TJOtala

Occasionally people ask me what software tools I use to manage my photos. This is another intriguing question as the answer is by definition highly individual and probably only relevant to my specific needs. Nevertheless, I can see how one could derive some benefit from the answer, so here goes.

I tend to favor power and flexibility over form and this reflects in my choice of tools. I like tools that are not necessarily the prettiest of the bunch, but they do get the job done and then some. More importantly, I have very low tolerance for slow tools, or tools that are too limiting in their features. This tends to lead me to tools that are highly powerful yet unnecessarily complicated for most typical users. Beware!

Photo Import

I use Breeze Systems Downloader Pro to import new images into my collection. It offers the best mix of powerful features and ease of use, and it fits well into my general workflow. I use it perform the four initial steps in my workflow:

1. Move the photos from the flash memory card onto appropriate folders on the hard drive
2. Rename each photo with a unique filename across my entire collection
3. Tag each photo with IPTC copyright information, plus embed the original filename in IPTC tags as well
4. If the photo is a JPEG file, perform lossless rotation based on EXIF orientation data provided by my camera
5. Mark the photo file as read-only. This is only a speed bump since most applications gladly offer help in working around that read-only attribute.
6. In the future, I may include an additional step to automatically produce a DNG file from any camera vendor specific RAW file formats

The software engineer in me likes the fact that you can extend Download Pro with plug-ins that anyone with the right tools can develop. I have thought about writing a plug-in that logs the incoming photos in a manifest-like text file, but I have yet to convince myself of any real need for such a tool.

Photo Management

I use photools.com IMatch for all my DAM needs. This is an incredibly powerful tool that allows me to define an immense set of tags or categories applied to each photo (more on this later). By far the best thing about IMatch is that it is scriptable: if it does not have a feature you need, you can write it as a script. In fact some of the basic features of the product such as a slideshow generation are rather elaborate scripts.

You may find it odd that now that I work for Adobe I don’t use any of the several Adobe solutions that address this need: Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Bridge, or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (still in beta as of writing). The simple answer is that none of them are either individually or together powerful enough to fulfill my quirky needs. I’ll work on changing that.

Photo Editing

I use Adobe Photoshop CS2 for all my photo editing needs. This is the Rolls Royce of photo editing tools. There are at least half dozen ways to do every conceivable editing operation in Photoshop, some of them downright unnatural. My only pet peeve about Photoshop is how awkward it is to edit actions, pre-recorded steps of operations.

Speaking of actions, here are some of mine, and you can find plenty more here.