Canon Digital vs. iPhoto?

[Javair]

Yep. I have a Mac with latest OS X.

I recently bought a Canon digital A95, and will see if it meets my needs for a while.

Is the "Canon Digital Camera" software any better than iPhoto?

I suppose I would only use either for stroage and organization. I am a Photoshop hound; love the program, and usually adjust every single picture that I take with Photoshop. So, in that case...?

[George Riehm]

Yep. I have a Mac with latest OS X.

I recently bought a Canon digital A95, and will see if it meets my needs for a while.

Is the "Canon Digital Camera" software any better than iPhoto?

I suppose I would only use either for stroage and organization. I am a Photoshop hound; love the program, and usually adjust every single picture that I take with Photoshop. So, in that case...?

You should be good to go...

[ZERO-D]

Although I use the Mac every day, I HATE iPHOTO. If you actually use it, which is hard not too being that it grabs every chance possible to collect any images on installed cameras/storage etc. It can get unwieldy fast. I have a couple hundred 3.3Mp mostly .tif or highest quality .jpg images in there and it's a dog. So I decided to split the library up into manageable albums or chunks. No luck! You can do this, but they are in addition to the ONE BIG HOG GALLERY that you can't kill or train to give up the gluttony. Worst of all though, is that iPHOTO stores your photos away in a strange series of numbered folders that really give you no help in finding an image. I would assume there is SOME way to manage disk files from iPHOTO but I haven't found it yet.

What I do use for HUGE, easily workable, image collections is iVIEW MEDIA. It comes with a lot of CD Burner packages like ROXIO TOAST or can be bought cheaply online (they have a trial too, and on last check did not EXPIRE as some do). iVIEW can render a movie of all pics selected, make web galleries fast, browse most every kind of media file (movies, sounds, vector graphics, raster graphics, pdf, text, etc. One way to do it is to name each folder coming off camera in a binary numeric fashion (01, 02, 03...10, 11, 12...) Then drag these to one directory after transfer. THEN, drag your new directories of pics, etc, onto iVIEW, wait a few and you can browse away really fast. Make thumbnails HUGE, launch in creator, manage disk files by copy, move, etc, mark files with colors, hide selected & the reverse, and determine all kinds of fields of info to display with pix or not.
If you have a number of images this is a great way to keep track and manage because you can open unlimited catalog files which can copy amongst each other. Also the full screen movie mode is great for watching a bunch of clips in succession or your photos, or anything it can import.Voice anotation is also supported and could be very helpful for file notes and catalog notes as a whole.

[Ben Miller]

Although I use the Mac every day, I HATE iPHOTO.

If you're not using the current version of iPhoto (4.0.3) you might consider upgrading. It made a BIG jump in speed going from 2.x to 4. You have to pay for the upgrade, unfortunately, but in this case it's definitely worth it. Since you're happy with iView there's no real reason to switch back to iPhoto, but I wanted people to know that it's not a TOTAL dog.

It's also possible to tell it NOT to start up automatically when a camera is connected. (I don't remember how right now, but it's definitely doable.)

[ZERO-D]

Too bad it costs money, but hey I understand. I guess that explains why it hasn't been bugging me to download it through software update. And yes upon check I'm on 2.01. Anyway, I suppose there's a right app for everybody. It's just about finding yours with the limited time left in a day for this kind of task. Does the iPHOTO 4 still do the magical mystery pile of folders in the photo directory? Seems to me that a folder for each transfer would be quite sufficient, maybe code named by date or even ask for a name. I feel really disconnected from my files like that. If you don't use the tool, your file is basically lost unless you want to use the find function. I'm still an Apple menu freak and want to be able to right click a folder or drive on the dock and get anywhere in a few moves. I get seriously gummed up in the works with the 2.01 file storing scheme. Anyway, bla, who cares. Just giving a heads up to folks who look for things like I do and want to avoid the hassle. Right now I have two libraries just for the sake of findability. I let iPHOTO grab images becuase it's easy sometimes, but then I have to dump the WHOLE IMAGES FOLDER on iVIEW (most of the time it's smart enough to only grab new images, but not always) and select all and move to new folder to get rid of all those directories in iPHOTO for actual work etc.

[John_Reed]

Does the iPHOTO 4 still do the magical mystery pile of folders in the photo directory?I've been using iPhoto since its beginning, and I can tell you that iPhoto4 is a great improvement over earlier versions, in speed and stability. As for the "magical mystery pile of folders," I don't know that it's changed in that respect. Actually, it's never seemed like a mystery to me. Basically, iPhoto has always created folders and sorted incoming photos by date. So, for example, there's a "2004" folder containing folders "01" through "10" right now, one for each month so far this year, and within the "10" folder (for this month), there's a folder numbered for each day of the month on which I shot photos (it sorts photos by their creation dates). Seems pretty straightforward to me, but your impressions may vary. If you want to make a new directory, say for 2005, for example, hold down the "option" key when you're starting it up, and iPhoto will ask you for the new directory's name. If you later want to open up any previous directory, again hold the "option" key on startup, and it will allow you to browse to the previous directory.

[Rhys]

I've been using iPhoto since its beginning, and I can tell you that iPhoto4 is a great improvement over earlier versions, in speed and stability. As for the "magical mystery pile of folders," I don't know that it's changed in that respect. Actually, it's never seemed like a mystery to me. Basically, iPhoto has always created folders and sorted incoming photos by date. So, for example, there's a "2004" folder containing folders "01" through "10" right now, one for each month so far this year, and within the "10" folder (for this month), there's a folder numbered for each day of the month on which I shot photos (it sorts photos by their creation dates). Seems pretty straightforward to me, but your impressions may vary. If you want to make a new directory, say for 2005, for example, hold down the "option" key when you're starting it up, and iPhoto will ask you for the new directory's name. If you later want to open up any previous directory, again hold the "option" key on startup, and it will allow you to browse to the previous directory.

This sounds like the way I organise my folders. I have folders named 2004-10-25 etc. Windows sorts the folder names from left to right. Inside each folder I have the photos left with the numbers the camera gave them. I could put an index but never do. It works just fine as it is.

[ZERO-D]

That's how connected to dates my thinking is! This sounds stupid now but I couldn't figure out what all those numbers were for! I think it was the 1901 folder that the damn thing created first that threw me. But hell I could have been alive with a digital camera back then, who knows? Not me. They always said "forget the dates, remember the concepts" in college. Maybe I took it too far. I suppose if you're normal and are actually aware that one day follows another this should work ok for you. As long as you're prepaired to be informed of your existence over a century ago! Thanks for pulling my head out of my wazoo on that one! Another one that screws ME up is in the new BROWSE mode in Photoshop CS where you see thumbnails of the folder you're in. I can't find what I'm looking for when I have a zillion folders. I'm dumb and need to see a bunch at once. I sucked at concentration too. Maybe I should keep my monster from the black lagoon reality under wraps, I doubt there's anybody out there who operates in a similar manner. So what good could I do? Ain't that the question... Anyway, have any neat pics on these boards? I don't mean XXX, I mean the ones here. 2004/10/14 or so...???

[Aoide]

It's also possible to tell it (iPhoto) NOT to start up automatically when a camera is connected. (I don't remember how right now, but it's definitely doable.)

You can do it by going into the Image Capture preferences. Under camera you can select which program you would like to start up when you connect a camera or you can choose to have no program start up at all.