Mac and PC Image Cataloging Apps

If you have a digital camera you have asked yourself this question: Is there a better way to organize and view my digital photos and movies than what I am doing now?

There is no single application that is a universal, everything but the kitchen sink image cataloging/editing app. Sure, most image cataloging apps give you some lightweight image editing tools, but they’re no more suited to doing any image heavy lifting than Photoshop is to managing your image library. You NEED two applications to handle your images; one for organization, and one for editing.

I’m a Mac user, but most of these tools have Windows versions, so with the exception of Aperture and iPhoto my Mac user impressions of the software should apply to the PC as well.

For a long time I used the proprietary image software provided by my camera maker, in my case Fuji. It’s a nasty little piece of work, but it did what I wanted out of my image cataloging app better than the competition. My recent upgrade from a Power PC to Intel Mac made the Fuji software even shoddier than it had been, and it forced me to look at the alternatives again.

So here is the fruit of my quest for the perfect image cataloging application. I’ll let a little spoiler slip: there still is no perfect solution as far as I’m concerned, but the options have improved quite a bit since the last time I compared them.

As a home user I have no pretenses about being a professional photographer. I take family pictures. My camera also does movies, so I use it for movie clips as well. I could care less about the image editing ability of my cataloging app because I use an image editor, as should you. I do want my image cataloger to recognize and handle movie files, because if I have to throw another app into this mix it makes it too easy to forget to import my movies separately, and I’ll end up losing memories.

For this reason, I am excluding Apple’s Aperture and Adobe Lightroom. Both of these programs are intended for professional photographers, or at least people who like to fancy themselves professional photographers. Neither handles movies. Aperture is a nice solution for the Mac user that wants more (and yet at the same time less) than what iPhoto offers, and Lightroom is great for the user that already has the other Adobe apps and wants something for browsing folders and applying batch level corrections and enhancements.

The losers   
• Kodak Easyshare While Easyshare isn’t really bad as a cataloging app, it doesn’t excel in any particular area. The look of the interface is somewhat dated and not the most intuitive. The way it takes over the screen when it plays a movie clip or displays a single image is a deal breaker. Kodak, you really need to add a window view mode to Easyshare. This is a poor man’s iPhoto. A very poor man’s iPhoto.


Kodak Easyshare

 

• Nikon ViewNX Of all the proprietary digital camera and imaging apps, this is the nicest. It’s still behind the rest of the pack though. Kudos to Nikon for making this app Intel native, and with some work ViewNX could be a contender. Movies are handled properly, within the application window. My only real big issue, which is a deal breaker for me, is the thumbnail view section. You’re limited to a single strip. You can resize the thumbs, but you can’t display more than one row of thumbnails. This is the one issue keeping this app out of the winners bracket.


Nikon ViewNX

The winners   
• Adobe Bridge Adobe Bridge gets installed with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. It is Adobe’s image browser, and integrates nicely with their Photoshop family of image editors. Is it as intuitive as iPhoto? No. Does it offer just about everything you need from your image cataloging app? Yes. This is primarily an interface issue. I could use Bridge with no major gripes if no other solution existed.


Adobe Bridge

 

• Picasa The Mac version of Picasa was released in January. It needs work, as it creates a lot of console log messages and uses an insane amount of cpu, but I’m sure they will sort these issues out.Current issues with the Mac beta aside, this is one fine image cataloging application. I am not crazy about the interface, from a strictly aesthetic perspective, but it does pretty much everything the average person will ever need from their image cataloging app. Double bonus points if you are a Picasa subscriber, and Picasa also makes it easy to upload your movies to Youtube. A very nice application, and if you’re a Windows user, my recommendation.


Google Picasa

 

• and the winner is…
  

  iPhoto

  Surprised? I am. I wasn’t too crazy about iPhoto the last time I gave it a go. Apple has added some nice refinements to this application, and my beefs are minor. Integration with Photoshop, or your choice of external editor, is a snap. Apple has added Facebook integration, which is a plus because we’re all Facebook users at my house. I prefer the thumbnail view iPhoto applies to folders, and especially smart is they way it browses photo content of folders. Dragging your mouse over the displayed thumbnail will cycle through and display all contained images. Nice. My only beef with iPhoto is that movies launch in an external Quicktime window where I would prefer them to be displayed within the application window instead. I can live with that one gripe.



iPhoto

iPhoto has gone from a dumbed down image browser that used to frustrate me to a very simple application that does everything I need it to. Kudos Apple, nice work.

For you Windows users, Picasa is awfully close.

…and for those of you with a host of Adobe software in regular use on your computer, give Adobe Bridge a try. To be honest I am still on the fence as to whether I prefer Bridge or iPhoto for my personal use.

Both Mac and PC users have a few very good options for an image cataloging apps. Depending on what’s important to you, they integrate with your other image software and your web interests to varying degrees depending on the app.