Photo Question NFF

[Threedayweekend]

I recently purchased a new camera (Nikon Coolpix P500). My other camera disappeared (we think that my youngest son flushed it). Well my wife and I have feel in love with this camera. We love taking pics with it and want to do more and more with it. My questions are this 1) What is everyones favorite photo program to use (I have a Mac) ? 2) Where do you like to store your photos: on DVD, on the hard drive of your computer, or at a wed site? 3) What web sites or books about the subject would you recommend. 4)What do you find is the easiest way to post pics on this wed site?


Thanks in advance
Jason

[bdesavage]

Jason,
I have a DSLR and shoot in RAW alot so it don't take much to use up a lot of storage space, However I picked up a 1.5T external hard drive for under 100.00 and thats where I store my pics. I use "Photoshop Elements" to process after using the software that came with my camera. As far as posting, sign up for a "Photobucket" account, it's free .
Hope this helps a little.
Bill

[Kerry Stratton]

I believe Apple's photo editing software is called Aperture and from what I have read it is very good. I use a PC, my software of choice is Lightroom and Photoshop Elements.

For photo storage I keep them on the hard drive of mycomputer. I also have two 1TB external drives that I use to make separate backup of all my photos. This means I have 3 separate copies on three separate drives of every photograph. I take a ton of pictures both for my own hobbyist interests and also of family. The photos are irreplaceable and I do everything I can to make sure I have plenty of backups.

I also use Photobucket for sharing and posting photos.

[DG]

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements at home. My puter hates it, but it does have some bells and whistles that I use once in a while. At work, I use the MS Photo Editor that comes with Office. I actually like it better most of the time, since almost all I ever do is crop and resize for the net, and it lets you see how many pixels wide your cropped photo is before you crop it.

I store my images on an external hard drive.

No idea on the book.

I like my photobucket page(s). They let you put up a link to the image, to the page the image is on, or a thumbnail link like the one below:

[Mike Thomas]

If you just want to resize, crop or do some basic retouching then just use your Iphoto on the Mac. If you want to do some fairly cool advanced retouching etc then you can't beat Photoshop.
I store all my photos in the Iphoto program and back them up on CD.
Photobucket is a good site, but I always re-size before uploading it is just easier.
All the best.
Mike

[Joel D. Popham]

You can do quite a bit of photo editing right in iPhoto on your Mac. Best Regards....

[Brian Moffitt]

Jason,

Good questions. I know nothing about the specific camera you mention, but post processing is pretty much universal unless you are shooting RAW and need a program which supports RAW output from the camera you are using. I'm an IT guy so I put a lot of emphasis on my answer to your second question only because I've seen and experienced the fallout from a poor backup plan.

1) I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. I like it both for the organization and the simple fact that it is extremely powerful and easier to use than full blown Photoshop CS5. I own both but do 90% of my edits in Photoshop Lightroom rather than full blown Photoshop. As others have noted as you are using a Mac, Apperature is an excellent choice and has most of the features found in Photoshop Lightroom (and a few that aren't found in Lightroom). Presently Photoshop Lightroom is $240 from Amazon; while Apperature is $180. I know Photoshop Lightroom has a trial available, if Apperature does you may want to download both and see which suits you best. If price is a consideration Photoshop Elements 9 is an excellent choice as it has many of the features found in Photoshop Lightroom but for $79 vs. $240.

2) I use a multi-method storage system for all of my pictures. First, the pictures are downloaded to my laptop where I do all of my actual editing work. I then copy them to my Windows Home Server which uses a RAID array (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) to ensure that the data is protected in event of a single drive failure. Once a month I backup my home server to a USB drive which is then stored off site at my office. Every few months I then backup all of my photos and other important documents to DVD which I then store off-site at a bank (safe deposit box). I should also note that my laptop is backed-up nightly to my home server as well, so I have backups of backups on a regular basis. In any event I highly recommend a multi-method storage system for your photos (and other critical data for that matter). USB hard drives do fail and they tend to fail at a higher rate than in system hard drives so don't depend on them as your sole backup method.

3) Kelby Training (http://www.kelbytraining.com) is an excellent website for both photography, Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom. Downside is it is not free and a year's worth of access runs around $199 (they run sales from time to time). That being said it is completely worth every penny you spend if you use the products they have training for. You can review their training catalog for free, which should help you make your decision. The founder of Kelby Training, Scott Kelby, also publishes a large number of books on the subjects of digital photography, Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom. His books are excellent, extremely accessible and I can't recommend them more highly. Another great site is Digital Photography School (http://www.digital-photography-school.com/) out of the UK. The site has great content that is constantly being either updated or added to. I checked Amazon and there are no books written about the CoolPix P500, but any generalized digital photography book should be helpful. However, the best advice I can give is shoot, shoot shoot! The more you use your camera and the more pictures you take the better a photographer you will become.

4) In Photoshop Lightroom I use the "Export for Web" process. This scales the images down to postable size on this site. Otherwise you can use a site like Flicker (http://www.flicker.com) or Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com). For printing I use Shutterfly (http://www.shutterfly.com) for snapshots and the like, or MPIX (http://www.mpix.com) for shots I'm framing, but those sites don't allow linking so they can't be used for posting here.

For what it's worth there is my .02. If there is anything I can put a higher priority on, it is save your stuff in multiple places. USB hard drives do fail and if that is the only place you have your priceless memories stored the $5-10,000 for data recovery will seem like a small price to pay at the time, but today an extra USB drive is like Bill says $100 or less.

Brian