[jqp]

And for basic tagging in Windows check this out

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/0a03011c-c189-410d-a044-acd713bd94451033.mspx

[jqp]

Can anyone compare Adobe Bridge to Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Aperture?

My friend just got Adobe CS4 through her company - free!  CS4 has Bridge but not Lightroom or Aperture (to my knowledge)

[srb]

Here is an article you may want to read, comparing iPhoto to Windows Photo Gallery.
 
http://cybernetnews.com/cybernotes-iphoto-vs-windows-photo-gallery/
 
Steve

[jqp]

There are tons out there.  Picasa is good.  I like ACDSee.

Levi - it's probably time for me to upgrade my ACDSee trial version    I have ACDSee 32 v2.41 Can you help me out?

I want the current product that has at least this interface option:



Unfortunately I could not confirm this from their website...

[JohnR]

Can anyone compare Adobe Bridge to Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Aperture?

Apple Aperture - only available on Mac AFAIK. Lightroom and Aperture are much stronger in the image management department and have been designed specifically to improve working with a lot of (RAW) images. Both have trial downloads I believe.

[jqp]

I read that Aperture had problems with, say, over 10,000 photos in the 'library' and I assume Lightroom does not?

Also, anyone use GIMP for Windows - it is more of an editing program like Photoshop or even PaintShop Pro

[Levi]

I just checked ACDSee website and they currently have the Photo Manager 2009 for $49.

I see lots of them being hacked and used for free.  I paid for my copy.

[jqp]

I just checked ACDSee website and they currently have the Photo Manager 2009 for $49.

I see lots of them being hacked and used for free.  I paid for my copy.

Thanks I will pick that up - it will be nice not to have the trial version nag screen after all these years

[JohnR]

I read that Aperture had problems with, say, over 10,000 photos in the 'library' and I assume Lightroom does not?

Don't know, but I guess this is likely to be a potential issue with any program that wants to "see" all of your images at once. One of the reasons I prefer to manage mine using the file system and supporting scripts.

What I meant by working with lots of images is the processing of a shoot with a couple of hundred RAW files.

Also, anyone use GIMP for Windows - it is more of an editing program like Photoshop or even PaintShop Pro

It's an editing program. Doesn't support 16-bit images, though, which may or may not be an issue for you.

[jqp]

OK 16-bit images...remind me what we have with Nikon

[JohnR]

Hi, sorry for the delay... I think it's really more about how images are processed than the input source. Fundamentally, 16-bit mode will have less arithmetic quantization errors than 8-bit mode. So if there is heavy processing, 16-bit processing has a better chance of not creating visible artifacts than 8-bit processing.

I tried for a while but while I was able to produce differences in the histograms I wasn't able to produce an obvious visible difference. (Sounds familiar to an audiophile? )

[nathanm]

Adobe Lightroom is a database-type program where you add images to it whereas Bridge just displays the contents of folders without any centralized file.  Lightroom is for doing creative post-processing on the metadata level so you're not editing pixels directly as you are in Photoshop etc.  If you just want to sort through your photos then Bridge is what you'd want, although I suspect other software is faster for that.  Personally I find Bridge just bearable to use from a speed standpoint, although I am not using the most recent version.

In my view storing finished images in 16-bit mode is not quite as critical as starting off with RAW data and getting the image to look good.  If your highlights or shadows are a bit clipped you may be able to salvage them with a RAW file.  Once you correct that you won't see any difference in the end result because you can't even see or print a true 16-bit\channel image anyway.  It's an 8-bit world and the 16-bit image is more for future developments or having additional headroom as JohnR described.  In practice it seems to add more data than it's worth in my opinion.  Most images do not take advantage of 16-bits.

[jqp]

I just checked ACDSee website and they currently have the Photo Manager 2009 for $49.

I see lots of them being hacked and used for free.  I paid for my copy.

Mine was freeware from years ago, but it has a nag screen after a certain period of time. Obviously it has not nagged me enough.  But now I am looking at the 2009 version

[JoshK]

Newbie question.

I took a bunch of pictures over xmas break.   I want to upload a bunch of them to photobucket, but as is they are all 3504 x 2336 resolution.  Is there a nice program for batch compressing them (editing resolution, whatever) for web use?  Doing it one by one is painful.

[Doublej]

I believe Irfanview will do batch compression.

Gimp is a photo editing program as is Paint.Net. Both are very good I am told but quite daunting for a novice.

[jqp]

Newbie question.

I took a bunch of pictures over xmas break.   I want to upload a bunch of them to photobucket, but as is they are all 3504 x 2336 resolution.  Is there a nice program for batch compressing them (editing resolution, whatever) for web use?  Doing it one by one is painful.

My advice is to just bulk upload them as they are. Mine are even bigger than that and there are no issues doing this.

Photobucket resizes them for you for web use, also stores them in their full resolution so you can also see that on the web!. And its free for plenty of space. I got the professional package as many do for $30 - basically unlimited storage and other good features.

[JoshK]

I ended up using Picasa and uploaded to a google web album.   It did the resizing.  That is easy.