor, Photoshop CS3.
With Lightroom in the chain, I guess I will be saying goodbye to iphoto. This old dog will have to learn new tricks. I have had limited experience shooting and processing RAW. I know that it will require a lot more memory. I wonder if the advantages will be worth it for me? Or do I need to necessarily shoot in RAW? Are there any advantages in shooting in Nikon's RAW/JPEG combo?
Should I import my 28,000 iphoto library en masse or selectively import my best work into lightroom? Ken is coming over monday and going to help tutor me and set me up.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't worry about technical expertise terribly if I were you. Your work is very good and it reflects a personal approach to image making and that is the most precious thing.
There is no great harm in knowing about the scientific side but caring too much can harm the work. Your intuitive approach is, in my opinion, the right way to go at it. I know a lot of techno-babble but when I am shooting I go into an intuitive mode as much as possible. That may be why my small camera work is usually better than my large format work.
Likewise with iPhoto. It really is a good program and if it works for you I would tend to keep using it. However if cataloging your work is becoming a problem that might force you to shift over to other programs. IPhoto insists that you keep the images in its libraries. That is fine for casual users but might be a problem if you have a slew of images.
Also, cataloging is a very personal thing and if you feel you should keep everything you can certainly do that. My preference is to toss the bad stuff. I often make bad images by repeating mistakes that I "know better" but still do anyway. I toss that stuff as i know it can't be saved, but that is me, not you.
Keep moving in the way you are. You are onto something and it is worth preserving despite the well intended advice of others.
jh
Good comments by jh. I agree.
ReplyDeleteI am a MAC user also. I download to iPhoto and for those I want to edit, I move them in to Photoshop CS5. I make a working copy, with layers, and when edited, I move the entire file in to it's own folder on the desktop. If I want to print one, I move the file to a print folder, flatten the image, re-size and then print. I then save the work file in the WRK folder and the print file in the print folder. I don't know anything about Light Room, but, I do think that with the ease of making folders on the MAC, it is a good way to store and organize photos, outside of iPhoto.
I have been shooting in RAW the past few months and the RAW processing is pretty easy and, I think, it does make a difference in your ability to make quality images.
The preceding opinions are make by a rank amateur!! Use at your own risk!!!