Organising your photos?

As a Nikon user I use Capture NX 2, however if you do not feel like spending mega bucks, try the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which is free. It will take a bit of learning but quite powerful. http://www.gimp.org/

I love Gimp, as a tech guy i've been using it for years. For those people who want to try it from a photoshop background there is also gimpshop (http://www.gimpshop.com/download.shtml) which is gimp, made to feel more like photoshop

Gimp is good for editing, but i'm more thinking about workflow and key wording, which is apparently where lightroom excels. For that gimp doesn't work so well. Picasa on the other hand seems fairly good, does basic touch ups, captioning and keywords! Best of all, Picasa is totally free!

I've got my install disk for the Cannon around here somewhere, i expect it comes with software as well, but i want to see whats out there for free/open source. Have you tried Picasa?

'View NX 2' is free from Nikon, layout quite similar to Lightroom

The view NX is quite a good program but can very unstable at times. But it is not suitable for editing and processing photos.

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I use light room. Cant fault it. I do 99% of my work in it.
Alternative is aperture.
Some use Bridge in the CS packages.

For news work and photo journalism you should not be using anything that changes the picture.
see Reuters guidelines
http://blogs.reuters.com/blog/archives/4327

For obvious reasons on line systems are out.

Gimp is a non starter if you are serious about photography and journalism.
IF you can't afford Photoshop use Photoshop Elements. (it is free with many things.

Personally I can't afford the free open source stuff.

I agree, I have LR3, I am useless at organising my photos (I normally end up with 5 copies of the same photos strewn all over my computer). Lightroom hasn't helped me much

Then get Scott Kelby's books on LR3

The first thing you have to do is decide on work flow and the structure of your photo store. I know dome people who tried LR and did not like it because they tried to uses their old workflow on it. They used LR in a way it was not intended and indeed in the very way it was designed to stop people working.

The only time I have more than one image (other than the backups) is when I am exporting it.

Agree with @Chris, work out your workflow and Lightroom is the business, took me a while but now sorted esp. with Demotix now having a LR plugin, it's ace!

Organisation is the key. In fact you should read chapter one of Kelby's book in lightroom BEFORE you install LR. It is about organising the images on the hard disk.

The point of LR is that you have ONE copy of the image on the hard disk. (plus backups that LR can make when you import from the memory card.) So I have two identical directory structures of pictures... one on the local hard disk and one on an external Xraid2 array across the network.

Then you have the LR catalogue and data file. This too LR will automatically back up (its on the raid array).

From the ONE copy of the image I can make several virtual copies that are the base real image with the various LR adjustments applied to it. Remember LR does NON-Destructive editing. That is when you load the original image LR then applies the changes to what you see on screen, print or export.

Unfortunately for me I have a PPC MAc so to get the "free " LR plug in I am going to have to get a new Intel MAC pro, Adobe Creative suite CS5, LR3 and Office not much change out of 4,000 GBP So I will have to limp on with LP2.7, CS3 . office 2004 and a G5... Mainly because I have my eye on a Sigma 120-300 F2.8 that is going to cost me 2K GBP.

So I will just have to carry one with the Demotix FTP loader

LightRoom is to easy once you've got your head around it. Even as a processing tool for landscape work you don't have to leave it often.

It's just a case of sitting down and thinking about it.

Now I'm off to find the LR plugin here :D

I am getting used to LR3 now, I went on some presentation where they told the people in the room how to use LR3

Out of interest did they say whether to use a folder structure or one folder and keyword/collections?

They never delved into that matter. I leave all my demotix work into one that is only for demotix, others are separate for what I do

I have a file structure on the disk. That is real and physical.

However the collections and smart collections that work on many things including keywords, dates, colour flags etc etc are virtual. You have both.

How you organise the file structure varies. Many do it on year, month, day just to keep images separate.
Others have a directory on subject

Mine is subject and then date. in both the main store and the back up store (I have LR set up to do a back up when I import) so I have two reasonably organised structures of images should the great computer virus wipe put my LR catalogue etc so I still have a vaguely usable manual system.

Then I have various collections and I must admit mainly smart collections. that as LR is so good at pick up collections from across the whole library.

As I said reading Scot Kelbys LR(2 in my case) for Digital photographers Chapter 1 is essential come to that so is Chapter 2. these cover importing and organising... They take up some 100 pages and it is well worth reading BEFORE you start using LR

I have a file structure on the disk. That is real and physical.

However the collections and smart collections that work on many things including keywords, dates, colour flags etc etc are virtual. You have both.

How you organise the file structure varies. Many do it on year, month, day just to keep images separate.
Others have a directory on subject

Mine is subject and then date. in both the main store and the back up store (I have LR set up to do a back up when I import) so I have two reasonably organised structures of images should the great computer virus wipe put my LR catalogue etc so I still have a vaguely usable manual system.

Then I have various collections and I must admit mainly smart collections. that as LR is so good at pick up collections from across the whole library.

As I said reading Scot Kelbys LR(2 in my case) for Digital photographers Chapter 1 is essential come to that so is Chapter 2. these cover importing and organising... They take up some 100 pages and it is well worth reading BEFORE you start using LR

I use Apple Apeture, does all I need and is totally stable, got over 8000 RAW files on there now.

I like the challenge of getting the image captured 'in camera' and only use the software to tweak exposure, WB and a bit of a crop. Call me old fasioned if you like, that is the way I like it.

I downloaded a trial version of the Adobe PS thingy, looks very capable, but not for me.

I file by place, then date. Seems to be working up to now, with of course, a special folder called Demotix

Aperture and LR are on a par and it is personal preference which you prefer. Photoshop is something different and is as much use to an Aperture or lightroom user. Though as an LR users I spend 90% of my time in LR and only occasionally need PS. As for using Bridge in stead of Aperture or LR... that is a non-starter

I don't have a file called Demotix. When I want to upload the selection I use the Demotx plug-in and it loads the pictures, captions titles and al the keyword automatically