Top software for working with pictures

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SpeedyVV

Supreme [H]ardness
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Hey, now that I got the gear, besides the obvious Photoshop, what other software do you guys use for photography?

Right now for example, I am looking for a tool that will help me create some sort of database of pictures and all the extended properties captured with each picture.
 
If you're looking for tagging and organization, then Lightroom is probably your best bet.

If I'm doing serious portrait work for clients then I basically work in Capture One => Photoshop. This workflow is perfect for low volume high quality work.

I use Lightroom for basically everything else. Just grinding through general photography, stuff from the Street Work Project, etc. I do use Lightroom for tagging occasionally, but I also use Adobe Bridge for the same purpose. If you want a searchable Database and you want to spend the time to tag everything then Lightroom is probably the best option. It also essentially does everything that Photoshop RAW does.
 
Lightroom. Just do it. It combines a Library module where you sort, rate, tag, and view your entire body or work at once, then it has a Develop module where you touch up exposure, color balance, and even remove specs and blemishes from the image. And it also has publishing modules for printing & posting to the web. It's really an all-in-one photo processing work-horse of a program that makes it a breeze to go through hundreds or thousands of images at a time.

90+% of my work-flow is all in lightroom, then very rarely I will need to do some serious touch-up work, painting, combining photos, or other design type work, and photoshop is needed for the heavy lifting stuff.

For pure photography work, all you need is Lightroom. It's a great program.
 
OMG, just downloaded a trial of Lightroom. It is amazing from the quick look I gave it.

Thanks a bunch for the recommendation.

Any other software or applications you guys use?
 
I use a ton of different stuff depending on what I'm trying to accomplish, but to start it's probably not going to be of first level importance.

As mentioned before, for serious portrait work I use:
Phase One Capture One - for RAW conversion. I also use it to pick selects, organize physical files etc. The RAW conversion step is of first order importance. Capture One gets by far the best skin tones and has some of the best color correction tools of any RAW conversion software. It's not always necessary though as not everything requires that level of scrutiny.
Adobe Photoshop - for Retouching and Color Grading amongst other things.

For all other work I use:
Adobe Lightroom - My general purpose processing tools for general photography, street photography, and other things that I don't want to spend massive amounts of time on. Capture One => Photoshop is for low volume, high quality work. Lightroom generally is the opposite, although I'm finally finding the tools I need to get images processed nicely. It's a strong tool if you know how to use it. I just clearly spent more time in PS than LS to find a lot of this stuff out until recently.
Adobe Bridge - if I want to do some organizing or mass tagging. However these functions are also available in Lightroom so I should probably get used to doing all of my management through less pieces of software. Bridge is not critical. I just haven't fully transitioned my workflow. It is useful if you do use multiple Adobe programs, as it is designed to be the middleware between all of them.
camera bits Photo Mechanic - This is what I use if I'm trying to dig through 1000's of RAW files from a single shoot. I don't use it often as most of the time I don't have more than 600-800 from a single shoot, but sometimes if you need expediency with viewing a lot of RAW files in order to pick selects, there isn't a better program. If I have less than 800 or so, I'll just use Capture One to pick selects as well as do the RAW conversion. Photo Mechanic is really a special case piece of software for me.
Photomatix Pro - which is only useful if you're going to do HDR work for landscapes. I used to commonly use this, but I've stepped away from doing landscape/architecture work.

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tl;dr - Stick to Lightroom for now. You don't need to spend a bunch of money on software. LS should carry you as far as you need to go for now. If in the future you need heavier software, then maybe add Photoshop. Then if you want super mega heavy software, then add Capture One. But generally both of those pieces of software aren't necessary unless you're trying to accomplish something very specific with them.
 
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sounds good. Mind you I will likely use Photoshop to fix some of my fav shoots.

What about publishing? i.e. Do you use Wordpress or something like that to show your work?
 
SpeedyVV said:
sounds good. Mind you I will likely use Photoshop to fix some of my fav shoots.
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It all depends on what you want and need to do. Lightroom has become a lot better as of late. Even allowing for basic clean-up and clone stamping. LR may even get to the point of having layers. Layers is probably the biggest reason to use Photoshop over LS, and of course a multitude of cleaning tools that just seem to work better. It's not really possible to D&B effectively in LR. But if all you want is to be able to tone, color grade, get rid of obvious blemishes, maybe work with gradients, file manage, and tag then LR does everything you need. Photoshop has access to layers, blending modes, D&B, frequency separation, multiple tools to color grade/color correct, multiple tools to tone, more advanced ways to B&W.

Basically in it's "more advanced-ness" it just has more tools to develop specific looks in addition to better tools to cleanup.

Capture One has also added layer functionality, but I have to say Capture One's implementation of layers is currently a headache. Who knows, maybe in the next revision.


SpeedyVV said:
What about publishing? i.e. Do you use Wordpress or something like that to show your work?
Click to expand...

My website is currently on hiatus.
http://www.jeremiahbostwick.com/

Right now I'm using a Tumblr account to work as my website. Which is working in a pinch to at least have something there. So I obviously paid for my domain name, but with Tumblr I'm not having to pay for a theme or hosting.

I did have a Wordpress site before, but it was getting old and clunky. I will more than likely move to it again after digging through tons of themes. I have EXTREMELY specific traits that I want my site to have. Eventually I WILL have to pay someone or do a TFP for a custom theme. However, this is my chosen profession/career, so if this is just something casual for you, I wouldn't bother.

You'll also note that the Street Work Project was published via Tumblr. Tumblr gives you the option to make multiple sites for different things and then through tagging get other people to see your work. So it's actually a really great social networking site for artists in general. Whether visual or otherwise.

I'm also on every social network known to man.
500px
Instagram
Google+
Facebook
Twitter
Behance

All of the above have at least some of my work up on it. I am also on UltraVisual, Snapchat, Vine, Youtube, Vimeo, and some other more niche stuff but I haven't done anything with those accounts.

I'm on all of these social networks because of necessity. I'm largely an unknown photographer and I have to get myself out there. Once again, if this is casual, then I wouldn't bother to publish at this level. If your goal is eventually to go full-time, then I would publish everywhere early and often.
 
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Thanks, will definitely look into Tumblr.

Really appreciate your time and advice. unlike some, you actually took the time to narrow down what I wanted to do, so the advice so far has been bang on.

BTW, I have zero desire of going serious or full-time.

Publishing, is more of the new photo albums of old, where I plan on boring my friends and family into going trough ;)

But I like telling stories, real or fake, so I would like a publish workflow that facilitates that.
 
SpeedyVV said:
Thanks, will definitely look into Tumblr.

Really appreciate your time and advice. unlike some, you actually took the time to narrow down what I wanted to do, so the advice so far has been bang on.
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You're welcome. I am a seriously technical person who studies a lot, and works as much as he can.
I've been in the industry a short time, but I've made it my business to read as much info as possible. But the real pleasure is passing it on.


SpeedyVV said:
BTW, I have zero desire of going serious or full-time.

Publishing, is more of the new photo albums of old, where I plan on boring my friends and family into going trough ;)
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That's fine. Some amazing artists aren't full time either. The goal of course is to produce the work that you want to do. I had a dream of being able to play the guitar. The goal was to be able to hear the music I heard in my head. I never reached that point, but I'm working on being able to do something analogous in photography.

As far as showing stuff to family: something you also may want to check out is Google+'s automatic slide shows. "Auto-awesome" I think?


SpeedyVV said:
But I like telling stories, real or fake, so I would like a publish workflow that facilitates that.
Click to expand...

I believe at this point that websites are of secondary importance in comparison with social media, even for working photographers.

Websites just have a lot of downs. Even with a prebuilt Wordpress site, it takes a lot of time to manage. I used to spend about 3 hours a day on the Street Work Project. About an hour+/- shooting, another hour doing selections and retouches, and another listing/tagging/scheduling, on Tumblr. If I had to spend even more time messing with a Wordpress site it wouldn't have gotten done.

Additionally Tumblr has a built in audience. Through tagging I can get people to see my work that would never see my website. Websites require searches to find. Social media doesn't.

Tumblr and other social networking sites also have things to help publish. Wordpress is automated as well, but it really needs the right themes and the right plugins. It's getting better all the time, but it's definitely not a turn key solution. That said, I do think it's the best CMS for websites available now.

For photographers, I think the best platforms are:
500px
Tumblr
Instagram
Google+

Each has a difference niche it fulfills. Behance I think is going to become stronger as time goes on for commercial work.
 
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) -- Free, Open Source, Multi-platform, and above all else better than Adobe Photoshop
 
erek said:
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) -- Free, Open Source, Multi-platform, and above all else better than Adobe Photoshop
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Oh wow, didn't know GIMP was still around. I haven't touched it in like 10+ years, and even then it was at least 2-3 versions of Photoshop behind. The general interface always felt like it was made by programmers for programmers, people who have no idea how the workflow and interface needs to work for designers and photographers to actually work in the program on a full-time basis. I'll have to play around with it a little and see how it runs these days. With the huge updates in the last few versions of PS to the healing brush, built-in image compositing, and all the highly advanced non-destructive layer filtering options like curves and color-balance, etc, I can't imagine an open-source app keeping up very well.

But the way Adobe is going lately with the cloud rental payment scheme that I hate so much, I may be looking to jump ship from Adobe within the next few years. Good to know there's still some competition out there.
 
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