PigPog

This post is part of a series of posts about switching to a Mac – here are links to all the posts:

• Switching to Mac Part 1: The Decision
• Switching to Mac Part 2: The Retail Experience
• Switching to Mac Part 3: The Unboxing
• Switching to Mac Part 4: In Use
• Switching to Mac Part 5: Finding a Photo Editor

I’ve used Windows PCs for a lot of years now – since the days of Windows 3.0. My first PC ran MS-DOS 4.01. The last time I bought a new computer, I considered the idea of getting a Mac, but ended up with a Tablet PC instead. That little tablet has done me quite nicely since, although I never really used it as a tablet any more. It was starting to show the strain, though, when processing RAW files from new 12-megapixel cameras.

We’d decided a while ago that when we sold our house, we’d both be buying new computers. I considered a Mac again then, but decided to spend the money on a new camera kit instead.

I started speccing up a new PC, and it started to get quite pricey to get the sort of machine I wanted. Still cheaper than a decent Mac, but not as cheap as I’d been hoping. On a wander around PC World, I came face-to-face with the 24″ iMac screen. Wow. Big, bright, clear. I started to consider spending the extra to get a Mac again.

• I’d tried out Adobe Lightroom, and liked it, but it didn’t really fit well for me. I wanted everything in one catalog, so I could search all my photos. That seemed a pretty basic thing to want to do, and Picasa could manage it just fine. Lightroom seemed to start having serious performance issues with a big catalog, though. My photos folder comes to just over 30,000 files. Aperture may be better, but I had no way of trying it out without having a Mac.
• I started doing a bit of searching around online to see what people thought was best for a photographer to use. Some people didn’t think it made a lot of difference, but a lot through a Mac was much better. There don’t seem to be many people who think Windows is actually better for photography.
• Big screens are expensive, especially if you want quality. I could find a PC much cheaper, but adding a good quality 24″ screen soon pushed the price way up.
• I’d changed phones recently, and was now using a Nokia. Before that, I used Windows Mobile, which was a bit limited when syncing with a Mac.
• They’re way prettier than almost any PC. When looking at PCs, I was considering a Sony Vaio, mainly because it looked so nice. If I was willing to pay extra for Sony’s design, Apple’s design was certainly worth a bit.

The one thing that was stopping me was the thought that if it turned out I really didn’t get on with MacOS, it would be a very expensive mistake. Then, I woke up at around 04:00 in the morning thinking “Bootcamp and Parallels! Idiot!”. Of course, if I didn’t get on with MacOS, I could buy a copy of Windows Vista, and use the Mac as a PC. OK, I’d have over-payed somewhat for a very pretty PC, but I’d still have a good quick PC with a great screen.

So, off we went to the Apple store in Exeter to hand over a whole lot of money. But that’s for Part 2.

I recently tried out Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom – an excellent RAW editor.  There are a couple of problems with it, though.  For one, it’s quite expensive.  If you’re a pro, and you need the best, you probably won’t care too much about that – it’s worth the money.  When you’re an amateur, though, you have to decide how much it’s worth spending on your hobby.  In either case, £200 spent on software is £200 you can’t put towards your next camera or lens.

The other problem is that I want to just point an app at my folder full of photos, and…  well, that’s it.  With Lightroom, I had to import each set of photos after adding them, which took quite a while.  Any changes, renamed folders, etc., it didn’t just find them – I had to import again, and delete old stuff.  Yes, there’s an option to get it to just sync all changes, but it had to be left overnight.  At least.  It seemed to be built around the idea of having one catalog file for each little set of photos you take.  That probably suits the way a lot of professionals work, but it doesn’t suit me.  I like to be able to search all of my images at once, and sometimes I just take one or two photos in a day, and don’t want to have to create a new catalog and run an import routine just to see how they turned out.

I think I’ll be sticking with Picasa for most of the basics now, with The GIMP for the more advanced editing. Lightroom is very impressive, but it just doesn’t suit me.