bettis1 Loc: Texas

I posted this in the general forum and was directed here. I apologize for the duplication.

As a fairly new returner to digital photography after years away from film, I am pretty confused regarding the post processing work flow.

On my MAC I have Preview, iPhoto, ViewNX2, and Aperture. Over the years I have downloaded numerous pictures (both RAW and JPEG) into all of them. Because of my confusion about the most efficient work flow, I have done little with them other than very basic corrections.

Since I have different pictures in different programs and duplicate pictures in some others I think that one of my first needs is to consolidate and remove duplicates where necessary.

I know that many of you use other software and I have no problem adding another one if the ones I have aren't what I need. But I'd actually like to use what I have before I move on to something else that I don't know how to use.

I appreciate any suggestions.

Bob

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

I will respond as someone who started off in essentially the same predicament you're in - several disconnected programs, photos strewn amongst them, no overall approach. Here's what worked for me, but there are other valid approaches.

I selected one primary program for cataloguing and editing (my choice was lightroom but aperture should work just the same) and vowed to run everything from thence forward through that one program, with photos neatly tucked into dated folders and keyworded in the program so I could find whatever I wanted. I house this folder structure on an external hard drive to keep from overloading my mac mini, and back it up on a second external drive. This I have done, as planned, for 6 years now. It is organized, accessible, and consistent.

The quandary was what to do about the stuff I had strewn around from the past. Most of it was jpegs that I hadn't done more than minimal editing to, and hadn't really known what I was doing. I made a decision NOT to bring that stuff into Lightroom but to consolidate all of it into iPhoto where much of it was anyway. I culled a LOT. I left no photos residing anywhere other than iPhoto or Lightroom. What I ended up with was a small iPhoto catalog of what I wanted to keep of my old photos, and a growing catalog in Lightroom of everything I had going forward. Now I was down to two programs each with 1 catalog.

I shoot mainly RAW. Every photo I take now gets loaded into the Lightroom catalog. 90+% of editing can be done in Aperture or Lightroom without creating any additional files. But my other editing programs are now all tied to Lightroom. If I do edit a photo in Photoshop, or Topaz or whatever, the edit sits down beside the original in the Lightroom catalog so it's easy to find. if I don't like the edit, I delete it. If I want to create a file to post on the web or email, I export it out of Lightroom and as soon as I've done what I'm going to do with it, I delete that jpeg to reduce clutter. I print from Lightroom.

If I had a notion, I could absorb all the IPhoto files into Lightroom as well, but I don't really feel I have to. Having it down to only 2 programs, one of which is everything up to 2008 and one which is everything after 2008 is manageable.

Now learning to USE your editing programs is another proposition for another day. But there's a wealth of information on this forum section about using these programs, and plenty of friendly people who will help.

Others have other systems which will I'm sure they'll share. Good luck and have fun!