Lightroom or Aperture for a JPEG only user?

I was looking at either Lightroom or Aperture for a photo organizing software with some editing capabilities. ARe these programs really only for the RAW user and not for somebody who only uses JPEG? i only use JPEG by the way. thanks

I can only talk about LR although I think that Aperture is very similar.

You can certainly use LR for JPEGs - with very few excpetions, LR is exactly the saem whichever you use.

However, it may be overkill. How many shots do you take on a typical shoot/trip? How many shots do you take a month? What do you do with them? LR/Aperture are of most use when you have to deal with large numbers of images.

If you volumes are relatively small, somthing like Picasa may be adequate.
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Chris R

I guess more info from me would be good.

i'm mostly taking pictures of my family/kids, and small mix of all the other types (landscape, macro, etc), but family shots are the most often. I am by no means taking pictures to sell, just want to make mine look as good as they can. My numbers are pretty small from what i've read a lot of photographers take. in 2008, i took just over 2,000 pictures. of course not all are keepers, but i don't like to delete anything. most of my printing will be for family photo albums and to hang on our walls, and to send to grandparents/extended family.

I used a film SLR for a number of years using my dad's old minolta XG-M when he went to autofocus SLR, beautiful pics, then moved to point and shoot for a couple years, then this past year went back to an SLR with the Nikon D60. Great pictures right from the camera. But i just don't have the time for RAW, and my wife is not interested in taking the time to learn all the RAW developing. But i'd still like to do general edits, color, shadow/highlight, etc. Some pictures that i know i'll want to play will i'll take in RAW and just use ViewNX to develop. i have Photoshop CS from a while ago, but I am just a novice using it.

So if i could find an easy program that does both cataloging and the main edits, it would be great.

There is a 30 day free trial of Lightroom but you need to put some effort into learning what it will do to appreciate it. There are a lot of very good video tutorials available on the Adobe site and elsewhere. Raw processing is very easy in LR.

However, if you only take 2000 shots a year, your cataloging problems are not great and LR or Aperture may be overkill. You really need LR if you come back from a trip with thousands of shots!
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Chris R

Based upon your comments, I think Lightroom or Aperture are well beyond you needs. When you consider the cash outlay for either of those programs, unless you want very sophisticated results and will spend the time getting them, it seems a waste of money.

You might look at Google's Picassa. It is downloadable from the Google's website, and it is free. I have both Aperture on a Mac and Lightroom on a PC, but just for knowledge, i downloaded and tried Picasso on the PC. Amazing capability for a piece of free software. Certainly no replacement for Aperture or Lightroom, but nearly ideal for the general purpose user with needs like yours.

Weisgrau

The best camera to shoot with is the one you have with you.

http://www.gallery.me.com/weisgrau

mattcrout said:

I was looking at either Lightroom or Aperture for a photo organizing
software with some editing capabilities. ARe these programs really
only for the RAW user and not for somebody who only uses JPEG? i
only use JPEG by the way. thanks
--

Click to expand...

I would advise you to try PhotoScape, a plenty of facilities, free, excellent program for post processing. I use it for most of my jpg needs. For the rest I use Adobe Photoshop CS.

Eduardo

Its half the price of lightroom. It doesn't do some of the things that Light room excells at, but it actually does a better job at other things (such as retouching) than Light room does.

LR is primarily for efficiently processing and handling / keeping track of a large vollume of raw images. It is ideal for global changes, but not as good at editing on the pixel level.

Photoshop CS is for the most powerful tools for editing photos, both globally and at the pixel level.

Photoshop elements isn't as strong as either of the above, but gives a nice ballance of both at a reasonable price.

You have CS, so Lr is a good option. You can use Lr for Jpeg to correct photographing things (exposure, WB, dodging& burning etc..) and if you need manipulate further (extract, clone..background replacement) Lr has option to edit with external editor like Cs and bounce back to LR.
I used LR the most with little edit in CS2
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'Photography is about feel of view, not field of view'
OOPSOS
D80-NIKKOR18-200VR, SIGMA 10-20, NIKKOR 50 1.8 D,
TAMRON 90, SB800

Yes, I think you should look at googles free picasa software. 2000 images is not many, It's easy to use and well free so worth a try!
--
Medialook Images
Professional photography by Chris Semple
http://www.medialook.co.uk

All good advice.

i've had picassa for a couple weeks, but doesn't seem very heavy or precise on the editing side of things. I guess in total, i have about 8,000 pictures from the last couple years. Baby number 2 will be coming any day now, so i'm guessing my picture count may go up quickly. Being a Grad Student in seattle, our school gets pretty good discounts on Adobe products. so i can get lightroom for under $100. (But you also have to sign a form and do some other stuff to prove that you are the only person using it, and not selling to somebody else). so it's not the cost i'm worried about.

I've looked at a couple video podcast from lightroom and aperture tutorials, so have a basic idea. but looks like they all use raw, so they may be more then what i need.

you have mentioned several questions. storage sorting and editing.

storage-try to get and maintainage some sort of backup system for your images. you definately need more thani copy of an image, and NOT on the same hard drive.

editing- i use pe6 and rarely cs2. i tend to start in pe6 then if needed go to cs2. like you i shoot jpeg all the time. the one thing i do is convert the format to tiffs from the jpeg as soon as i edit. i never touch the original jpeg after the edit all work is done off the the tiff. the original jpeg is put into a holdall folder and burned to a dvd when the tosl exceeds 4.1gb. how much editing software you need depends on what quality image you are supplying to the pc. i put the effort into the field work so that the pping work in the pc is at the absolute minamum. i do sharpen ALL images in the pp however.

for sorting-i heavily recommend that you sort and cull out your images as you bring them to the pc. if you do not eventually you will hjave a thousands of images that you can do nothing with. with a very many that should really have been deleted originally. remember--YOU WILL BE TAKING MORE PICTURES. so my suggestion is to be utterly ruthless rpt ruthless rpt ruthless in your culling out process.

i do not use a program for sorting my images. i simply made up my own. the cost was cheap too. after my sorting method is in operation i find that i have no problem finding any of then images that i want. the storage into folder can be done with any process that makes sense to you. after all, you are the one who ks going to find them with your method. see below.

there is now 44 main folders in the Mypics(the main pictures folder) folder.

the first few are animals aquarium astronomy boat butterflys cars christmas clouds commercial dng fall fireworks flowers garysoffice, etc. according to the folder properties there is a total of 148 folders which includes the 44 main folders. in the travel folder there are 26 subfolders, which is every trip the wife and i have been on. the last folders are pistons2004 places raw sbc scan3 scan4 sunriseset things tiff travel turkeyday winter.

in the people folder there are 2 subfolders and the rest of the pics are in order but in the folder. in panorama there are 13 subfolders which are all the panos that i have made(this could be more than 1 pano in each folder they are grouped by location and date). in the hdr folder there are 5 subfolders which like my panos by location each has more than 1 pano in it. note in the pano and hdr folders also have the pic files that the panos and hdrs are made from.

i made the folders based on how I wanted them organized, what i would look for if i wanted to find a certain picture. and the VERY MOST IMPORTANT, I STARTED THE FOLDERS WHEN I WENT TO DIGITAL. i did not have 5000 shots then decided to put them in folders. there is currently 120gb and 5178image files.

note that this includes a lot of slides that i have scanned to digital and are quite large. my folder names are the way i organize them and want to find them later. if i would go to joe blow junk yard and shoot flowers. i would then make a folder in the main flower folder and label it joe blow junk yard. i would not make a junk yard folder because that is not what i shot, i shot flowers. i will be going the u of michigan matthai botanical gardens when it warms up and the flowers bloom. so there will be a folder in the flowers folder called matthai botanical gardens. it will contain what ever i shot there.

the big thing with my folders is that it is up and running now. i do not have to start with 5000 or 15000 pics and decide where to put them. also i never rpt never rpt never set them up by date, that is month yr, i cannot imagine trying to look for them that way. i would be in a position that i would want a certain pic of my sisterinlaw taken 3 yrs and 2 months ago so i would have to recall which date i took the pic. no thanks, i am not that good.

with my system i would simply go to mypics/peoplep/jennifer and every shot i ever took is there of her.

i am currently not making any new main folders. just the subfolders once in awhile. i seem to have all the folder catagories i need, it is just a matter of putting the pics in them when i am done with them.

i also use the rightclick/copyhere a lot now. that is when i know i am done except for printing by me or an online outfit i just copy them to correct folders then delete when the prints are made.

all my original jpegs and digital scans of slides(which are really tiffs of 131mb each) are in the jpeg folder that has subfolders each limited to about 4.1 or 4.2gb in size so they fit on a dvd. these i have burned as they reach the 4.2gb size.

my intent is to go into the people folder and make subfolders of different people so i can find them easier.

a big NOTE- when i shoot and bring them to the computer i do a sort. i am getting 95% or better correct exposure and wb. the sort is based on composition. since i could and will have doubles triples and quads etc of the same scene- this could be different lenses or different zoom amounts vertical vs landscape or i could have moved my shooting position slightly. in any event i decide what i want to keep and delete the rest(which will probably be fine in terms of exposure and wb), but i am not going to keep them just for the heck of it and take up hdr drv space. The first sort is ruthless rpt ruthless. I am always going to have more pics in the future; I absolutely do not have to keep everyone for posterity. i shoot jpegs. the jpeg is pped if needed than i save it as tiff, the original untouched jpeg goes into my jpeg folder in a subfolder(they are limited to 4.2gb because of dvd size). any future work is done off the tiff including making a jpeg for the web or sending to be printed.

when i do my backup of the my pics folder in the primary pic ext hdr drv i just right click and drag to the second ext hdr drv and copy here, all 120gb of folder is image copied. i also have another 3rd copy on another ext hdr drv. the copy there is based the same way. i have never had a problem in 4yrs+ of digital pics. takes about 2 1/2 hrs to make a copy. i can and do use the pc for other uses during the copy process, but not major work.

as i shoot new stuff i sort and/or make any needed folders so there is never a backup of images. on my c drv is a folder called pics with 25 subfolders called pic1 pic2 etc they are my current holding folders for what has been shot just recently or that i am working on for some reason. the pics folder is also backed up to other ext hdr drvs. takes 2-5 minutes. i do the backup if a add/change/remove anything from the c drv pics folder.

On my desktop is a folder labels Pics in it are 25 subfolders. named pic1 pic2 etc. these are my receiving folders coming in from the field. I do my work there. When finished they are then right click and dragged to the main group of 44 folders on my ext drv.
if you have questions, ask. gary