[anders8848]

Hi there

I use an PowerBook G4 12"

My problem is that I handle a lot of pictures,that needs to be sorted out a fast way. that means in the first case I need speed to move up and down + delete the bad ones. Later I could go through the better ones in Photoshop but thats another thing.

When I was using my PC I loved to do this job in ACDSee and that program just rocks!!!
But now I am on my Mac and I have tried I View MediaPro 3, witch is a good one but I am not 100% happy and now I try out Adobe Lightroom.

The issue I have here is when I preview the pictures it takes about 2-3 sek to loose the pixels to an sharp picture on my screen... That's just not the way it's supposed to do, or...

Either my mac is to slow or I need to do some adjustments to Lightroom

Please help


My spec.

Machine Model: PowerBook6,8
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1.25 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz

[Sourbook]

If you just want an application for viewing, sorting and editing photos, I'd take a look at Photo Mechanic. It'll fly on any G4 and it integrates very well with Photoshop. It can't do adjustments and corrections like Lightroom, but its the best editing tool around.

[Veltliner]

If PhotoMechanic can't make adjustments to photos, it's not an editing tool, because those adjustments are called editing.

Lightroom is better to work on photos than PhotoShop. It has better image adjustment tools, and is a much more modern software. Compare also the color controls, where you have eight different color channels in Lightroom. And Lightroom is much, much, much faster to work with. There are several other good reasons not to do photo work on PhotoShop, but these are the main ones.

For pixel editing and layering, etc. that is still PhotoShop territory, but I hope Lightroom will take over those features in the long run. After all, it's called PhotoShop Lightroom.

A G4 is an outdated chip and will never run any modern software fast.

But Lightroom is definitely better to run on older computers than Aperture. If you are looking for a good deal, Amazon still sells it at its introductory price. And soon there will be the 1.1 upgrade, which attacks weaknesses in library management and sharpening.

[Sourbook]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

If PhotoMechanic can't make adjustments to photos, it's not an editing tool, because those adjustments are called editing.

As a veteran of 20-plus years as a graphic artist I've never known an editor who "worked" an image. They're in the business of reviewing and selecting the images, then ingesting them into the system for the art department to correct and modify. Photo Mechanic is the editing application of choice for newspapers, magazines and catalog houses. Or any business that handles large volumes of images.

Try before you buy. -> Photo Mechanic 4 - The Essence of Editing

[Veltliner]

But Sourbook said "editing", not "editor".

Originally Posted by Sourbook 

If you just want an application for viewing, sorting and editing photos, I'd take a look at Photo Mechanic. .

Photo editing means image adjustment.

Quote from Wikipedia:

"Photo editing is the application of image editing techniques to modifying photographs, by either analog or digital means. Uses, cultural impact and ethical concerns have made it a subject of interest beyond the technical process and skills involved. See Image editing for the technical processes involved."


The link you gave referred to the ad line of Photo Mechanic "Photo Mechanic - the essence of editing". Essence means a property or a group of properties, without which something would not be what it is.

We all know that ad texters can't be taken seriously. They always enlarge, distort, lie, or whatever undue alteration of facts there is to get their product into pole position. If Photo Mechanic cannot edit (alter) photos, but calls itself the essence of editing, it is ignoring the standard use of the expression "photo editing", which is the adjustment and alteration of a photo.

"Photo Mechanic" is possibly widely used in the newspaper biz, the ad writer obviously interpreted "editing" as choosing photos for publication.

The standard use of "to edit" is to prepare written material for publication, TV and radio material for broadcasting. There is always change involved. If an editor edits a text, he changes it, if a TV producer edits a news report, he makes cuts or adds to it.

Now if a newspaper editor selects or deselects photos for publication, he doesn't edit the photos, but the illustrative content of the newspaper.

Maybe press people call selecting photos editing. But all professional groups have certain words they can communicate with because all members of that group use it wrong in the same way. The problem is when they try to communicate to humans outside their particular professional world.

So "Photo Mechanic" is better called a photo organizer, as it can't edit photos.

[anders8848]

But Sourbook said "editing", not "editor".

Originally Posted by Sourbook
If you just want an application for viewing, sorting and editing photos, I'd take a look at Photo Mechanic. .
Photo editing means image adjustment.


Ok than we know that...

But back to Adobe Lightroom. How about cache, is there not an setting that might help to quicken the preview of the pictures??

[OreoCookie]

I know it's not what you've asked for, but how about trying Aperture? I've been using it for two months now and I can't think of any other app (besides TextMate) that I find equally astonishing. I was an avid iView Media Pro user before, I took a look at Lightroom, but Aperture just `feels' much, much better. With the touch of a button or two, I can change views as I wish, add this or that and make most of the common corrections (rotate by a slight angle, correct white balance, etc.).

Your machine will (honestly) barely be able to run it if your library is larger, but it is definitely the application (for me) to sort pictures. I would just download the trial version and give it a spin.

[Veltliner]

As you mention iView, image organization is clearly the strength of Aperture.

Lightroom has Adobe's excellent RAW converter and the image correction tools are just great.

As far as I have heard, Aperture is suited best for dual display arrangement, as tools often cover up parts of the image. I have also repeatedly heard that Aperture is too much for older macs - any G5 included except maybe the ex-high end machines. And you need a lot of RAM. And a very fast video card. Nothing for iMacs.

a few links for reviews>

http://www.thomas-fitzgerald.net/200...htroom-take-1/

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007...-aperture.html

http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2006/...re_vs_lig.html

http://www.lightroomreview.com/?gcli...FRYbYQodZgP-xQ

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/pub/...re.html?page=3

[Veltliner]

One thing I really like about Lightroom is that its workflow is so well organized. It was in beta for years, and developed with the input of photographers.

There is a (free) upgrade coming, dealing with library features (image organization), better sharpening tools, and some other things...

[OreoCookie]

That's not true. I run Aperture on a ProBook which is about as fast (if not a bit slower) than most Intel-based iMacs. It works just great (with 2 GB RAM). (If you are still using Safari 2 (which is a RAM hog), make sure to quit it before working in Aperture.) It also depends on what format you shoot in (I usually shoot high-quality jpgs, about 4-5 MB in size each, older pics are smaller jpgs). So as soon as you work with many RAW files, the RAM consumption is dominated by the huge image files and both apps are slowed down equally.

Since many tools are available as HUDs, they cover the image if you want them to (otherwise you just select the non-HUD variety). I just switch off unnecessary panels (e. g. projects or the viewer) with the touch of a button. However, it's more fun to work with two screens (which is also true for Lightroom or Photoshop), but it's not a necessity (right now, I don't have a second screen as I'm temporarily abroad and all I have is my 15" ProBook's screen). Depending on the task (image editing, sorting, tagging), in less than 5 seconds you have the workspace you want once you memorize some of the more prominent shortcuts.

The next one is a matter of taste, but I never got to like Lightroom's workflow. You'd have different tools in different modes and I ended up constantly changing modes. Aperture's philosophy is slightly different: everything is a tool that you can take out if you wish to do so. Instead of changing modes, you show/hide certain tools.

I'd just say try before you buy. And take some time, both apps are `pro apps', i. e. complicated and some of their functionality will only become apparent if you work with it for a little while.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

As far as I have heard, Aperture is suited best for dual display arrangement, as tools often cover up parts of the image.

False I use Aperture on a single display and while it (like photoshop) could benefit with a second display it works extremely well with a single display.

I have also repeatedly heard that Aperture is too much for older macs - any G5 included

Sounds like the telephone game where one person whispers one thing on person, it goes down the chain till finally the original message is almost completely lost.

Yes Aperture requires more horse power then Lightroom, but no it absolutely flies on a G5. I ran it on a G4 w/o any problems and it even worked decently on my Macbook (with intergrated graphics and all).

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

It also depends on what format you shoot in (I usually shoot high-quality jpgs, about 4-5 MB in size each, older pics are smaller jpgs). So as soon as you work with many RAW files, the RAM consumption is dominated by the huge image files and both apps are slowed down equally.

I exclusively work in RAW, and do not feel the software slowing down. Where it gets slower is, when I have lots of touch-ups on an image.

What I also like about Lightroom is the ability to convert proprietary RAW formats to DNG. It's a universal format without sidecar files, which is more likely to be read in ten or fifteen years than some camera's proprietary format, that will die with the camera (digital SLR models have a life span of maximal 3 to 4 years at the moment). Additionally, I found out DNG is a bit more economical. A 6 MB RAW file is only 5MB after conversion to DNG.

OreoCookie, I would recommend trying out RAW. Much better deatail, uncompressed (no color info thrown away by a short/winded onboard image processor, and, above all: far less play with adjusting images. RAW images can, for example, be adjusted to up to three openings in exposure, ...

[OreoCookie]

I was just referring to the RAM usage (where some say Aperture is a hog).

So far I haven't worked with RAWs for two reasons: (i) On my old camera, an Olympus E-20, the time to clear the buffer was proportional to file size, shooting in anything other than standard jpgs was out of the questions. My D80 doesn't really have that constraint. (ii) RAWs take a lot more additional time and space to develop. Since my D80 (and even the E-20) are usually dead-on exposure-wise or I bracketed shot anyway, it is rare that I wish/need to extract the last epsilon of information from an image.

However, I want to try out shooting RAWs next time I take out my camera, though. But overall, I found the D80 to be more than just a capable camera

[Veltliner]

The amount of time you need for working RAW (which doesn't come view/ready out of the camera most of the time) will decrease significantly when you get used to doing picture adjustments.

Additionally, you do not work every picture. You take one of a series, adjust it (basic it takes about 20 to 30 seconds) and then copy the settings to the rest of the series.

For real detail work and retouching it will take much more time - but I can tell you, it's really fun.

To have a digital negative (which RAW actually is) you will never see the loss of quality you see in JPEGS after each time you work on them. I very much like the DNG format, which not only saves you about 20% of storage space (this is a side effect), but has no sidecar files and is expected to be a standard format to be. (or one of the standard formats to be)

[OreoCookie]

Yeah, DNG is a very good format and it's regrettable that neither Canon nor Nikon seem inclined to switch to it. Some professional digibacks use DNG as their native format, though. To be honest, I think the biggest reason which holds me back is harddrive space: I'd like to keep all my pictures on my internal harddrive, so I'll eventually have to get a new one (currently I have a 100 GB drive which is filled to the brim).

[Veltliner]

Actually, almost no camera maker has a DNG option built in. But conversion from a proprietary RAW format to DNG can be done automatically on import.

Regarding hard drive space: you can save a lot of it, if you have a camera that shoots 6MP RAW (enough for most work) instead of 10MP. Digital photography also demands a good weeding out process. There are photographers that have a closet full of hard drives, because they never throw an image away as long as it is sharp and correctly exposed. But I think this is an inviation to a diluted photo library.

6MP files to DNG are 5MP, 200 per gigabyte. That's not bad.