Ok, I am a geek. I love good software, and I am always chasing the next “Big Thing”. In photography, the “Big Thing” over the last few years has been Digital Asset Management software. With the announcement from Apple of Aperture 3, and the impending arrival of Adobe Lightroom 3, I felt its about time that I updated my previous post on software for Photographers. So below I outline my views on some of the leading contenders, including Google Picasa, Apple iPhoto, and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In part 2, I will cover the more professional orientated offerings (at least in price) such as Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, and some more exotic candidates.

What Is Digital Asset Management?

Before we jump into the overviews, it’s probably not a bad idea to outline very very briefly what we mean by Digital Asset Management. From Wikipedia:

Digital asset management (DAM) consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. Digital photographs, animations, videos and music are samples of media asset management (a sub-category of DAM). Digital asset management systems includes computer software and/or hardware systems that aid in the process of digital asset management.

With the advent of Digital Cameras, (and now the emergence of Digital cameras shooting video), the number of original photo’s, edits, scans, etc. cluttering up our computers has exploded. Digital Asset Management processes and software products attempt to help us catalog, edit, rearrange, prune, locate and otherwise manage the thousands and thousands of digital photos and videos scattered around our hard disks. For a more indepth examination of Digital Asset Management, I can highly recommend The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers by Peter Krogh.

Initially, DAM software products restricted themselves to simply tracking the location of image files, and perhaps arranging them in virtual collections and albums. Now they offer so much more, and the line between them and Gorilla sized image editing packages such as Adobe Photoshop is blurring more and more. Even Scott Kelby, author of many many photoshop books, admits that he now spends 85% of his time in Adobe Lightroom! The two main criteria I used to select the following products were:

1. Software performs typical DAM tasks such as cataloging, rating, tagging, creation of virtual collections
2. Software performs some level of global image adjustment, such as exposure, white balance, or other tonal adjustments

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Many people are quiet happy to use the build in image previewing and tagging capabilities of Windows Vista or Windows 7. For those who want a bit more, Microsoft offers Windows Live Photo Gallery as a free download as part of the Windows Live suite. It brings enhanced photo browsing using the capture date embedded in the image, and people tagging. You can make some basic global adjustments to images such as sharpness, though these tend to be automatic with little tuning capability. Uploads to Flickr and Windows Live is supported natively, and Facebook using a plugin.

An interesting feature is support for Windows Live Sync which allows you to sync photo collections between computers.

Pro:

• Free
• Probably the easiest to use above directories of images
• If you are familar with Windows Vista or 7, you will be comfortable here

Con:

• RAW image support is limited to that provided by the underlying operating system
• No support for virtual collections, except by tags
• Limited searching
• Limited control over image adjustment

Details:

• Link: http://windowslive.com/Desktop/PhotoGallery
• Cost: Free
• Platforms: Windows
• Target: Entry level photographers with compact digital cameras who want a simple to use, yet familiar looking tool to manage their photos.

iPhoto

I must admit that I have never used this iPhoto from Apple in anger, apart from playing with it in the Sydney Apple Store. It is part of the iLife suite of creative products which normally comes preinstalled with any new Mac, and at a cost for those who wish to upgrade. iPhoto is targeted at the compact digital camera wielding home user who just wants to tweak jpeg photos. Some of its organisation tools are strong though,and include the ability to create various types of albums, and use tools such as the automatic face detection, and location tagging using GPS support. Like most applications designed by Apple, the interface looks wonderful, especially the full screen view.

Pro:

• Simple to use
• Upload to Flickr, Facebook, and MobileMe
• Create Slideshows, Photo Books, and other Print Creations

Con:

• Mac only
• RAW image support is limited to that provided by the underlying operating system
• Limited control over image adjustment

Details:

• Link: http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/
• Cost: US$62.95
• Platforms: Mac OSX
• Target: Entry level photographers with compact digital cameras
• Buy: iLife ‘09 (includes iPhoto)

Picasa

Picasa from Google has in my impression got nearly everything that someone who loves photos would want. Sure, you don’t have individual pixel editing al a Photoshop, or the fine grained RAW controls present in most of the pro level products outlined below, but it sure is fun! It now has RAW support, virtual albums, can sync automatically up to Google Picasa Web Albums, face taging, geo location, and the wonderful collage tool, for creating collages such as the one at the very toop of this post (great for desktop wallpapers!). And it is available for all the major platforms. It doesn’t natively support Flickr or Facebook to my knowledge, but it is still my go to program for anyone who needs photo management on a budget.

Pro:

• Free
• Available on most platforms
• Very quick
• Great fun

Con:

• Sometimes the interface can be a little cluttered and confusing, in that there are so many toggle switches, sliders, big buttons all over the screen.
• Do not let it index your entire hard disk – unless you want to wade through all sorts of cached image files for internet browsers, and other rubbish
• Limited control over image adjustment
• RAW support while good, is not a match for PRO products

Details:

• Link: http://picasa.google.com/
• Cost: Free
• Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux
• Target: Entry level, but some aspects are useful and fun for all photographers

Adobe Photoshop Elements

I was a long time Photoshop Elements user, initially for the cheap entry point into the pixel manipulating madness of photoshop. But you end up spending most of your time in the Elements Organiser… sorting, renaming, tagging, etc. that the powerful image editing tools tend to get overlooked. It packs a lot of power into a reasonable cheap package, including Adobe Camera RAW and support for hundreds of professional digital SLR’s. It does have it’s limitations though. When I was using it, it didn’t support layers, non destructive editing, advanced renaming, or automation using Photoshop Actions. It was winning an expensive set of Photoshop Actions that finally made me jump for Lightroom and Photoshop itself.

Pro:

• Very powerful image editing tools, 95% of what Photoshop offers for a fraction of the price
• Great organisational features, that were only matched with Adobe Lightroom appeared
• Superb RAW support through Adobe Camera RAW

Con:

• Seemed like there was a new version every year, with some useful features, but a lot of filler
• Enough of the tools from Photoshop to tempt you, before tripping you up with some gotchya

Details:

• Link: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/
• Cost: US$74.99 (Windows), US$85.49 (Mac OSX)
• Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX
• Buy: Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (Windows), Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 (Mac OSX)
• Target: Advanced Amateur, should be included with every DSLR

Related Posts:

1. Software for Beginner, Improver, and Advanced Photographers
2. The State Of The DAM 2 – Adobe Lightroom
3. Great Overview of 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop
4. Enhanced Photo Display Options For Your PC
5. Some Quick Links

Author: jbourke

Tags: Digital Asset Management, iPhoto, Photoshop Elements, Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery